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. In almost every case they discovered that the first step in the acquisition of the better standards of achievement was to go abroad. If their interests were scholarly or scientific, they were likely to matriculate at one of the German universities for the sake of studying under some eminent specialist. If they were painters, sculptors, or architects, they flocked to Paris, as the best available source of technical instruction in the arts. Wherever the better schools were supposed to be, there the American pupils gathered; and the consequence was during the last quarter of the nineteenth century a steady and considerable improvement in the standard of special work and the American schools of special discipline. In this way there was domesticated a necessary condition and vehicle of the liberation and assertion of American individuality.
A similar transformation has been taking place in the technical aspects of American industry. In this field the individual has not been obliged to make his own opportunities to the same extent as in business, politics, and the arts. The opportunities were made for him by the industrial development of the country. Efficient special work soon became absolutely necessary in the various branches of manufacture, in mining, and in the business of transportation; and in the beginning it was frequently necessary to import from abroad expert specialists. The technical schools of the country were wholly inadequate to supply the demand either for the quantity or the quality of special work needed. When, for instance, the construction of railroads first began, the only good engineering school in the country was West Point, and the consequence was that many army officers became railroad engineers. But little by little the amount and the standard of technical instruction improved; while at the same time the greater industrial organizations themselves trained their younger employees with ever increasing efficiency. Of late years even farming has become an occupation in which special knowledge is supposed to have certain advantages. In every kind of practical work specialization, founded on a more or less arduous course of preparation, is coming to prevail; and in this way individuals, possessing the advantages of the necessary gifts and discipline, are obtaining definite and stimulating opportunities for personal efficiency and independence.
It would be a grave mistake to conclude, however, that the battle is already won—that the individual has already obtained in any department of practical or intellectual work sufficient personal independence or sufficiently edifying opportunities. The comparatively zealous and competent individual performer does not, of course, feel so much of an alien in his social surroundings as he did a generation or two ago. He can usually obtain a certain independence of position, a certain amount of intelligent and formative appreciation, and a sufficiently substantial measure of reward. But he has still much to contend against in his social, economic, and intellectual environment. His independence is precarious. In some cases it is won with too little effort. In other cases it can be maintained only at too great a cost. His rewards, if substantial, can be obtained as readily by sacrificing the integrity of his work as by remaining faithful thereto. The society in which he lives, and which gives him his encouragement and support, has the limitations of a clique. Its encouragement is too conscious; its support too willful. Beyond a certain point its encouragement becomes indeed relaxing rather than stimulating, and the aspiring individual is placed in the situation of having most to fear from the inhabitants of his own household. His intellectual and moral environment is lukewarm. He is encouraged to be an individual, but not too much of an individual. He is encouraged to do good work, but not to do always and uncompromisingly his best work. He is trusted, but he is not trusted enough. He believes in himself, but he does not believe as much in himself and in his mission as his own highest achievement demands. He is not sufficiently empowered by the idea that just in so far as he does his best work, and only his best work, he is contributing most to national as well as personal fulfillment.
What the better American individual particularly needs, then, is a completer faith in his own individual purpose and power—a clearer understanding of his own individual opportunities. He needs to do what he has been doing, only more so, and with the conviction that thereby he is becoming not less but more of an American. His patriotism, instead of being something apart from his special work, should be absolutely identified therewith, because no matter how much the eminence of his personal achievement may temporarily divide him from his fellow-countrymen, he is, by attaining to such an eminence, helping in the most effectual possible way to build the only fitting habitation for a sincere democracy. He is to make his contribution to individual improvement primarily by making himself more of an individual. The individual as well as the nation must be educated and "uplifted" chiefly by what the individual can do for himself. Education, like charity, should begin at home.
An individual can, then, best serve the cause of American individuality by effectually accomplishing his own individual emancipation—that is, by doing his own special work with ability, energy, disinterestedness, and excellence. The scope of the individual's opportunities at any one time will depend largely upon society, but whatever they amount to, the individual has no excuse for not making the most of them. Before he can be of any service to his fellows, he must mold himself into the condition and habit of being a good instrument. On this point there can be no compromise. Every American who has the opportunity of doing faithful and fearless work, and who proves faithless to it, belongs to the perfect type of the individual anti-democrat. By cheapening his own personality he has cheapened the one constituent of the national life over which he can exercise most effectual control; and thereafter, no matter how superficially patriotic and well-intentioned he may be, his words and his actions are tainted and are in some measure corrupting in their social effect.
A question will, however, immediately arise as to the nature of this desirable individual excellence. It is all very well to say that a man should do his work competently, faithfully, and fearlessly, but how are we to define the standard of excellence? When a man is seeking to do his best, how shall he go about it? Success in any one of these individual pursuits demands that the individual make some sort of a personal impression. He must seek according to the nature of the occupation a more or less numerous popular following. The excellence of a painter's work does not count unless he can find at least a small group of patrons who will admire and buy it. The most competent architect can do nothing for himself or for other people unless he attracts clients who will build his paper houses. The playwright needs even a larger following. If his plays are to be produced, he must manage to amuse and to interest thousands of people. And the politician most of all depends upon a numerous and faithful body of admirers. Of what avail would his independence and competence be in case there were nobody to accept his leadership? It is not enough, consequently, to assert that the individual must emancipate himself by means of excellent and disinterested work. His emancipation has no meaning, his career as an individual no power, except with the support of a larger or smaller following. Admitting the desirability of excellent work, what kind of workmanlike excellence will make the individual not merely independent and incorruptible, but powerful? In what way and to what end shall he use the instrument, which he is to forge and temper, for his own individual benefit and hence for that of society?
These questions involve a real difficulty, and before we are through they must assuredly be answered; but they are raised at the present stage of the discussion for the purpose of explicitly putting them aside rather than for the purpose of answering them. The individual instruments must assuredly be forged and tempered to some good use, but before we discuss their employment let us be certain of the instruments themselves. Whatever that employment may be and however much of a following its attainment may demand, the instrument must at any rate be thoroughly well made, and in the beginning it is necessary to insist upon merely instrumental excellence, because the American habit and tradition is to estimate excellence almost entirely by results. If the individual will only obtain his following, there need be no close scrutiny as to his methods. The admirable architect is he who designs an admirably large number of buildings. The admirable playwright is he who by whatever means makes the hearts of his numerous audiences palpitate. The admirable politician is he who succeeds somehow or anyhow in gaining the largest area of popular confidence. This tradition is the most insidious enemy of American individual independence and fulfillment. Instead of declaring, as most Americans do, that a man may, if he can, do good work, but that he must create a following, we should declare that a man may, if he can, obtain a following, but that he must do good work. When he has done good work, he may not have done all that is required of him; but if he fails to do good work, nothing else counts. The individual democrat who has had the chance and who has failed in that essential respect is an individual sham, no matter how much of a shadow his figure casts upon the social landscape.
The good work which for his own benefit the individual is required to do, means primarily technically competent work. The man who has thoroughly mastered the knowledge and the craft essential to his own special occupation is by way of being the well-forged and well-tempered instrument. Little by little there have been developed in relation to all the liberal arts and occupations certain tested and approved technical methods. The individual who proposes to occupy himself with any one of these arts must first master the foundation of knowledge, of formal traditions, and of manual practice upon which the superstructure is based. The danger that a part of this fund of technical knowledge and practice may at any particular time be superannuated must be admitted; but the validity of the general rule is not affected thereby. The most useful and effective dissenters are those who were in the beginning children of the Faith. The individual who is too weak to assert himself with the help of an established technical tradition is assuredly too weak to assert himself without it. The authoritative technical tradition associated with any one of the arts of civilization is merely the net result of the accumulated experience of mankind in a given region. That experience may or may not have been exhaustive or adequately defined; but in any event its mastery by the individual is merely a matter of personal and social economy. It helps to prevent the individual from identifying his whole personal career with unnecessary mistakes. It provides him with the most natural and serviceable vehicle for self-expression. It supplies him with a language which reduces to the lowest possible terms the inevitable chances of misunderstanding. It is society's nearest approach to an authentic standard in relation to the liberal arts and occupations; and just so far as it is authentic society is justified in imposing it on the individual.
The perfect type of authoritative technical methods are those which prevail among scientific men in respect to scientific work. No scientist as such has anything to gain by the use of inferior methods or by the production of inferior work. There is only one standard for all scientific investigators—the highest standard; and so far as a man falls below that standard his inferiority is immediately reflected in his reputation. Some scientists make, of course, small contributions to the increase of knowledge, and some make comparatively large contributions; but just in so far as a man makes any contribution at all, it is a real contribution, and nothing makes it real but the fact that it is recognized. In the Hall of Science exhibitors do not get their work hung upon the line because it tickles the public taste, or because it is "uplifting," or because the jury is kindly and wishes to give the exhibitor a chance to earn a little second-rate reputation. The same standard is applied to everybody, and the jury is incorruptible. The exhibit is nothing if not true, or by way of becoming or being recognized as true.