Two solutions, then, of a crowd civilization—­having the extraordinary men crowded out of it as a convenience to the average ones, and having the average men crowded out of it as a convenience to the extraordinary ones—­are equally impracticable.

This brings us to the horns of our dilemma.  If the crowd cannot be made beautiful by itself, and if the crowd will not allow itself to be made beautiful by any one else, the crowd can only be made beautiful by a man who lives so great a life in it that he can make a crowd beautiful whether it allows him to or not.

When this man is born to us and looks out on the conditions around him, he will find that to be born in a crowd civilization is to be born in a civilization, first, in which every man can do as he pleases; second, in which nobody does.  Every man is given by the Government absolute freedom; and when it has given him absolute freedom the Government says to him, “Now if you can get enough other men, with their absolute freedom, to put their absolute freedom with your absolute freedom, you can use your absolute freedom in any way you want.”  Democracy, seeking to free a man from being a slave to one master, has simply increased the number of masters a man shall have.  He is hemmed in with crowds of masters.  He cannot see his master’s huge amorphous face.  He cannot go to his master and reason with him.  He cannot even plead with him.  You can cry your heart out to one of these modern ballot-boxes.  You have but one ballot.  They will not count tears.  The ultimate question in a crowd civilization becomes, not “What does a thing mean?” or “What is it worth?” but “How much is there of it?” “If thou art a great man,” says civilization, “get thou a crowd for thy greatness.  Then come with thy crowd and we will deal with thee.  It shall be even as thou wilt.”  The pressure has become so great, as is obvious on every side, that men who are of small or ordinary calibre can only be more pressed by it.  They are pressed smaller and smaller—­the more they are civilized, the smaller they are pressed; and we are being daily brought face to face with the fact that the one solution a crowd civilization can have for the evil of being a crowd civilization is the man in the crowd who can withstand the pressure of the crowd; that is to say, the one solution of a crowd civilization is the great-man solution—­a solution which is none the less true because by name, at least, it leaves most of us out or because it is so familiar that we have forgotten it.  The one method by which a crowd can be freed and can be made to realize itself is the great-man method—­the method of crucifying and worshipping great men, until by crucifying and worshipping great men enough, inch by inch, and era by era, it is lifted to greatness itself.