But just in so far as the work of social and individual amelioration advances, the condition will be gradually created necessary to completer mutual confidence between the few exceptional leaders and the many “plain people.”  At present the burden of establishing any genuine means of communication rests very heavily upon the exceptionally able individual.  But after a number of exceptionally able individuals have imposed their own purposes and standards and created a following, they will have made the task of their successors easier.  Higher technical standards and more adequate forms of expression will have become better established.  The “public” will have learned to expect and to appreciate more simple and appropriate architectural forms, more sincere and better-formed translations of life in books and on the stage, and more independent and better equipped political leadership.  The “public,” that is, instead of being as much satisfied as it is at present with cheap forms and standards, will be prepared to assume part of the expense of establishing better forms and methods of social intercourse.  In this way a future generation of leaders may be enabled to conquer a following with a smaller individual expenditure of painful sacrifices and wasted effort.  They can take for granted a generally higher technical and formal tradition, and they themselves will be freed from an over-conscious preoccupation with the methods and the mechanism of their work.  Their attention will naturally be more than ever concentrated on the proper discrimination of their subject-matter; and just in so far as they are competent to create an impression or a following, that impression should be more profound and the following more loyal and more worthy of loyalty.

Above all, a substantial improvement in the purposes and standards of individual self-expression should create a more bracing intellectual atmosphere.  Better standards will serve not only as guides but as weapons.  In so far as they are embodied in competent performances, they are bound also to be applied in the critical condemnation of inferior work; and the critic himself will assume a much more important practical job than he now has.  Criticism is a comparatively neglected art among Americans, because a sufficient number of people do not care whether and when the current practices are really good or bad.  The practice of better standards and their appreciation will give the critic both a more substantial material for his work and a larger public.  It will be his duty to make the American public conscious of the extent of the individual successes or failures and the reasons therefor; and in case his practice improves with that of the other arts, he should become a more important performer, not only because of his better opportunities and public, but because of his increase of individual prowess.  He should not only be better equipped for the performance of his work and the creation of a public following, but he should have a more definite