Discourses in America

Discourses in America, three lectures by Matthew Arnold, delivered during a tour of the Eastern states in 1883 and published in 1885.

Numbers; or, The Majority and the Remnant, a discussion of national traits, shows the danger of assuming that what is popular or widespread need be praiseworthy. The author indicates the fallacy of the American pride in size and numbers; “in a democratic community like this, with its newness, its magnitude, its strength, its life of business, its sheer freedom and equality, the danger is in the absence of the discipline of respect; in hardness and materialism, exaggeration and boastfulness; in a false smartness, a false audacity, a want of soul and delicacy.” Literature and Science is an argument against the tendency in modern schools to supplant literary education by scientific studies. The essay on Emerson states that the American author is not a great poet, writer, or philosopher, but rather occupies a position like that of Marcus Aurelius, “the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit.” Emerson's “insight is admirable, his truth is precious”; but his most valuable quality is his “hopeful, serene, beautiful temper,” which makes him, together with Franklin, “the most distinctly and honourably American of your writers.”