A technical standard in any one of the liberal or practical arts cannot be applied as rigorously as can the standard of scientific truth, because the standard itself is not so authentic.  In all these arts many differences of opinion exist among masters as to the methods and forms which should be authoritative; and in so far as such is the case, the individual must be allowed to make many apparently arbitrary personal choices.  The fact that a man has such choices to make is the circumstance which most clearly distinguishes the practice of an art from that of a science, but this circumstance, instead of being an excuse for technical irresponsibility or mere eclecticism, should, on the contrary, stimulate the individual more completely to justify his choice.  In his work he is fighting the battle not merely of his own personal career, but of a method, of a style, of an idea, or of an ideal.  The practice of the several arts need not suffer from diversity of standard, provided the several separate standards are themselves incorruptible.  In all the arts—­and by the arts I mean all disinterested and liberal practical occupations—­the difficulty is not that sufficiently authoritative standards do not exist, but that they are not applied.  The standard which is applied is merely that of the good-enough.  The juries are either too kindly or too lax or too much corrupted by the nature of their own work.  They are prevented from being incorruptible about the work of other people by a sub-conscious apprehension of the fate of their own performances—­in case similar standards were applied to themselves.  Just in so far as the second-rate performer is allowed to acquire any standing, he inevitably enters into a conspiracy with his fellows to discourage exhibitions of genuine and considerable excellence, and, of course, to a certain extent he succeeds.  By the waste which he encourages of good human appreciation, by the confusion which he introduces into the popular critical standards, he helps to effect a popular discrimination against any genuine superiority of achievement.

Individual independence and fulfillment is conditioned on the technical excellence of the individual’s work, because the most authentic standard is for the time being constituted by excellence of this kind.  An authentic standard must be based either upon acquired knowledge or an accepted ideal.  Americans have no popularly accepted ideals which are anything but an embarrassment to the aspiring individual.  In the course of time some such ideals may be domesticated—­in which case the conditions of individual excellence would be changed; but we are dealing with the present and not with the future.  Under current conditions the only authentic standard must be based, not upon the social influence of the work, but upon its quality; and a standard of this kind, while it falls short of being complete, must always persist as one indispensable condition of final excellence.  The whole body