Many excellent specialists
exercise a very small amount of influence, and many individuals who
exercise apparently a great deal of influence are conspicuously lacking
in any kind of excellence. The responsibility for this condition is
usually fastened upon the Philistine American public, which refuses to
recognize genuine eminence and which showers rewards upon any
second-rate performer who tickles its tastes and prejudices. But it is
at least worth inquiring whether the responsibility should not be
fastened, not upon the followers, but upon the supposed leaders. The
American people are what the circumstances, the traditional leadership,
and the interests of American life have made them. They cannot be
expected to be any better than they are, until they have been
sufficiently shown the way; and they cannot be blamed for being as bad
as they are, until it is proved that they have deliberately rejected
better leadership. No such proof has ever been offered.
Some disgruntled Americans talk as if in a democracy the path of the
aspiring individual should be made peculiarly safe and easy.
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