5. American Totality. This expression, taken from
Walt Whitman, can be understood as pointing in the
direction of the absorption of the concept into the
texture of the problematic ideology of the United
States. The problem presented by such an ideology
is clear in this context: the people of the United States
are not a traditional people in the European sense of
the term. Its institutions are based rather on the notion
of natural or rational law than on the legal system
which expresses an accepted historical tradition. Yet
in spite of this diversified background rooted in princi-
ples and based on theoretical considerations, we do find
traces of the concept of
Volksgeist. Whitman refers
explicitly to Herder's idea of a national spirit, though
he places his reference in a reflection on the character
of poetry. Really great poetry, like the Homeric or
biblical canticles, he says, is the result of a national
spirit and not of the privileges of a polished and select
few. The idea seems to be that the national spirit is
an expression of a whole people and against the whole
people stand the privileged few. This identification of
a national spirit with folk elements is close to Grimm's
view of natural poetry as the poetry of the people and
artificial poetry as the poetry of individual poets. Again
this duality runs parallel to the duality between the
law of the people and the imposed law of the jurists.
The populist trend in Whitman finds its expression in
his rejection of the poetry of the Old World. Here the
polemic aspect of his national feeling emerges: as long
as the United States remains unsupplied with autoch-
thonous song the people lacks first-class nationality.
The influence of the German thinkers on the Ameri-
can version of the idea of Volksgeist is revealed in the
fact that two American thinkers, Francis Lieber and
Philip Schaff, who concerned themselves with this issue
(though their terminology differs), were of German
descent. Francis Lieber did not use the term Volksgeist;
but he was aware of his relation to the German ideol-
ogy and the use of the terms Volkstum and Volksgeist.
Lieber placed the emphasis on the consciousness of
unification of different peoples according to circum-
stances: either the consciousness of unity precedes the
political unification as is the case of Germany and Italy,
or the political unity precedes the ethnic and the
cultural unity as is the case of the United States,
Canada, and Australia. He spoke about races though
he gave to the concept a cultural and historical mean-
ing and not a biological one, and considered the
Anglican race which achieved guarantees to human
rights, civil liberties, and self-government superior to
the Teutonic one.
Philip Schaff's sketch of the character of the Ameri-
can people and its components is another instance of
German influence on American thinking. The concept
used by Schaff is national character and not Volksgeist;
but the two concepts are similar in their origin. When
Schaff says that all depends ultimately upon the char-
acter of the nation, he echoes the idea of Volksgeist.
His reference to history and his notion that every
nation has its peculiar calling is based on the connec-
tion put forward in German thinking between the
importance of history and the position of Volksgeist
as a principle operating in history. Schaff is aware of
the particular situation prevailing in America where,
in spite of the confused diversity, there resides, after
all, a higher unity and where, in a babel of peoples,
the traces of a specifically American national character
may be discerned. The impulse towards freedom and
the sense of law and order resting on moral basis are
features of this character. Thus ultimately the ideas
rooted in the conception of natural law and rational
morality are presented as expressions of the national
character. Here, too, a polemical note can be dis-
cerned: gloire is the motto of the Frenchman; “duty”
that of the Englishman. A similar idea is voiced by
Theodore Parker, and to some extent its echoes can
be heard in the notion of “manifest destiny” which,
though related to the physical expansion of the United
States to the Pacific, absorbed also the view that it
is God's design that each country should wear a pecu-
liar physiognomy—as Thomas Starr King and John
Fiske said. George Bancroft was in his own way influ-
enced by similar ideas.
