it is the particular business of the exceptional individual to impose himself on the public; and the necessity he is under of creating his own following may prove to be helpful to him as his own exceptional achievements are to his followers.  The fact that he is obliged to make a public instead of finding one ready-made, or instead of being able by the subsidy of a prince to dispense with one—­this necessity will in the long run tend to keep his work vital and human.  The danger which every peculiarly able individual specialist runs is that of overestimating the value of his own purpose and achievements, and so of establishing a false and delusive relation between his own world and the larger world of human affairs and interests.  Such a danger cannot be properly checked by the conscious moral and intellectual education of the individual, because when he is filled too full of amiable intentions and ideas, he is by way of attenuating his individual impulse and power.  But the individual who is forced to create his own public is forced also to make his own special work attractive to a public; and when he succeeds in accomplishing this result without hauling down his personal flag, his work tends to take on a more normal and human character.

It tends, that is, to be socially as well as individually formative.  The peculiarly competent individual is obliged to accept the responsibilities of leadership with its privileges and fruits.  There is no escape from the circle by which he finds himself surrounded.  He cannot obtain the opportunities, the authority, and the independence which he needs for his own individual fulfillment, unless he builds up a following; and he cannot build up a secure personal following without making his peculiar performances appeal to some general human interest.  The larger and more general the interest he can arouse, the more secure and the more remunerative his personal independence becomes.  It by no means necessarily follows that he will increase his following by increasing the excellence of his work, or that he will not frequently find it difficult to keep his following without allowing his work to deteriorate.  No formula, reconciling the individual and the popular interest, can be devised which will work automatically.  The reconciliation must always remain a matter of victorious individual or national contrivance.  But it is none the less true that the chance of fruitful reconciliation always exists, and in a democracy it should exist under peculiarly wholesome conditions.  The essential nature of a democracy compels it to insist that individual power of all kinds, political, economic, or intellectual, shall not be perversely and irresponsibly exercised.  The individual democrat is obliged no less to insist in his own interest that the responsible exercise of power shall not be considered equivalent to individual mediocrity and dependence.  These two demands will often conflict; but the vitality of a democracy hangs upon its ability to keep both of them vigorous and assertive.  Just in so far as individual democrats find ways of asserting their independence in the very act of redeeming their responsibility, the social body of which they form a part is marching toward the goal of human betterment.