Vernon Louis Parrington

Ideas are not godlings that spring perfect-winged from the head of Jove; they are not flowers that bloom in a walled garden; they are weapons hammered out on the anvil of human needs.

Vernon Louis Parrington (August 3, 1871 – June 16, 1929) was an American literary historian, scholar, and college football coach. His three-volume history of American letters, Main Currents in American Thought, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1928 and was one of the most influential books for American historians of its time. Parrington taught at the College of Emporia, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Washington. He was also the head football coach at the College of Emporia from 1893 to 1896 and Oklahoma from 1897 to 1900. Parrington founded the American studies movement in 1927.

Quotes

• Ideas are not godlings that spring perfect-winged from the head of Jove; they are not flowers that bloom in a walled garden; they are weapons hammered out on the anvil of human needs. Freedom to think is bought with a price; and to ignore the price is to lose all sense of values. To love ideas is excellent, but to understand how ideas themselves are conditioned by social forces, is better still. To desire culture, to enjoy commerce with the best that has been known and thought in the world is excellent also; but to understand the dynamics which lies back of all culture signifies more. Men who will be free, struggle to be free, fashion themselves ideas for swords to fight with. To consider the sword apart from the struggle is to turn dilettante and a frequenter of museums.
  • "Economics and Criticism" (1917); ed. Vernon Parrington Jr., The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 3 (July, 1953), p. 99

• There is a certain historical fitness in the fact that the Wits should have arisen in Connecticut and been the intellectual and spiritual children of Yale. For generations the snug little commonwealth had been the home of a tenacious conservatism, that clung to old ways and guarded the institutions of the fathers with pious zeal. In no other New England state did the ruling hierarchy maintain so glacial a grip on society. The Revolution of '76 had only ruffled the surface of Connecticut life; it left the social structure quite unchanged. The church retained its unquestioned control of the machinery of the commonwealth; and the church was dominated by a clerical aristocracy, hand in glove with a mercantile aristocracy.
  • as editor, "Introduction". The Connecticut Wits. World classics in large print: American authors series. Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1926. pp. ix–xlviii.  (514 pages; quote from p. xii)

• Those older satirists—nagging souls like Pope and bold bad fellows like Churchill—were mainly concerned to annoy their victims with pin-pricks. They were too completely the gentleman to grow chummy with base fellows whom they frankly despised; and in consequence they never discovered half the possibilities of the gentle art of satire. Sinclair Lewis is wiser than they were. He has learned that before one can effectively impale one's victim, one must know his weaknesses and take him off his guard.
  • Sinclair Lewis, Our Own Diogenes. Issue 5 of Chapbooks, University of Washington, Seattle. 1927. p. 8.  (27 pages)

• We Americans are a simple and somewhat primitive people. We desire things eagerly like children; and when we are crossed or thwarted, when we encounter those who dissent from our proposals, we strike out assertively. The state of Washington is characteristically American, with the virtues and shortcomings of the old stock set in sharp relief. In what temper our Economics and politics will dwell together in the immediate future, no wise man will endeavor to forecast.
  • Previously unpublished article, which ran in the Seattle Weekly (June 26, 1984); ed. Junius Rochester, "Parrington, Vernon Louis (1871–1929)". HistoryLink (March 10, 2007)

Main Currents in American Thought (1927)

3 vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

• Perhaps the rarest bit of irony in American history is the later custodianship of democracy by the middle class, who while perfecting their tariffs and subsidies, legislating from the bench, exploiting the state and outlawing all political theories but their own, denounce all class consciousness as unpatriotic and all agrarian or proletarian programs as undemocratic. But it was no fault of Andrew Jackson if the final outcome of the great movement of Jacksonian democracy was so untoward; it was rather the fault of the times that were not ripe for democracy. ... One far-reaching result survived the movement, the popularization of the name of democracy and the naive acceptance of the belief that the genius of America was democratic.
  • Vol. 2, pt. 3, ch. 2, sec. 1

• Congress had rich gifts to bestow — in lands, tariffs, subsidies, favors of all sorts; and when influential citizens made their wishes known to the reigning statesmen, the sympathetic politicians were quick to turn the government into the fairy godmother the voters wanted it to be. A huge barbecue was spread to which all presumably were invited. Not quite all, to be sure; inconspicuous persons, those who were at home on the farm or at work in the mills and offices, were overlooked; a good many indeed out of the total number of the American people. But all the important persons, leading bankers and promoters and business men, received invitations. There wasn't room for everybody and these were presumed to represent the whole. It was a splendid feast. If the waiters saw to it that the choicest portions were served to favored guests, they were not unmindful of their numerous homespun constituency and they loudly proclaimed the fine democratic principle that what belongs to the people should be enjoyed by the people.
  • Vol. 3, bk. 1, ch. 1, sec. 4 (Gilded Age)

• There was a vast amount of nosing about to discover bad smells, and to sensitive noses the bad smells seemed to be everywhere. Evidently some hidden cesspool was fouling American life, and as the inquisitive plumbers tested the household drains they came upon the source of infection — not one cesspool but many, under every city hall and beneath every state capitol — dug secretly by politicians in the pay of respectable business men. It was these cesspools that were poisoning the national household, and there would be no health in America till they were filled in and no others dug.
  It was a dramatic discovery and when the corruption of American politics was laid on the threshold of business — like a bastard on the doorsteps of the father — a tremendous disturbance resulted.
  • Vol. 3, addenda (Progressive Era)