The good work which for his own benefit the individual is required to do, means primarily technically competent work.  The man who has thoroughly mastered the knowledge and the craft essential to his own special occupation is by way of being the well-forged and well-tempered instrument.  Little by little there have been developed in relation to all the liberal arts and occupations certain tested and approved technical methods.  The individual who proposes to occupy himself with any one of these arts must first master the foundation of knowledge, of formal traditions, and of manual practice upon which the superstructure is based.  The danger that a part of this fund of technical knowledge and practice may at any particular time be superannuated must be admitted; but the validity of the general rule is not affected thereby.  The most useful and effective dissenters are those who were in the beginning children of the Faith.  The individual who is too weak to assert himself with the help of an established technical tradition is assuredly too weak to assert himself without it.  The authoritative technical tradition associated with any one of the arts of civilization is merely the net result of the accumulated experience of mankind in a given region.  That experience may or may not have been exhaustive or adequately defined; but in any event its mastery by the individual is merely a matter of personal and social economy.  It helps to prevent the individual from identifying his whole personal career with unnecessary mistakes.  It provides him with the most natural and serviceable vehicle for self-expression.  It supplies him with a language which reduces to the lowest possible terms the inevitable chances of misunderstanding.  It is society’s nearest approach to an authentic standard in relation to the liberal arts and occupations; and just so far as it is authentic society is justified in imposing it on the individual.

The perfect type of authoritative technical methods are those which prevail among scientific men in respect to scientific work.  No scientist as such has anything to gain by the use of inferior methods or by the production of inferior work.  There is only one standard for all scientific investigators—­the highest standard; and so far as a man falls below that standard his inferiority is immediately reflected in his reputation.  Some scientists make, of course, small contributions to the increase of knowledge, and some make comparatively large contributions; but just in so far as a man makes any contribution at all, it is a real contribution, and nothing makes it real but the fact that it is recognized.  In the Hall of Science exhibitors do not get their work hung upon the line because it tickles the public taste, or because it is “uplifting,” or because the jury is kindly and wishes to give the exhibitor a chance to earn a little second-rate reputation.  The same standard is applied to everybody, and the jury is incorruptible.  The exhibit is nothing if not true, or by way of becoming or being recognized as true.