But
it was not enough to suppress the man with a special vocation by
depriving him of social and pecuniary rewards. Public opinion must be
taught to approve of the average man as the representative type of the
American democracy, so that the man with a special vocation may be
deprived of any interest or share in the American democratic tradition;
and this attempt to make the average man the representative American
democrat has persisted to the present day--that is, to a time when the
average man is no longer, as in 1830, the dominant economic factor.
It is in this way, most unfortunately, that one of the leading articles
in the American popular creed has tended to impair American moral and
intellectual integrity. If the man with special standards and a special
vocation interfered with democratic consistency of feeling, it was
chiefly because this consistency of feeling had been obtained at too
great a sacrifice--at the sacrifice of a higher to a lower type of
individuality. In all civilized communities the great individualizing
force is the resolute, efficient, and intense pursuit of special ideals,
standards, and occupations; and the country which discourages such
pursuits must necessarily put up with an inferior quality and a less
varied assortment of desirable individual types.
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