I have often heard Socialists wondering among themselves why a movement that had so many fine insights and so many noble motives behind it had produced so few artists.
It has seemed to me that it might be because Socialists as a class, speaking roughly, are generalizers. They do not see vividly and deeply the universal in the particular, the universal in the individual, the national in the local. They are convinced by counting, and are moved by masses, and are prone to overlook the Spirit of the Little, the immensity of the seed and of the individual. They are prone to look past the next single thing to be done. They look past the next single man to be fulfilled.
They feel a bit superior to Individualists for the way they have of seeing the universal in the particular, and of being picturesque and personal.
Socialists are not picturesque and personal. They do not think in pictures.
Then they wonder why they do not make more headway.
Crowds and great men and children think in pictures.
A hero pictures greatness to them. Then they want it for themselves.
From the practical, political point of view of getting things for crowds, perhaps the trouble lies, not in our common popular idea of having heroes, but in the heroes. And perhaps the cure lies not in abolishing heroes, but in making our heroes move on and in insisting on more and better ones.
Any man who looks may watch the crowd to-day making its heroes move on.
If they do not move on, the crowd picks up the next hero at hand who is moving—and drops them.