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.