serviceable in a coherent national democratic organization?  How, indeed, are these specialists to get at the public whom they are supposed to lead?  Many very competent contemporary Americans might claim that the real difficulty in relation to the social influence of the expert specialist has been sedulously evaded.  The admirably competent individual cannot exercise any constructive social influence, unless he becomes popular; and the current American standards being what they are, how can an individual become popular without more or less insidious and baleful compromises?  The gulf between individual excellence and effective popular influence still remains to be bridged; and until it is bridged, an essential stage is lacking in the transition from an individually formative result to one that is also socially formative.

Undoubtedly, a gulf does exist in the country between individual excellence and effective popular influence.  Many excellent specialists exercise a very small amount of influence, and many individuals who exercise apparently a great deal of influence are conspicuously lacking in any kind of excellence.  The responsibility for this condition is usually fastened upon the Philistine American public, which refuses to recognize genuine eminence and which showers rewards upon any second-rate performer who tickles its tastes and prejudices.  But it is at least worth inquiring whether the responsibility should not be fastened, not upon the followers, but upon the supposed leaders.  The American people are what the circumstances, the traditional leadership, and the interests of American life have made them.  They cannot be expected to be any better than they are, until they have been sufficiently shown the way; and they cannot be blamed for being as bad as they are, until it is proved that they have deliberately rejected better leadership.  No such proof has ever been offered.

Some disgruntled Americans talk as if in a democracy the path of the aspiring individual should be made peculiarly safe and easy.  As soon as any young man appears whose ideals are perched a little higher than those of his neighbors, and who has acquired some knack of performance, he should apparently be immediately taken at his own valuation and loaded with rewards and opportunities.  The public should take off its hat and ask him humbly to step into the limelight and show himself off for the popular edification.  He should not be obliged to make himself interesting to the public.  They should immediately make themselves interested in him, and bolt whatever he chooses to offer them as the very meat and wine of the mind.  But surely one does not need to urge very emphatically that popularity won upon such easy terms would be demoralizing to any but very highly gifted and very cool-headed men.  The American people are absolutely right in insisting that an aspirant for popular eminence shall be compelled to make himself interesting to them, and shall not be welcomed as a fountain of excellence