Then there is the Super-Careerist.  Ordinarily, the careerist is rather obvious, easily recognizable, with diaphanous motives and conduct.  But there is another and rarer bird, the careerist of talent, even the careerist of genius, whom it is not so easy to see through.  Clever and brainy, he may be a good all around trifler, or his specific gift for some line of achievement may make him more effective.  There is nothing he may not call himself:  conservative, liberal, progressive, or radical.  Often he is an agnostic about social and political affairs and problems, which passes for the indecision of the open mind, and is quite handy to render him all things to all men.  But perpetually, the underlying careerist instinct drives him to use all men and women, all ideas and movements and forces he comes in contact with for his own personal advancement, just as the slave making instinct guides the red ant in all its activities to procure its captives.  Ideas do not make a hero out of him, but he makes heroes of ideas, because they serve him in his ascent.

Because he is the most subtle, the most complex and the most deceptive type of careerist, he is the most dangerous to the adventure and speculation in intellect which mankind is.  To say that he is a wolf in sheepskin is to be unjust to him, since he is most successful when he is most unaware of his own charlatanry.  He is most sincere when he is most insincere, and most truthful when he lies best.  A little self-consciousness of hypocrisy is a corrupting thing, much of it completely incompatible with the most successful careerism.  Tartuffe is always applauded by the world when he plays Hamlet, if he really believes in himself as Hamlet.  And, as all he has to do, if he is at all talented, is to look into his glass and see himself in the part, he carries it off very well.

WHY THE STATESMAN FAILS

Slaves and careerists, subnormals and abnormals, are the important elements of the constituency of every modern statesman.  The financial and social careerists as business men, professionals, artists, publicists, presidents of countries, politicians, philosophers dominate his outlook, his plans, his horizon.  The slaves, the inferiors, the subnormals exist merely to be exploited by them.  No one questions the causes of the multiplicity of them.  No one asks why there are so many little lives.  For a fundamentally minded statesman the control of the production of the careerist, why he is produced, and how he may be prevented, becomes the primary problem of his art.