and enlightenment until he has found some means of forcing his meat and his wine down their reluctant throats.  And if the aspiring individual accepts this condition as tantamount to an order that he must haul down the flag of his own individual purpose in order to obtain popular appreciation and reward, it is he who is unworthy to lead, not they who are unworthy of being led.  The problem and business of his life is precisely that of keeping his flag flying at any personal cost or sacrifice; and if his own particular purpose demands that his flying flag shall be loyally saluted, it is his own business also to see that his flag is well worthy of a popular salutation.  In occasional instances these two aspects of a special performer’s business may prove to be incompatible.  Every real adventure must be attended by risks.  Every real battle involves a certain number of casualties.  But better the risk and the wounded and the dead than sham battles and unearned victories.

There is only one way in which popular standards and preferences can be improved.  The men whose standards are higher must learn to express their better message in a popularly interesting manner.  The people will never be converted to the appreciation of excellent special performances by argumentation, reproaches, lectures, associations, or persuasion.  They will rally to the good thing, only because the good thing has been made to look good to them; and so far as individual Americans are not capable of making their good things look good to a sufficient number of their fellow-countrymen, they will on the whole deserve any neglect from which they may suffer.  They themselves constitute the only efficient source of really formative education.  In so far as a public is lacking, a public must be created.  They must mold their followers after their own likeness—­as all aspirants after the higher individual eminence have always been obliged to do.

The manner in which the result is to be brought about may be traced by considering the case of the contemporary American architect—­a case which is typical because, while popular architectural preferences are inferior, the very existence of the architect depends upon his ability to please a considerable number of clients.  The average well-trained architect in good standing meets this situation by designing as well as he can, consistent with the building-up an abundant and lucrative practice.  There are doubtless certain things which he would not do even to get or keep a job; but on the whole it is not unfair to say that his first object is to get and to keep the job, and his second to do good work.  The consequence is that, in compromising the integrity of his work, he necessarily builds his own practice upon a shifting foundation.  His work belongs to the well-populated class of the good-enough.  It can have little distinctive excellence; and it cannot, by its peculiar force and quality, attract a clientele.  Presumably,