Herbert Croly

Herbert Croly

At the turn of the 20th century, Herbert Croly – as far as the accelerating world was concerned – was a man without a name. Painfully shy and without many friends, he was admitted to Harvard in 1886 as one of 96 "special students" who would not be eligible for a degree. Perhaps the world should have realized he would one day be reckoned with when was given the former room of newspaperman William Randolph Hearst, who was expelled from Harvard a year before Croly entered its halls. But Croly remained aloof through his long stay at Harvard, which had more promising sons to look after. However, when in 1909 Croly published his first and most remembered book, The Promise of American Life, he was instantly recognized as a great political thinker. Eager to recognize him as one of its own, Harvard gave him his bachelor’s degree soon after the jubilant reviews were printed.

Croly was born on Jan 23, 1869 and journalism was in his household, if not in his blood. His father, David Goodman Croly, immigrated to the United States from Ireland as a young boy and married Jane Cunningham, who journeyed to the states from England at age 12. Herbert Croly’s mother wrote for several newspapers under the name Jennie June and was an adamant feminist. Similarly, his father worked for several New York City newspapers and was a devout follower of the French philosopher Auguste Comte, a founder of sociology and positivism. In order to achieve progress, Comte created a Religion of Humanity that emphasized altruism and the destruction of organized religion. Comte’s teachings changed the way Herbert Croly looked at and envisioned life, but he did not devote himself to the Religion of Humanity. However, Croly’s belief that bureaucrats are good people who should be given enough power to improve the lives of their fellow citizens goes along with Comte’s teachings.

Croly admitted the dead Auguste Comte influenced how he envisioned living political systems. He wrote, "From my earliest years, it was his endeavor to teach me to understand and believe in the religion of Auguste Comte. Under such instruction it was not strange that in time I dropped instinctively into his mode of thinking."1 Still, there is no doubt that Croly’s positivism faded once he entered Harvard in 1886. He attended the school off-and-on, initially intending to become a philosophy teacher and taking classes with several notable professors, including William James, Josiah Royce and George Santayana.