When William Faulkner addressed the Delta Council, annorganization of feirmers, at Cleveland, Mississippi in 1952, henspoke about the Declaration of Independence.* The noblenAmerican postulate of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuitnof happiness, Faulkner observed, seemed to have devolvedninto little more than a shorthand for material security. Hisninsight was confirmed a few years later when President Eisenhowernconfessed to being unable to counter Khrushchev’snargument that capitalism appealed only to man’s baser naturenwhile communism was a spiritual philosophy.nxmenlericans once knew, said Faulkner, what the rightnto life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness meant, becausenmost men had been without it. Historically, that right wasnidentified with strenuous eflforts, not with material abundance.nThe men who made the hard and often &tal ocean voyages tonfound new colonies, who challenged the world’s greatestnpower for their independence, who repeatedly penetrated thenwildemess, were not seeking comfort. To pursue happiness didnnot mean an easy sinking into an anonymous hedonistic mass;nit meant taking an active responsibility. “Which was exactlynwhat we did, in those old days.”nOur Founding Fathers did not glory chiefly in the fact thatnwe were a prosperous people (though they did find that ansource of satisfaction) but in the feet that we were a virtuousnpeople. And “virtue” did not mean a mere puritanical avoidancenof minor vices or that commercially circumspect behaviorndesigned “to win friends and influence people.” Virtue had anstem Roman connotation. It was a striving for republicannethics and personal honor. Men were not virtuous becausenthey enjoyed the boon of self-government Rather, they enjoyednthe boon of self-government because they were virtuousnenough to earn and to keep it.nAmericans “did not mean,” said Faulkner, “just to chasenhappiness, but to work for it.” And by happiness they meantn”not just pleasure, idleness, but peace, dignity, independencenand self-respect; that man’s inalienable right was, the peacenand freedom in which, by his own eflforts and sweat, he couldngain dignity and independence, owing nothing to any man.”nFaulkner’s words must be seen primarily in light of the biblicalninjunction about the necessity to labor for our daily bread, annassumption that implies a transcendent dimension in labor.nFaulkner also knew that “inalienable right” was a term used inna political context. Man’s happiness was not pursued atomistically,nbut within a civil community. The pursuit of happinessncould not properly be read to mean putting consumptionnbefore labor or pleasure before obligation. Nor could it validatenthe distortions of sophists who, beginning in the 19thncentury, took the dependent clause about equality as the mainn•WiUiam Faulkner, Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters, ed James B. Memwethern(New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 126-134.nChronicles of Cultaren• IDEOLOGY & OUR DAILY BREAD •nC O M M i: N Innnpoint, as a jeremiad. Equality was merely the condition appertainingnto the individual stru^e for freedom and dignity, notna program to be implemented or a guarantee of results.nFaulkner was attempting to reemphasize the sacramentalnaspect of man’s work and liberty, to free them from the materialistnand utilitarian aura they had taken on. Man must live bynbread, but he does not live by bread alone. The sane man, asnFaulkner more than once Ulustrated in his fiction by contrarynexample, does not work to pile up riches. He works for thenwelfare of those of his blood and name—^including the generationsnto come—^and for his own dignity as a member of thencommunity. His work and the liberty that makes it possible arennot to be seen chiefly as a utilitarian search for maximumnprofit. Neither democracy nor economic productivity arensatisfactory without the spiritual striving that Faulkner wasnpointing to. He knew, of course, that man would usuaUy faUnshort of spiritual goals oftener than he would attain them.nX hough he was probably not conscious of it, Faulknernwas following a theme common in 19th-centory Southernnpolitical literature. American democracy depended not sonmuch upon its pragmatic methodology of the greatest goodnfor the greatest number as upon its chivalric inheritance ofnstriving for a code of conduct worthy of republicanism. Thenconsent of the governed, Calhoun repeatedly w^arned in hisnfl:uidess attempts to clarify the concept of majority rule, wasnnot a mere counting up of heads with the pie to be dividednamong the party with the largest numbers. It was a conditionnof intangible spiritual assent to the higher purposes of ancommonwealth, an assent which required restraint and magnanimitynon aU sides.nFaulkner caUed upon his audience to remember not just thenpragmatic and productive side of their liberty and labor butnthe chi^]ric and spiritual side. It is the linking of honor, courage,nand loyalty to the earning of our daily bread that gives us whateverndignity we achieve. It is this that tells the plowman thatnhe is not merely scratching in the earth but making it fruitfiilnaccording to divine injunction; that tells the entrepreneur thatnhe is not just making a quick buck but creating somethingnuseful; that tells the writer he is not only satisfying his vanitynbut communicating something of value to his feUow man.n