If Royce and Bourne failed to give enough attention to the reconciliation of conflicts and the mechanisms of social cohesion, it was because they saw desiccation as a greater danger than social conflict. The debate about cultural pluralism came down to the issue posed by William James in his exchange with Hobhouse. The assimilationists, like Hobhouse, worried about intolerance and fanaticism, whereas the pluralists, like James, saw "insipidity" as a greater danger—the "tame flabbiness," as Bourne put it, that was "accepted as Americanization." In their view, the rootless, emancipated, migratory individuals so highly prized by critics of particularism were cultural renegades who believed in nothing except their own right to a good time. Boas was impressed by the traits shared by all men and women, once the differences imposed by culture were peeled away. ^* Royce and Bourne, like Brownson, attached more importance to cultural differences and to the loyalty they inspired. They were less concerned with the danger of competing loyalties than with the erosion of the very capacity for loyalty.

Even blind loyalty, Royce thought, was better than a "thoughtless individualism which is loyal to nothing." Modern life gave rise to "social motives that seem to take away from people the true spirit of loyalty, and to leave them distracted, unsettled as to their moral standards, uncertain why or for what they live." Utilitarianism obscured the existence of "something much larger and richer than the mere sum of human happiness." The "spread of sympathy" and the spirit of universal philanthropy made people forget that when philanthropy was "not founded upon a

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His exposure to the Eskimo, on the first of his many field trips as an anthropologist, taught him, he said, that "they enjoyed life, as we do; that nature is also beautiful to them; that feelings of friendship also root in the Eskimo heart; that, although the character of their life is so rude as compared to civilized life, the Eskimo is a man as we are; his feelings, his virtues and his shortcomings are based on human nature like ours." It is impossible not to be touched by these sentiments, typical of the liberal mind at its most generous and expansive. The appeal to universal human traits, however, contains an unanticipated pitfall. If all men are alike, they should look, act, and think alike. When the fact of diversity contradicts the fiction of brotherhood, liberals often find it hard to maintain an attitude of exemplary tolerance. Diversity affronts their vision of the unity of all mankind. Thus Boas, staggered by the depth of racial animosities in the United States, argued, as we have seen, that the race problem would disappear only when observable racial differences themselves disappeared.

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