A technical standard in any one of the liberal or practical arts cannot be applied as rigorously as can the standard of scientific truth, because the standard itself is not so authentic. In all these arts many differences of opinion exist among masters as to the methods and forms which should be authoritative; and in so far as such is the case, the individual must be allowed to make many apparently arbitrary personal choices. The fact that a man has such choices to make is the circumstance which most clearly distinguishes the practice of an art from that of a science, but this circumstance, instead of being an excuse for technical irresponsibility or mere eclecticism, should, on the contrary, stimulate the individual more completely to justify his choice. In his work he is fighting the battle not merely of his own personal career, but of a method, of a style, of an idea, or of an ideal. The practice of the several arts need not suffer from diversity of standard, provided the several separate standards are themselves incorruptible. In all the arts—and by the arts I mean all disinterested and liberal practical occupations—the difficulty is not that sufficiently authoritative standards do not exist, but that they are not applied. The standard which is applied is merely that of the good-enough. The juries are either too kindly or too lax or too much corrupted by the nature of their own work. They are prevented from being incorruptible about the work of other people by a sub-conscious apprehension of the fate of their own performances—in case similar standards were applied to themselves. Just in so far as the second-rate performer is allowed to acquire any standing, he inevitably enters into a conspiracy with his fellows to discourage exhibitions of genuine and considerable excellence, and, of course, to a certain extent he succeeds. By the waste which he encourages of good human appreciation, by the confusion which he introduces into the popular critical standards, he helps to effect a popular discrimination against any genuine superiority of achievement.
Individual independence and fulfillment is conditioned on the technical excellence of the individual's work, because the most authentic standard is for the time being constituted by excellence of this kind. 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. The respect it demands is similar to the respect demanded by science in all its forms. In this particular case the science is neither complete nor entirely trustworthy, but it is sufficiently complete and trustworthy for the individual's purpose, and can be ignored only at the price of waste, misunderstanding, and partial inefficiency and sterility.
A standard of uncompromising technical excellence contains, however, for the purpose of this argument, a larger meaning than that which is usually attached to the phrase. A technically competent performance is ordinarily supposed to mean one which displays a high degree of manual dexterity; and a man who has acquired such a degree of dexterity is also supposed to be the victim of his own mastery. No doubt such is frequently the case; but in the present meaning the thoroughly competent individual workman becomes necessarily very much more of an individual than any man can be who is merely the creature of his own technical facility and preoccupation. I have used the word art not in the sense merely of fine art, but in the sense of all liberal and disinterested practical work; and the excellent performance of that work demands certain qualifications which are common to all the arts as well as peculiar to the methods and materials of certain particular arts and crafts. These qualifications are both moral and intellectual. They require that no one shall be admitted to the ranks of thoroughly competent performers until he is morally and intellectually, as well as scientifically and manually, equipped for excellent work, and these appropriate moral and intellectual standards should be applied as incorruptibly as those born of specific technical practices.
A craftsman whose merits do not go beyond technical facility is probably deficient in both the intellectual and moral qualities essential to good work. The rule cannot be rigorously applied, because the boundaries between high technical proficiency and some very special examples of genuine mastery are often very indistinct. Still, the majority of craftsmen who are nothing more than, manually dexterous are rarely either sincere or disinterested in their personal attitude towards their occupation. They have not made themselves the sort of moral instrument which is capable of eminent achievement, and whenever unmistakable examples of such a lack of sincerity and conviction are distinguished, they should in the interest of a complete standard of special excellence meet with the same reprobation as would manual incompetence. It must not be inferred, however, that the standard of moral judgment applied to the individual in the performance of his particular work is identical with a comprehensive standard of moral practice. A man may be an acceptable individual instrument in the service of certain of the arts, even though he be in some other respects a tolerably objectionable person. A single-minded and disinterested attempt to obtain mastery of any particular occupation may in specific instances force a man to neglect certain admirable and in other relations essential qualities. He may be a faithless husband, a treacherous friend, a sturdy liar, or a professional bankrupt, without necessarily interfering with the excellent performance of his special job. A man who breaks a road to individual distinction by such questionable means may always be tainted; but he is a better public servant than would be some comparatively impeccable nonentity. It all depends on the nature and the requirements of the particular task, and the extent to which a man has really made sacrifices in order to accomplish it. There are many special jobs which absolutely demand scrupulous veracity, loyalty in a man's personal relations, or financial integrity. The politician who ruins his career in climbing down a waterspout, or the engineer who prevents his employers from trusting his judgment and conscience in money matters, cannot plead in extenuation any other sort of instrumental excellence. They have deserved to fail, because they have trifled with their job; and it may be added that serious moral delinquencies are usually grave hindrances to a man's individual efficiency.
From the intellectual point of view also technical competence means something more than manual proficiency. Just as the master must possess those moral qualities essential to the integrity of his work, so he must possess the corresponding intellectual qualities. All the liberal arts require, as a condition of mastery, a certain specific and considerable power of intelligence; and this power of intelligence is to be sharply distinguished from all-round intellectual ability. From our present point of view its only necessary application concerns the problems of a man's special occupation. Every special performer needs the power of criticising the quality and the subject-matter of his own work. Unless he has great gifts or happens to be brought up and trained under peculiarly propitious conditions, his first attempts to practice his art will necessarily be experimental. He will be sure to commit many mistakes, not merely in the choice of alternative methods and the selection of his subject-matter, but in the extent to which he personally can approve or disapprove of his own achievements. The thoroughly competent performer must at least possess the intellectual power of profiting from this experience. A candid consideration of his own experiments must guide him in the selection of the better methods, in the discrimination of the more appropriate subject-matter, in the avoidance of his own peculiar failings, and in the cultivation of his own peculiar strength. The technical career of the master is up to a certain point always a matter of growth. The technical career of the second-rate man is always a matter of degeneration or at best of repetition. The former brings with it its own salient and special form of enlightenment based upon the intellectual power to criticise his own experience and the moral power to act on his own acquired insight. To this extent he becomes more of a man by the very process of becoming more of a master.
The intellectual power required to criticise one's own experience with a formative result will of course vary considerably in different occupations. Technical mastery of the occupation of playwriting, criticism, or statesmanship, will require more specifically intellectual qualities than will be demanded by the competent musician or painter. But no matter how much intelligence may be needed, the way in which it should be used remains the same. Mere industry, aspiration, or a fluid run of ideas make as meager an equipment for a politician, a philanthropist, or a critic as they would for an architect; and absolutely the most dangerous mistake which an individual can make is that of confusing admirable intentions expressed in some inferior manner with genuine excellence of achievement. If such men succeed, they are corrupting in their influence. If they fail, they learn nothing from their failure, because they are always charging up to the public, instead of to themselves, the responsibility for their inferiority.
The conclusion is that at the present time an individual American's intentions and opinions are of less importance than his power of giving them excellent and efficient expression. What the individual can do is to make himself a better instrument for the practice of some serviceable art; and by so doing he can scarcely avoid becoming also a better instrument for the fulfillment of the American national Promise. To be sure, the American national Promise demands for its fulfillment something more than efficient and excellent individual instruments. It demands, or will eventually demand, that these individuals shall love and wish to serve their fellow-countrymen, and it will demand specifically that in the service of their fellow-countrymen, they shall reorganize their country's economic, political, and social institutions and ideas. Just how the making of competent individual instruments will of its own force assist the process of national reconstruction, we shall consider presently; but the first truth to drive home is that all political and social reorganization is a delusion, unless certain individuals, capable of edifying practical leadership, have been disciplined and trained; and such individuals must always and in some measure be a product of self-discipline. While not only admitting but proclaiming that the processes of individual and social improvement are mutually dependent, it is equally true that the initiative cannot be left to collective action. The individual must begin and carry as far as he can the work of his own emancipation; and for the present he has an excuse for being tolerably unscrupulous in so doing. By the successful assertion of his own claim to individual distinction and eminence, he is doing more to revolutionize and reconstruct the American democracy than can a regiment of professional revolutionists and reformers.
Professional socialists may cherish the notion that their battle is won as soon as they can secure a permanent popular majority in favor of a socialistic policy; but the constructive national democrat cannot logically accept such a comfortable illusion. The action of a majority composed of the ordinary type of convinced socialists could and would in a few years do more to make socialism impossible than could be accomplished by the best and most prolonged efforts of a majority of malignant anti-socialists. The first French republicans made by their behavior another republic out of the question in France for almost sixty years; and the second republican majority did not do so very much better. When the republic came in France it was founded by men who were not theoretical democrats, but who understood that a republic was for the time being the kind of government best adapted to the national French interest. These theoretical monarchists, but practical republicans, were for the most part more able, more patriotic, and higher-minded men than the convinced republicans; and in all probability a third republic, started without their coöperation, would also have ended in a dictatorship. Any substantial advance toward social reorganization will in the same way be forced by considerations of public welfare on a majority of theoretical anti-socialists, because it is among this class that the most competent and best disciplined individuals are usually to be found. The intellectual and moral ability required, not merely to conceive, but to realize a policy of social reorganization, is far higher than the ability to carry on an ordinary democratic government. When such a standard of individual competence has been attained by a sufficient number of individuals and is applied to economic and social questions, some attempt at social reorganization is bound to be the result,—assuming, of course, the constructive relation already admitted between democracy and the social problem.
The strength and the weakness of the existing economic and social system consist, as we have observed, in the fact that it is based upon the realities of contemporary human nature. It is the issue of a time-honored tradition, an intense personal interest, and a method of life so habitual that it has become almost instinctive. It cannot be successfully attacked by any body of hostile opinion, unless such a body of opinion is based upon a more salient individual and social interest and a more intense and vital method of life. The only alternative interest capable of putting up a sufficiently vigorous attack and pushing home an occasional victory is the interest of the individual in his own personal independence and fulfillment—an interest which, as we have seen, can only issue from integrity and excellence of individual achievement. An interest of this kind is bound in its social influence to make for social reorganization, because such reorganization is in some measure a condition and accompaniment of its own self-expression; and the strength of its position and the superiority of its weapons are so decisive that they should gradually force the existing system to give way. The defenses of that system have vulnerable points; and its defenders are disunited except in one respect. They would be able to repel any attack delivered along their whole line; but their binding interest is selfish and tends under certain conditions to divide them one from another without bestowing on the divided individuals the energy of independence and self-possession. Their position can be attacked at its weaker points, not only without meeting with combined resistance, but even with the assistance of some of their theoretical allies. Many convinced supporters of the existing order are men of superior merit, who are really fighting against their own better individual interests; and they need only to taste the exhilaration of freedom in order better to understand its necessary social and economical conditions. Others, although men of inferior achievement, are patriotic and well-intentioned in feeling; and they may little by little be brought to believe that patriotism in a democracy demands the sacrifice of selfish interests and the regeneration of individual rights. Men of this stamp can be made willing prisoners by able and aggressive leaders whose achievements have given them personal authority and whose practical programme is based upon a sound knowledge of the necessary limits of immediate national action. The disinterested and competent individual is formed for constructive leadership, just as the less competent and independent, but well-intentioned, individual is formed more or less faithfully to follow on behind. Such leadership, in a country whose traditions and ideals are sincerely democratic, can scarcely go astray.