Can "He" refers to collective people?

I was pleasantly surprised to find the Empire Building so poetical.
From every one except my blind friend I had received an impression of
sordid materialism – the piling up of one steel honeycomb upon another
with no real purpose but to satisfy the American craving for the
superlative in everything. A Frenchman has said, in his exalted
moments the American fancies himself a demigod, nay, a god; for only
gods never tire of the prodigious. The highest, the largest, the most
costly is the breath of his vanity.

This is Helen Keller’s letter answering John Finely’s question, “What Did You Think ‘of the Sight’ When You Were on the Top of the Empire Building?”
I guess the bolded ‘his’ refers to the American in general. But then, isn’t it have to be ‘their’ instead of ‘his’?