A COUNTRY WITHOUT PRE-HISTORY
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the government is not protected by its proximity to a State which
is an object of veneration. The government is called exactly what
it is: the Administration, and is subject to any kind of criticism,
criticism that never touches the sensitivity of the Constitution which,
on the contrary, delimits the powers of government and guarantees
the various rights of the citizen.
Some other basic differences between the traditional societies
and America become evident as we consider the attitude of the
members of the respective societies toward what one might call the
limits or limitations of human existence, a problem which in part
coincides with one of the basic problems of religion. There is, of
course, no uniform interpretation of the limits common to the various
traditional civilizations. In countries of the Orient, for example,
we find often a "philosophical" attitude toward life that accepts not
only the frailty of human existence-sickness and death and the
various mishaps of life-but also the social evils as necessary, per–
haps even divinely determined, limitations. In the Christian West
we find a great many people who prefer to consider man's depravity,
rising from original sin, as his most important limitation. On the
other hand, whatever the specific interpretations of the nature of
these limits or limitations, they are considered by those who "believe"
in
them as something given that has to be accepted. One may
adjust himself philosophically to their presence as many seem to
have done in the Orient, or make it the foundation of a pessimism
and cynicism that leads to indolence in social and political matters
as we see it
in
various countries of the West, or, finally, one may
raise the very acceptance of man's limitations, as symbolized by his
sinfulness, to be the key to salvation; basically, however, these
limitations cannot be overcome in tlle natural realm.
America offers the opposite faith: namely, in man's capacity to
overcome every limit whatsoever. In fact, the very Constitution,
man-made myth in contrast to the handed-down myths of the
traditional societies, represents a limit or limitation only for the
purpose of overcoming or abolishing more serious limitations; based
on the faith in the possibility of eventually overcoming all limits or
limitations, it regulates, to this effect, the citizens' activities. The
transcendence of the Constitution- the fact that it has been created
