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After all, the American mind was conditioned by one of the noblest and most formidable structures of analysis ever devised, Calvinist theology, and any intellect so shaped was bound to have certain vulnerability to secular ideology ever after. There have been hedgehogs throughout American history who have attempted to endow America with an all-inclusive creed, to translate Americanism into a set of binding propositions, and to construe the national tradition in terms of one or another ultimate law.
毕竟，美国人的思维方式深受加尔文派神学的影响，这种神学是有史以来人类创造的最崇高、最令人敬畏的分析体系之一，而如此形成的思维方式一定始终容易受到世俗意识形态体系的攻击。那些所谓“刺猬”贯穿于美国整个历史，他们企图赋予美国一个万能的信条，把美国精神转变成一系列必须遵循的主张，用一种或另一种最终规律来解释国家的传统。
Yet most of the time, Americans have foxily mistrusted abstract rationalism and rigid priori doctrine. Our national faith has been not in propositions but in processes. In its finest hours the United States has, so to speak,risen above ideology. It has not permitted dogma to falsify reality, imprison experience, or narrow the spectrum of choice. This skepticism about ideology has been a primary source of the social inventiveness which has marked so much of development. The most vital American social thought has been to empirical, practical, pragmatic. America, in consequence, has been at its most characteristic a nation of innovation and experiment.
然而，大多数美国人对抽象的理性主义和僵硬的先验理论持明智的不信任态度。我们的民族不相信一成不变的终极目标，而忠诚于发展中探求。在她处于最佳时期时，美国可以说超越了所有的意识形态体系，她不允许由于信仰教条的原因使现实被曲使人们的实践受到束缚，使选择的范围变得十分狭小。这种对意识形态体系的怀疑是社会创造力的首要源泉。最重要的美国社会思想是经验主义、实践主义和实用主义。因此，美国最显著的特点是创新和尝试。
Pragmatism is no more wholly devoid of abstractions than ideology is wholly devoid of experience. The dividing line comes when abstractions and experience collide and one must give way to the other. At this point the pragmatist rejects abstractions and, the ideologist rejects experience. The early history of the republic illustrates the difference. The American Revolution was a pragmatic effort conducted in terms of certain general values. The colonists fought for independence in terms of British ideals of civil freedom and representative government; they rebelled against British rule essentially for British reasons. The ideals of American independence found expression in the classical documents which accompanied the birth of the nation:the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
实用主义并不完全排斥抽象概念，就像意识形态体系不完全排斥经验一样。当抽象概念与经验发生冲突，必须做出取舍时，区别就显现出来了。在这一点上，实用主义者拒绝抽象概念，而意识形态主绝经验，共和国的早期历史阐释了这种差，美国独立战争是在某些普遍价值指导下的实用主义的尝试。殖民者们为独立而战所根据的是英国的公民自由和代议制政府的理想；他们起义反抗英国人是用了英国的理由。美国独立的理想可以在伴随国家产生的权威文献中找到表述：独立宣言、宪法以及权利法案。
