wisdom is the prerogative of the few.  And we undoubtedly owe many of the healthy breezes of rebellion and scepticism in such matters to the example of America.  The keen-eyed Yankees distinguish more clearly than we do between the essential conditions of existence and the “stupid and vulgar accidents of human contrivance,” and are consequently readier to lay irreverent hands on time-honoured abuses.  If a balance could be struck between the influence of Europe on America and that of America on Europe, it is not by any means clear that the scale would descend in favour of the older world.

There is a long list of influential witnesses in favour of the theory that the development of the democratic spirit is bound inevitably to hamper individuality and encourage mediocrity.  De Tocqueville, Scherer, Renan, Maine, Bourget, Matthew Arnold, all lend the weight of their names to this conclusion.  It does not seem to me that this theory is supported by the social facts of the United States.  When we have made allowance for the absence of a number of picturesque phenomena which are due to temporal and physical conditions, and would be equally lacking if the country were an autocracy or oligarchy, there remains in the United States greater room for the development of idiosyncrasy than, perhaps, in any other country.  It has been paradoxically argued by an English writer that individualism could not reach its highest point except in a socialistic community; i.e., that the unbridled competition of the present day drives square pegs into round holes and thus forces the individual, for the sake of bread and butter, to do that which is foreign to his nature; whereas in an ideal socialism each individual would be encouraged to follow his own bent and develop his own special talent for the good of the community.  To a certain extent this seems true of the United States.  The career there is more open to the talents; the world is an oyster which the individual can open with many kinds of knives; what the Germans call “umsatteln”, or changing one’s profession as one changes one’s horse, is much more feasible in the New World than in the Old.  The freedom and largeness of opportunity is a stimulus to all strong minds.  Lincoln, as Professor Dowden remarks, would in the Middle Ages have probably continued to split rails all his life.

The fact is that if the predominant power of a few great minds is diminished in a democracy, it is because, together with such minds, a thousand others are at work contributing to the total result....  It is surely for the advantage of the most eminent minds that they should be surrounded by men of energy and intellect, who belong neither to the class of hero-worshippers nor to the class of valets de chambre.

The truth seems to be that with an increased population and the multiplicity of interests and influences at play on men, we may expect a greater diversity of mental types in the future than