America, however, actually America, proved to me that the ancient culture represented by Europe is not destined to die out, and that, if Europe is being Americanised, America in compensation is being induced by an eternal impulse to Europeanise herself! I, like so many other Europeans, had gone to America, persuaded that the American’s only thought is to make money. But in America, I, too, ended with the conviction that no country in Europe expends so much money, labour, and zeal on founding museums, schools, universities, and new religions; on fostering, in the midst of the mechanical civilisation and the realm of quantity, the arts, the religious spirit, and the disinterested sciences; on preventing the loss of that intellectual legacy of the past, in which Europe takes an ever-decreasing interest, occupied as she is in developing her industries and her trade. If, out of deference to history, rather than to the present day, we may grant that Europe represents in the world’s history the effort directed to the perfecting of a lofty culture, artistic, scientific, religious, or philosophic,—there is no doubt but that America is to-day becoming Europeanised; is seeking, that is to say, to employ the vast riches which she has accumulated by the intensive exploitation of her territory in the promotion of the progress of art, knowledge, and the religious spirit. Doubtless, not all the efforts she makes are successful; but they are numerous, intense, and obstinate. Indeed, if America is open to any reproach in this relation, it is, in my opinion, to that of feeling too ardent an admiration for lofty culture—art and science in particular—an admiration which sometimes blunts the critical sense, and does not permit her to distinguish what in the world of the ideal is authentic from what is counterfeit, the real gold from pinchbeck. In fact, one can find in no European country so lively and profound a trust in science as in America. Europe knows that science can do a great deal and has done a great deal, but that it often promises, or raises hopes of, more than it can do. Not so in America. Among the cultured, as among the lower classes, faith in the power of science is practically unlimited. There is no marvel which the American does not expect to see issuing from the scientist’s closet. Even the mystical movements in America, whose trend is anti-scientific, like to trick themselves out with the name of “Science,” which has a kind of magic sound and glamour for the men of the New World.