The process of educating men of moral and intellectual stature sufficient for the performance of important constructive work cannot be disentangled from the process of national fulfillment by means of intelligent collective action.

American nationality will never be fulfilled except under the leadership of such men; and the American nation will never obtain the necessary leadership unless it seeks seriously the redemption of its national responsibility.
Such being the situation in general, how can the duty and the opportunity of the individual at the present time best be defined?
Is he obliged to sit down and wait until the edifying, economic, political, and social transformation has taken place?
Or can he by his own immediate behavior do something effectual both to obtain individual emancipation and to accelerate the desirable process of social reconstruction?
This question has already been partially answered by the better American individual; and it is, I believe, being answered in the right way.

The means which he is taking to reach a more desirable condition of individual independence, and inferentially to add a little something to the process of national fulfillment, consist primarily and chiefly in a thoroughly zealous and competent performance of his own particular job; and in taking this means of emancipation and fulfillment he is both building better and destroying better than he knows.
The last generation of Americans has taken a better method of asserting their individual independence than that practiced by the heretics of the Middle Period.

Those who were able to gain leadership in business and politics sought to justify their success by building up elaborate industrial and political organizations which gave themselves and their successors peculiar individual opportunities.

On the other hand, the men of more specifically intellectual interests tacitly abandoned the Newer-Worldliness of their predecessors and began unconsciously but intelligently to seek the attainment of some excellence in the performance of their own special work.