spiritual heritage. In the midst of her struggle for existence she had preserved her
spiritual sensitivity. But in the wake of the Civil War the desire to posses 'bigger and
better things' cast its spell everywhere. Big utilities and corporations came into
existence; the spiritual and romantic glow of the frontier days degenerated into the
sordidness of competitive materialistic life, while the unceasing flow of crude
immigrants from Europe made difficult the stabilization of American culture.
Emerson was disillusioned by the aftermath of the Civil War. He had hoped 'that in the
peace after such a war, a great expansion would follow in the mind of the country,
grand views in every direction — true freedom in politics, in religion, in social science,
in thought. But the energy of the nation seems to have expended itself in the war.'
Walt Whitman was even more caustic. He wrote bitterly:
Society in the States is cramped, crude, superstitious, and rotten.... Never was there,
perhaps, more hollowness of heart than at present, and here in the United States.
Genuine belief seems to have left us....; The great cities reek with respectable, as much
as non-respectable, robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid
amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time.... I say that our
New World Democracy, however great a success in uplifting the masses out of their
sloughs in materialistic development, and in a certain highly deceptive superficial
popular intellectuality, is so far an almost complete failure in its social aspects. In vain
do we march with unprecedented strides to empire so colossal, outvying the antique,
beyond Alexander's, beyond the proudest sway of Rome. In vain we annexed Texas,
California, Alaska, and reach north for Canada or south for Cuba. It is as if we were
somehow being endowed with a vast and thoroughly appointed body, and left with
little or no soul.
But the material prosperity or the triumph of science could not destroy the innate
idealism of the American mind. It remained hidden like embers under ashes.
Thoughtful Americans longed for a philosophy which, without going counter to the
scientific method, would show the way to a larger vision of life, harmonizing the
diverse claims of science, the humanities, and mystical experience. Now the time was
ripe for the fulfilment of Thoreau's dream of the marriage of East and West, a real
synthesis of science and religion. And to bring this about, no worthier person could
have been found than Swami Vivekananda of India. This accounts for the spontaneous
welcome received by this representative of Hinduism, who brought to America an
ancient and yet dynamic philosophy of life.