An authentic standard must be based either upon acquired knowledge or an accepted ideal.

Americans have no popularly accepted ideals which are anything but an embarrassment to the aspiring individual.

In the course of time some such ideals may be domesticated--in which case the conditions of individual excellence would be changed; but we are dealing with the present and not with the future.

Under current conditions the only authentic standard must be based, not upon the social influence of the work, but upon its quality; and a standard of this kind, while it falls short of being complete, must always persist as one indispensable condition of final excellence.

The whole body of acquired technical experience and practice has precisely the same authority as any other body of knowledge.