of acquired technical experience and practice has precisely the same authority as any other body of knowledge.  The respect it demands is similar to the respect demanded by science in all its forms.  In this particular case the science is neither complete nor entirely trustworthy, but it is sufficiently complete and trustworthy for the individual’s purpose, and can be ignored only at the price of waste, misunderstanding, and partial inefficiency and sterility.

A standard of uncompromising technical excellence contains, however, for the purpose of this argument, a larger meaning than that which is usually attached to the phrase.  A technically competent performance is ordinarily supposed to mean one which displays a high degree of manual dexterity; and a man who has acquired such a degree of dexterity is also supposed to be the victim of his own mastery.  No doubt such is frequently the case; but in the present meaning the thoroughly competent individual workman becomes necessarily very much more of an individual than any man can be who is merely the creature of his own technical facility and preoccupation.  I have used the word art not in the sense merely of fine art, but in the sense of all liberal and disinterested practical work; and the excellent performance of that work demands certain qualifications which are common to all the arts as well as peculiar to the methods and materials of certain particular arts and crafts.  These qualifications are both moral and intellectual.  They require that no one shall be admitted to the ranks of thoroughly competent performers until he is morally and intellectually, as well as scientifically and manually, equipped for excellent work, and these appropriate moral and intellectual standards should be applied as incorruptibly as those born of specific technical practices.

A craftsman whose merits do not go beyond technical facility is probably deficient in both the intellectual and moral qualities essential to good work.  The rule cannot be rigorously applied, because the boundaries between high technical proficiency and some very special examples of genuine mastery are often very indistinct.  Still, the majority of craftsmen who are nothing more than, manually dexterous are rarely either sincere or disinterested in their personal attitude towards their occupation.  They have not made themselves the sort of moral instrument which is capable of eminent achievement, and whenever unmistakable examples of such a lack of sincerity and conviction are distinguished, they should in the interest of a complete standard of special excellence meet with the same reprobation as would manual incompetence.  It must not be inferred, however, that the standard of moral judgment applied to the individual in the performance of his particular work is identical with a comprehensive standard of moral practice.  A man may be an acceptable individual instrument in the service of certain of the arts, even though he be in some other respects