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 Postage extra. 
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 nei. Postage extra. 
 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY. Large 
 
 crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Boston and New York 
 
 CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT {In prep- 
 aration ). 
 
 D. APPLETON & CO. 
 New York
 
 THE QUALITIES OF MEN
 
 THE QUALITIES 
 
 OF MEN 
 
 AN ESSAY IN APPRECIATION 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH JASTROW 
 'Z.OBSI 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (SEbe RitoetjSitic "pxtii Cambritiflc 
 
 1910
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY JOSEPH JASTROW 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October iqiq
 
 T3\ 
 
 IN RECOGNITION OF ITS SERVICES 
 
 IN FOSTERING 
 
 THE HIGHER APPRECIATION OF 
 
 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This essay must itself carry its mes- 
 sage and justify its mission. An intro- 
 ductory word cannot illuminate its pur- 
 pose ; though it may facilitate the ap- 
 proach, as a sign-board points the way 
 and avoids the disappointment of an un- 
 expected destination. 
 
 A study of the qualities of men in 
 which a psychological interest in human- 
 ity is prominent, may properly be ex- 
 pected to undertake an analysis of the 
 fundamental factors in human nature; 
 their transformation in human nurture ; 
 and their values in growth, education, 
 and vocation. This is indeed the basal 
 problem^ in the psychology of human 
 traits. I have not slighted it, and am en- 
 gaged lin a modest attempt to interpret 
 what modern psychology has to say on
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 the subject. To that interpretation I pro- 
 pose to give the title " Character and 
 Temperament," a combination of terms, 
 that by the consensus of recent writers 
 has again become current with a richer 
 and more scientific meaning. 
 
 In the preparation for that work, I 
 found the more general bearings of the 
 problems of human quality constantly 
 growing in interest and insistently de- 
 manding formulation. I found, too, that 
 their treatment made natural a more 
 general form of statement and a wider 
 appeal ; while yet it could be reconciled 
 to a seeming neglect of the psycholog- 
 ical analysis at closer range. The present 
 essay thus represents an expansion of 
 the conclusions of a study, the prelimi- 
 naries of which are not overlooked but 
 merged in the composite contours of a 
 generalizing interest. 
 
 The material has passed through the 
 stages of a paper before a Literary Club, 
 of a Commencement address, and the
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 concluding- one of a course of eight lec- 
 tures on "Character and Temperament," 
 delivered at Columbia University in 
 March and April 1910. 
 
 University of Wisconsin, Madison, 
 September y 19 10.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE SENSIBILITIES 
 
 The aesthetic range — The innateness 
 of its quality — Social complications 
 of its expression — Pleasure and dis- 
 pleasure — The aesthetic ingredient in 
 social intercourse ; in morals — Man- 
 ner as real and assumed .... i 
 
 II. THE IDEALS OF APPRECI- 
 
 ATION 
 
 Education and the selection of quality 
 
 — The democratic fallacy — The 
 elective system — The newer and the 
 older appreciation of quality . . . 2i 
 
 in. THE SUPPORT OF THE 
 SENSIBILITIES 
 
 Sensibility and practice : architecture 
 
 — The limitations of sensibility — 
 Sensibility as the support of intelli- 
 gence — Stupidity and dullness — 
 Sensibility, energy, and skill ... 26
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 IV. THE ANALYSIS OF QUAL- 
 
 ITY 
 
 The study of character j the blending 
 of temperament — Practical psychol- 
 ogy of observation — Theory and 
 practice — The psychological artist . 41 
 
 V. QUALITY AND CIRCUM- 
 
 STANCE 
 
 The esteem of quality in Utopia — 
 The leaders and the led — Athenian 
 and Boeotian — Bromide and Sulphite ; 
 their contrasted qualities — Gentleman 
 and vulgarian — The Utopia of Mr. 
 Wells : the Poietic, Kinetic, Dull, and 
 Base — The qualities of the Poietic . 49 
 
 VI. THE COMPATIBILITIES OF 
 
 QUALITY 
 
 The incompatibilities — Square pegs 
 and round holes — The frailties of 
 genius — The hazard of high quality 
 — The social esteem of other civiliza- 
 tions — The pioneer and complacent 
 prosperity — The false appraisal of 
 quality 65
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 VII. THE POIETIC CALLINGS 
 The appreciation of poietic talent ; in 
 college life — The weakness of aca- 
 demic influences 79 
 
 VIII. THE SOCIAL ENCOUR- 
 AGEMENT OF QUALITY 
 
 The service of ideals — The prag- 
 matic position — The intellectual and 
 social efficiency of ideals — Conven- 
 tion and innovation — Conservative 
 and liberal — The service and disser- 
 vice of convention — The problems 
 of compromise — The political tem- 
 per : its perils — The advancement of 
 quality by selection 87 
 
 IX. THE UPPER RANGES OF 
 
 QUALITY 
 
 The social transformation — Funda- 
 mental and derivative traits — Com- 
 plex conditions and the emphasis of 
 the upper ranges ; of the derivative 
 issues of quality — The contrasts of 
 culture — The conspicuousness of 
 slighter contrasts 103
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 X. INTERACTION OF QUAL- 
 
 ITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 Environment and quality as in turn 
 cause and effect — Illustration in 
 American push ; in the psychology of 
 advertising; in the economics of sup- 
 ply and demand; in occupation and 
 milieu — Adjustment in terms of na- 
 tional ideals — Responsiveness of femi- 
 nine quality to masculine ideals — 
 The import of leadership . . . .115 
 
 XI. QUALITY AND CAREERS 
 Human nature : basal quality and su- 
 perficial expression — Success and its 
 significance — The complexity of hu- 
 man quality ; its misleading simplifi- 
 cation — Short-sighted practicality — 
 Communites to be judged by their 
 practical esteem of quality — Lower 
 and higher appreciation 131 
 
 XII. A SUMMARY 
 
 The sensibilities as commanding; as 
 educative; as differentiating — Sensi- 
 bility and morals; and intelligence —
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 The blends of quality — Quality and 
 circumstance ; in Utopia ; on earth 
 
 — The direction of ideals — The up- 
 per ranges of quality — The interplay 
 of social forces — Individual quality 
 and the restraint of convention — A 
 plea for the poietic — The judgment 
 
 of communities 142 
 
 XIII. THE REALM OF PRACTICE 
 
 The privileges of leadership — The 
 shortcomings of democracy: inhospit- 
 able to dissent; impatient of reform 
 
 — The emphasis of individuality — 
 "Mute, inglorious Miltons" — The 
 distortions of preferment: first-rate 
 and second-rate qualities and men — 
 The uncongenial intellectual climate : 
 in Universities — The remedies — 
 Each calling demands its own condi- 
 tions — The injustice and unwisdom 
 of unsuitable standards — Business 
 and the higher quality — The political 
 and the philosophical temper — The 
 assurance of optimism in the plasticity 
 
 of human nature — Conclusion . . 153
 
 THE QUALITIES 
 
 OF MEN 
 
 In these enterprising days of journal- 
 istic ingenuity, problems may enter un- 
 invited with the postman's visitations, 
 and be entertained unawares. Though 
 they fail in their inquisitive mission, they 
 set up an irritation that seeks satisfaction 
 in a formula. The momentary intruder 
 presented the double mask of comedy or 
 tragedy: "Why are you an optimist; 
 ^ and if not, why not?" it asked. On re- 
 flection, so much of optimism as seemed 
 consistent in a vale of tears with an un- 
 certain climate found its warrant in the 
 manifest and profound error of that bene- 
 ficent historical document which enlight- 
 ened the world by informing it that all 
 men are born free and equal. If that pro- 
 nunciamento were in any real application 
 
 s. 
 i 
 
 V 
 
 t 
 
 CI
 
 2 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 true, the chief prop to a sane optimism 
 would become as a broken reed. If all 
 humanity were of the quality of its aver- 
 age, we should be vacant of our glori- 
 ous gains, and as successive heirs of all 
 the ages have little to inherit. The ine- 
 qualities of men furnish the material for 
 nature and civilization alike and jointly 
 to work upon. Clay makes the earthen 
 pot and the finer vessel ; but the texture 
 of the raw material and the potter's 
 art transform the finished product. 
 
 The purpose of my ambitious venture 
 is to survey the varieties of human qual- 
 ity, and to do this dominantly in a prac- 
 tical vein ; to gauge the measure and note 
 the manner of distinctive inequalities, to 
 distinguish and portray their several in- 
 fluences in the careers of men ; then more 
 critically, to appraise their worth, to ob- 
 serve the success which attends them,
 
 THE SENSIBILITIES 3 
 
 and, if fortune favor, to reach some in- 
 sight into the play of personal forces that 
 shape our fate individually, collectively, 
 nationally. Like much that is interesting 
 in life, the situation finds its most direct 
 illumination under the fitful torch which 
 the psychologist hesitantly flourishes. In 
 his vocabulary — which in this context 
 may appear in simplified spelling — a 
 term of largest meaning is appreciation. 
 When encountered in his customary ped- 
 agogical mood, the psychologist will ex- 
 plain that the source and the enduring 
 supply of the mental nourishment are to 
 be sought in the environment, in a world 
 so puzzlingly full of a number of things 
 that we are kept endlessly busy discov- 
 ering them, and variously happy and 
 unhappy in bending them to our uses. 
 One of the compensations of crying for 
 the moon is the discovery of the moon 
 itself. The most ardent and strenuous 
 discoverer of all times and climes is the 
 dauntless amateur adventurer who pene-
 
 4 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 trates unattended and on all fours to the 
 farthest corner of the nursery. Never 
 again as in these infantile explorations 
 will the zest of entering into the king- 
 dom of knowledge and the joy of posses- 
 sion be so keen and so complete, so 
 untroubled by the burden of ignorance 
 that is far from blissful. The enjoyment 
 of sense open to any or at least to many 
 an appeal, the capacity to observe, the 
 responsiveness to the passing show, the 
 appetite for variety, the ingenuity to sup- 
 ply it, — in general, the scope and vigor 
 of the receptive attitude by virtue of 
 which we reach the kingdom of our 
 earthly inheritance, mark a distinctive 
 type, a significant variety of human trait. 
 And early and late, our discoveries are 
 determined by such alertness of sense, 
 such sustaining curiosity, such organized 
 interests as we bring to our occupations. 
 Thus is spun the mental web, the spin- 
 ner taking up his lodging at the centre 
 of the system, and by his sensitiveness
 
 THE ESTHETIC RANGE 5 
 
 to the currents of the atmosphere finding 
 what he may devour. So each becomes 
 the sum of his sensibilities, and his world 
 bounded by the range of his apprecia- 
 tions. 
 
 Herein lies a fair starting point for 
 the differentiation of human quality. 
 Where the sensory dependence is strong- 
 est, the demarcation is clear. The ear for 
 music is early revealed ; without native 
 endowment, incentive and enjoyment 
 lag ; and if persisted in, however assidu- 
 ously, the effort to develop a tonal facil- 
 ity becomes an unwarranted intrusion 
 upon an unwilling audience. The range 
 of endowment is wide: between those to 
 whom no other language is so eloquent, 
 no other voice so commanding, and their 
 antipodes, for whom music is but elabo- 
 rate noise, there is to be found a consid- 
 erable series of niches, in one or another 
 of which each of us finds a modest place. 
 The gift of the muses is typically the 
 musical gift — the offering of an attend-
 
 6 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 ant fairy in the older setting, a dower of 
 heredity in the newer, yet each with more 
 concealment than revelation of their de- 
 vious ways. Such marked sensory dis- 
 positions as those of painter and musician 
 lead to precocity of achievement; yet 
 cultivation and the infinite capacity for 
 taking pains do not find their occupa- 
 tions gone. But the bending of the twig, 
 as the inclination of the tree, stands as a 
 variation of nature, though matured by 
 the vicissitudes of climate and our horti- 
 cultural ideals. 
 
 So naturally do we look upon musical 
 virtue, like beauty of person, as a dow- 
 er of birth, that we withdraw it from the 
 ethical phases of responsibility. We hold 
 it not against a man that he is utterly 
 unmusical, though we condole with him 
 in his misfortune ; we confess as freely 
 to such a lack in our composite nature as 
 to an illegible handwriting. In the field 
 of the decorative arts, a like frankness of 
 confession is a privilege equally avail-
 
 THE ESTHETIC RANGE 7 
 
 able, but commonly declined. Our friends 
 do not unconcernedly disclose — even 
 though their domestic surroundings do 
 — an immunity to the aesthetics of form 
 and color, a defect presumably yet more 
 common than tone-deafness. The unob- 
 served blind-spot in the retina may be 
 proposed as the symbol of aesthetic in- 
 sensibility, as the mote in a neighbor's 
 eye is of moral dimsightedness. Yet the 
 reasons are many and sufficient why that 
 estimable citizen Jones does not care to 
 be told, what by the narrow ray of light 
 that enters his confessional he must at 
 times dimly discern : that he is decora- 
 tively purblind. Imprimis there enters 
 the intrusion of pride : one's Lares and 
 Penates, however assembled, become a 
 badge of possession, an index of social 
 position, a token of success and station ; 
 if they are properly costly, conform to 
 the standards of the tribe, do not violate 
 any of its taboos, they bring no detrac- 
 tion upon the qualities of their owner.
 
 8 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 Of his offense to the muses he is igno- 
 rant ; or if perchance vaguely suspicious, 
 he finds ready solace in the goodly com- 
 pany of his tribal associates. He is not 
 tempted to emulate the unreserve of that 
 equally estimable citizen Smith, who long 
 ago discovered and announced that to 
 him music was a blank ; and this because 
 the pictures on the Jonesian walls, the 
 trappings about his hearth — which pre- 
 sumably has been modernized to a hole 
 in the floor or a cast-iron monument 
 — along with explicit comfort bring to 
 him some confused or distorted message. 
 The pictures, though with little art, tell 
 an intelligible story ; and the conven- 
 tional decoration on his china is still to 
 him a recognizable primrose. Unlike the 
 enviable Smith, he has not the refuge of 
 silence ; for he can hardly be expected to 
 establish himself in a whitewashed lean-to, 
 which alone would express the barren- 
 ness of his decorative sensibilities. An 
 outer vestment and a fitted shelter he
 
 THE ESTHETIC RANGE 9 
 
 and we must devise to hide our naked- 
 ness, wherein conventionally to display 
 our primitive finery. 
 
 And though this fable teaches most di- 
 rectly that the qualities of our nature are 
 subtly and complicatedly interwoven, it 
 teaches as well how promptly the diaboli- 
 cal spell of display and possession is cast 
 upon the innocence of our primeval vir- 
 tue ; how the melodeon in the farm-house 
 or the grand piano in the suburbanite 
 villa is installed not as a tribute to the 
 muses, but as a libation to respectable 
 success. For the most of us, neither art- 
 ists nor musicians, yet not devoid of the 
 sensibilities of their arts, the aesthetic in- 
 gredient in the ordinary leaven contri- 
 butes something essential to the flavor 
 of the daily bread. Yet despite the com- 
 mon element in our farinaceous diet, the 
 varieties of sensibility, like the varieties of 
 breakfast-food, are many. They all find 
 support in a sensory basis, but in fulness 
 of time stand free of their supporting
 
 lo THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 scaffolding. The status of our personal 
 quality in respect of this or that variety 
 of sensibility is probably little subject to 
 our desires. We cannot by taking thought, 
 and only moderately by taking lessons in 
 art, add many a cubit to the height of 
 our sesthetic stature. But we may observe 
 how native endowments grow under 
 favor of nurture, what influences of our 
 making quicken the process, and how in 
 the end achievement waits upon, as it re- 
 flects and embodies, innate quality. 
 
 "The eye," as Goethe psychologically 
 observes, " sees only what it has in itself 
 the power of seeing"; and the increased 
 power of vision — " more light " were his 
 dying words — is what he and we strive 
 to attain. The illumination, though in 
 part a matter of candle-power, or of tele- 
 scope and microscope, is more essentially 
 an inner enlightenment, a clear-sighted- 
 ness and deep-sightedness, an expansion 
 of sensibilities. Though dominant in the 
 sesthetic arts that follow closely the clues
 
 PLEASURE AND PAIN ii 
 
 of sense, sensibility extends its subtle but 
 decisive influence over all art, over the 
 realm of knowledge pure and applied, 
 over social intercourse, practical manage- 
 ment, and the deftness of what human 
 hands find to do. Most directly it ex- 
 presses itself in pleasure and pain, and 
 more unequivocally, as if to enforce its 
 sovereignty, in the aspect of displeasure. 
 Certainly in our most familiar environ- 
 ments, the aesthetically sensitive shudder 
 more generally than they thrill. The dis- 
 cord grates ; the garish clash of color in- 
 cites an instinctive recoil ; the vulgar riot 
 of crude ornament invites, as it seems to 
 embody, the spirit of profanity. And when 
 these violations transgress the milder 
 prohibitions of the civil, rather than the 
 sterner ones of the criminal code, they 
 disseminate a malaise only more easily 
 endured, because the sensitive nature, so 
 frequently shocked, has perforce devel- 
 oped an auto-ansesthetic for its wounds. 
 Displeasure or dissatisfaction is the price
 
 12 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 ever to be paid for the privilege of better 
 things. The sources of unhappiness are 
 themselves the keys to the joys of living. 
 Weltschmerz finds its compensation in 
 Weltfreude. And equally in the field of 
 knowledge, the fruit of the tree is worth 
 all the qualms its enjoyment entails. The 
 nobler bliss of knowledge prevails above 
 the bliss that lurks in ignorance. The 
 keener satisfaction, the richer content, 
 the fuller meaning — these make the 
 deeper feeling in the man as in the poet, 
 in so far as he is born thus to be made. 
 The personal qualities of the artist are 
 but the unfoldments of his sensibilities ; 
 and the higher pleasures and the deeper 
 pains furnish the standards of worth that 
 inspire his expression. For those who 
 cannot create but can enjoy, the measure 
 of their appreciation, as for the creative 
 artist himself, becomes the index of their 
 cultivated sensibilities. 
 
 The quality of sensibility reflects the 
 class of its employment. Human inter-
 
 SOCIAL INTERCOURSE 13 
 
 course, notably in its social phases, and 
 alike in its casual and its more enduring 
 service, discloses its various and versa- 
 tile composition. It is associated tradi- 
 tionally with the educative contact of 
 city life. Civility and urbanity, speaking 
 Romanwise, are qualities to be devel- 
 oped where most they are needed, — in 
 the madding crowds of men ; while boor- 
 ishness, somewhat harshly, pertains to 
 the peasant tiller of the soil. Yet class 
 distinctions, though prone to become 
 artificial and irrelevant, are founded upon 
 sensibilities that are deep, and congeni- 
 ality that is responsive. Inevitably qual- 
 ity — as in the ante-bellum use of the 
 phrase — attaches to the favored of birth 
 and circumstance ; and " nature's noble- 
 men " are not as plentiful as obituary not- 
 ices suggest. However circumstanced, so- 
 cial and intellectual intercourse proceed 
 upon inherent sensibilities. The frictional 
 interchange of thought brings the quiet 
 glow to an occasional spark ; wit scintil-
 
 14 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 lates ; a phrase, a turn, flashes a new 
 vista. In the minor give and take, the 
 amenities, the manner, the ease and 
 adaptability, all these and a larger kin- 
 dred of qualities subtly and delicately 
 yet effectively reflect the bearing of mind 
 in the service of the social sensibilities. 
 Much of it is conventional, some of it as- 
 sumed ; yet the best and deepest of it 
 confirmatory of, if not contributory to the 
 patent of one's antecedents. Breeding is 
 at once the homely and the distinguished 
 name for the quality ; and aristocrat and 
 democrat may share alike in the dignity 
 and warrant thereof, in so far as they 
 have the support of the proper sensibili- 
 ties. How far this consummation is ob- 
 tainable by effort and the shaping of edu- 
 cation is a vexed issue. The conservative 
 will agree with Professor James that the 
 initiative for such prerogative must be 
 laid in early life. " Hardly ever can a 
 youth transferred to the society of his 
 betters unlearn the nasality and other
 
 MORALS 15 
 
 vices of speech bred in him by the asso- 
 ciation of his growing years. Hardly ever 
 indeed, however much money there be 
 in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress 
 like a gentleman-born. The merchants 
 offer their wares as eagerly to him as to 
 the veriest * swell,' but he simply ca7inot 
 buy the right things. An invisible law, 
 as strong as gravitation, keeps him with- 
 in his orbit, arrayed this year as he was 
 last; and how his better-bred acquaint- 
 ances contrive to get the things they 
 wear will be for him a mystery till his 
 dying day." 
 
 Sensibility equally touches and refines 
 the field of morals. The tokens of personal 
 consideration given and received, the 
 lighter appeals to and recognition of the 
 gentler feelings, the things emphasized 
 and overlooked sans dire, — these reflect 
 a moral coloring in one light, an aes- 
 thetic in another. Fastidiousness protects 
 from vice as effectively as a colder ascetic 
 conscience. And the proximity to holiness
 
 i6 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 of so homely a virtue as cleanliness is 
 due to the underlying rectitude of the 
 sensibilities. The daily bath is no more 
 than clean linen a hygienic necessity. 
 But to be uncomfortable without them 
 indicates a proper sensibility. It is worth 
 w^hile to appreciate the temperament that 
 can lunch upon spotless napery and a 
 biscuit, even though a more robust appe- 
 tite enables one to eat hungrily amid 
 unsavory surroundings. Yet all things 
 in moderation. That sensibilities may be 
 over-refined, that the disdain that ignores 
 may conceal a deeper rottenness, that the 
 effeminate preclude the sterner qualities, 
 needs no emphasis in a climate in which 
 no one has as yet died of a rose in aro- 
 matic pain. What more needs to be re- 
 garded is the overstrain of sensibilities 
 that leads to sensationalism, indicative of 
 a spoiled appetite with insufficient ingre- 
 dients of solid food. But the corrective is 
 once more a truer quality of sensibility 
 which is ever ready to affiliate with the
 
 MANNER 17 
 
 higher phases of virtue ; for the virtues, 
 though subject to complex sympathies 
 and antipathies, have an underlying af- 
 finity for their kind. 
 
 Admittedly, manner may be skin-deep 
 or even cosmetically achieved ; and con- 
 vention is the most disguising of all hu- 
 man expedients. Yet however democrat- 
 ically disposed, we must recognize the 
 value of grandparents, and more or less 
 agree with the "Autocrat" that a suc- 
 cessful education does well to begin with 
 them. Truly sensibilities and their early 
 encouragement are significant, and the 
 qualities which they endow and engender 
 equally so ; and the tendency that comes 
 in the wake of a too intensive or uncrit- 
 ical faith in the equal privileges of demo- 
 cracy, or in the healing and levelling 
 mission of education, or as a solace for 
 personal deficiency, — the tendency to 
 look upon the qualities thus conferred as 
 incidental, unessential or superficial, is 
 for most applications misleading, and
 
 i8 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 readily becomes a popular fallacy intol- 
 erant of its counterpart, the unpopular 
 truth. The important and the practical 
 emphasis, however, is upon the true ap- 
 praisal of sensibility wherever found, how- 
 ever conditioned. Yet in thus holding, 
 one does not question that there circu- 
 lates, and often at par, a deceptive sur- 
 face polish, a glitter that may be a thin 
 plating or quite palpably brazen ; does 
 not suppose that the race of snobs and 
 cads is disappearing ; does not forget 
 Lowell's pointed reminder that the ** con- 
 ceit of singularity " may be resorted to as 
 a " natural recoil from our uneasy con- 
 sciousness of being commonplace." The 
 view finds a partial consolation in the 
 conclusion that those who would assume 
 the outer show of quality without honestly 
 acquiring its warrant express a distorted 
 appreciation thereof ; and it finds a more 
 real consolation in the conviction that the 
 plating and the glitter somehow manage 
 to disclose to the discerning the fabric of
 
 MANNER 19 
 
 their skeletons ; that only good leather 
 will permit of the taxing processes of 
 cure and treatment that make possible 
 an enduring and high-grade polish.
 
 II 
 
 The emphasis of sensibility commits 
 one to an ideal. It bears against the 
 vaunted glory of a triumphantly demo- 
 cratic education, that professes to manu- 
 facture wholesale ready-to-wear gar- 
 ments duly heralded (though as yet 
 without those fascinating plates of the 
 tailor-made youth and maiden) in the 
 annual Fall college catalogues, and suit- 
 ed to all figures irrespective of sex, creed, 
 endowment, or previous condition of ser- 
 vitude. Naturally the system selects and 
 makes much of those generic contours in 
 the human figure that lend themselves 
 most readily to drapery ; studies are 
 chosen that are easily taught upon the 
 basis of a slender stock of sensibilities, 
 such as demand a certain aptness of 
 acquisition, a modest application, and
 
 EDUCATION 21 
 
 a carrying power sufficient to meet a 
 routine inspection. It glosses over the 
 cultures that grow too directly out of sen- 
 sibility, pins its faith to what may be tab- 
 ulated and scaled, rather than upon what 
 must be judged and appraised by an in- 
 sight inhospitable to statistical standards ; 
 and eventually confers its " Bachelor of 
 Arts," because the candidate presumably 
 has some acquaintance with everything 
 but the arts, and would look least appro- 
 priate or comfortable with laurel or bay 
 about his brow. 
 
 It would seem to follow that so far as 
 the significant qualities, which it is pe- 
 culiarly the business of the higher educa- 
 tion to develop in the selected youth of 
 each generation, depend upon sensibili- 
 ties, it becomes the educative function 
 to further select rigorously, to weed out 
 strenuously, to lead forward and upward 
 by the inspiration of example, by the 
 suggestiveness of precept that is itself 
 the issue of the qualities it aims to ex-
 
 22 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 pand. To discover sensibilities and deep- 
 en them, to discourage the inept, to sep- 
 arate the sheep from the goats, is a serv- 
 ice to both ; for it directs each to more 
 suitable pasture. In so far as our educa- 
 tional procedure refuses to recognize 
 this situation and to realize its respons- 
 ibilities, it misleads ; it takes the broader 
 but not the wiser path. It seems to favor 
 the impression that all stalks may bear 
 roses, that some do so in spite of ne- 
 glect or with judicious neglect, that oth- 
 ers need only a higher temperature, more 
 fertilizer, or a longer time to develop 
 the buds ; and only the incorrigible re- 
 vert to cabbages. The two views lead 
 to wide differences of emphasis despite a 
 community of interest and a sympathy 
 of motive. The one proceeds upon the 
 direct capacities that respond to teach- 
 ing ; the other encourages what each may 
 assimilate, under stimulus of guidance, 
 or must teach himself. The one scatters 
 over the paths of learning minutely la-
 
 THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 23 
 
 belled sign-posts, maintains a coddling 
 chaperonage over the lost, strayed or 
 stolen, admonishes the heedless to keep 
 off the grass and away from the water's 
 edge. The other sets the young idea to 
 browse, to explore, to examine, to report, 
 to take a wiser companion upon a stroll, 
 to try an occasional plunge to quicken 
 a hesitant courage ; in brief to find him- 
 self in an environment stimulating to any 
 worthy quality he may possess. Routine 
 and determination will be enlisted and 
 enforced when once the quest is earn- 
 estly on, the goal cherished, or the en- 
 joyment of the pursuit aroused. 
 
 A more sympathetic recognition of the 
 claims of sensibility stands out conspicu- 
 ously in our higher education as a whim- 
 pering, if not a crying need. The urgency 
 of its satisfaction is inherent in the con- 
 ception of education as a selection and 
 reenforcement of quality, — admittedly 
 the test and issue alike of native though 
 perfectible sensibility. It was as proper
 
 24 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 as inevitable that with the glorious ex- 
 pansion of the intellectual horizon that is 
 ours and was our fathers', we should feel 
 the imperative obligation of shaping the 
 newer education to the newer knowledge, 
 boldly to venture new worlds for old. 
 But with the vista of half a century, the 
 lights and shadows have become fixed. 
 The elective system, typical of, though 
 by no means wholly responsible for, these 
 untoward tendencies, might well stand 
 as a form of rational liberty, not of un- 
 bridled license, and thus appeal to the 
 sensibilities ; yet the privilege should not 
 be used to discover by costly trial for 
 how many and how various pursuits the 
 student has no capabilities, but be en- 
 listed to foster those which he has dis- 
 covered within himself. And the greatest 
 hindrance to such discovery lies in the 
 otherwise directed set, the practical tem- 
 per, the weakly educative influences of 
 his environment. The loss of the older 
 influence that sprang from the apprecia-
 
 THE ELECTIVE SYSTEM 25 
 
 tion of quality, doubtless of a different 
 range of quality, must somehow be rein- 
 stated, if we are to remain permanently 
 satisfied with the exchange.
 
 Ill 
 
 It is indeed possible to acquire a cer- 
 tain expertness, a facility born of experi- 
 ence, founded, it may be, upon a fair ex- 
 ecutive and constructive talent, and it 
 may be, upon a meagre one ; and with 
 this equipment to launch one's craft upon 
 the open waters and amid keen compe- 
 tition of like vessels reach a snug harbor. 
 These trainable facilities, with a slight 
 ingredient of a limited imagination, and 
 a larger portion of enthusiasm, produce 
 the average and desirable citizen, — the 
 available practitioner. Yet in so far as 
 the profession involves it, feebleness of 
 sensibility may prove and should prove 
 the most serious handicap. Easily the 
 best example of such a calling that 
 makes composite demands upon human
 
 ARCHITECTURE 27 
 
 quality is that of the architect. Yet archi- 
 tects of the quahty described secure and 
 deserve employment and build houses 
 not devoid of merit, yet curiously toler- 
 ant of demerit ; they respond imitatively 
 to any improvement in vogue or in the 
 increased sensibilities of patrons : they 
 advance with time and tide, yet remain 
 uncertain, mediocre, styleless and in- 
 significant. While those of lesser endow- 
 ment, though not markedly of lesser 
 skill, who likewise build houses, suggest 
 one or other of the familiar German re- 
 frains : ^^ Aber fragt mich itur nicht wie .'" 
 or ** Ich weiss nicht was soil es bedeutenP 
 But infuse into this composite of worthy 
 qualities the leaven of appreciation, and 
 it at once carries all talents enlisted in 
 its service to a higher plane. One might 
 cite photography as a peculiarly convinc- 
 ing example : for the transformation from 
 the chamber of horrors — with inquisi- 
 tional apparatus applied to delicate spots 
 of one's anatomy, and the injunction
 
 28 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 to assume a smirking superiority to the 
 indignity — to the atmosphere of the stu- 
 dio and the wholly altered standards of 
 purpose and technique, was due, in the 
 main, to the heightened sensibilities of 
 the amateur. 
 
 But enough of the pedagogical mood ; 
 and let the other side be heard. Life, the 
 objector interposes, is not a studio nor a 
 drawing-room. Admittedly not. It is real 
 and earnest ; and in many callings the 
 aesthetic aspects are of all the most neg- 
 ligible. If I had to face the opulent ne- 
 cessity of a surgical operation, I should 
 be looking only for the best surgeon. He 
 might, if he chanced to be of that kidney, 
 wear a purple and green necktie, use 
 musk and double negatives, and still be 
 the one chosen. And yet, when we ex- 
 amine into the qualities that make the 
 great physician of bodies curiously en- 
 tangled with souls, we begin to find that 
 sensibilities count, giving expertness its 
 finer edge, separating the very best
 
 SENSIBILITY 29 
 
 from the very good. I contend simply 
 that there are few callings demanding 
 any high order of quality in which sen- 
 sibility is not a vital factor ; few occu- 
 pations that do not reflect for better or 
 for worse, for richer or for poorer, the 
 fundamental distinctions of human qual- 
 ity presented by depths and varieties of 
 sensibility. Yet it is time to direct 
 attention away from the supporting 
 sensibilities and towards the achieve- 
 ments in terms of human quality which 
 they support. In the psychological divi- 
 sion, thinking — logical insight — and 
 doing — coordinated energy — point to 
 the distinctive varieties of quality ; as in 
 the practical world we seek intelligence 
 and skill, heads and hands, judging the 
 qualities of men by their deeds. Assuredly 
 it will not endanger the dignity or the 
 supremacy of the sensibilities to admit 
 with the convincing irrelevancy of The 
 Mikado's exalted factotum, that in many 
 of the situations of life, " the flowers that
 
 30 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 bloom in the Spring have nothing to do 
 with the case." 
 
 For the moment, consider, not the lilies 
 of the field, but the toilers and spinners. 
 The craft of the tool and the fruit of the 
 loom will yet reflect the quality of the arti- 
 san, and above all, his native intelligence. 
 No quality is more difficult to define; 
 and the psychologist, despite the refine- 
 ments of his laboratory and his special in- 
 terest in the solution of just such practical 
 issues, has not solved to his own or any 
 other's satisfaction the final method of dis- 
 closing or testing what with his fellowmen 
 he is constantly appealing to, namely, 
 general intelligence. He cannot doubt 
 that in some real sense the faculty exists, 
 despite his emphasis that so much of hu- 
 man activity as he investigates is made 
 up of many and diverse special facilities. 
 The quality, reflective of a world in which 
 thistles grow thicker than figs, is most 
 conspicuous in its negative fruition to 
 which we apply unsparingly the epithet,
 
 STUPIDITY 31 
 
 stupidity, — a ratlier democratic quality- 
 distributed with sufficient irregularity to 
 permit the unexpected to happen and 
 make the world interesting. For practi- 
 cal issues it is well to have in mind not 
 the academic type of the quality : " He 
 made an instrument to know if the moon 
 shine at full or no," — nor the guileless- 
 ness of the wise men of Kampen, who, 
 to save their precious town-bell when 
 danger threatened, rowed it out to sea 
 and cut a notch in the side of the boat to 
 mark the place where they threw it over- 
 board. Ignorance is not stupidity, though 
 the two, like birds of a feather, fraternize 
 in spontaneous sympathy. It is well to 
 note that stupidity, though partly an ab- 
 sence of common sense, is as well a de- 
 ficiency of common sensibility, — the in- 
 ability to perceive a situation being but 
 a part of the incapacity to meet it. The 
 former as the less teachable becomes the 
 more baffling ; and the calm, imperturb- 
 able complacency oftiill-fledged stupid-
 
 32 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 ity presents the most desperate of hu- 
 man situations, hopeless even to super- 
 human powers : " Gegen Dummheit 
 k'dinpfen selbst die Goiter vergebens^ 
 
 I urge then that in the composite qual- 
 ity of stupidity the failure to see and ap- 
 preciate is yet more characteristic than 
 the logical defect, the dearth of rational 
 foresight ; for it is the lack of penetration 
 that makes dullness of quality. Such are 
 the dull, hacking their way clumsily 
 through difficulties, oblivious alike of ana- 
 tomy and the fine art of dissection. The 
 hand, the practical prehensile instrument, 
 becomes as pertinent an embodiment 
 of this faculty as does the instrument of 
 our mental comprehension. Dexterity 
 of hand or mind is the issue of sensibil- 
 ity ; mental awkwardness and manual stu- 
 pidity have a like basis. Indeed, touch 
 lays claim to be the most personal of 
 all sensibilities, and if we may credit 
 so unique a witness as Miss Helen Kel- 
 ler, supplies a more reliable estimate of
 
 DULLNESS 33 
 
 human quality than the superficial allure- 
 ments appealing to the eye. The tactile 
 sensibility and its kindred in the motor 
 mechanisms vitalize behavior, supply the 
 springs of action, the tone of achieve- 
 ment, and therein find their worthy con- 
 summation. Yet the whole is supported 
 upon a sensory basis of nicety of discrimi- 
 nation, which becomes the distinctive 
 quality of the pianist's execution, as of 
 the potter's thumb as it carries grace and 
 texture to the product of his wheel ; and 
 the plying of that deft trade that inter- 
 changes the meum and tuum without so 
 much as a disturbing appeal to the sub- 
 conscious, appropriates with the direct- 
 ness of slang the tribute of a good 
 " touch." And contrariwise in the home- 
 lier occupations, the marrers of furniture, 
 the nickers of plates, the bangers of 
 doors, the heavy-stepped, loud-voiced, 
 the slatterns and shufflers, — what are 
 these but the tokens of insensibility ooz- 
 ing out through bone and muscle ? Let
 
 34 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 us then take pride in our allegiance of 
 speech and culture that makes delicacy 
 the hall-mark of a gentleman, that still 
 brings homage deep and articulate to 
 the gentler sex. 
 
 It thus appears that each member of 
 the psychological triumvirate, — feeling, 
 thinking, doing, — the departments of 
 inquiry, of the judiciary, and of the exec- 
 utive, — derives his warrant in some 
 measure from the supporting quality of 
 sensibility. An alert responsiveness to 
 situations as they arise, the discerning 
 insight that interprets them, are of a 
 nature all compact with the resourceful- 
 ness in their handling, the tact that 
 steadies judgment, the refinement that 
 shapes conduct to its finer issues. Our 
 sensibilities are, and the most cultivated 
 desire them to be, complex, though in 
 their many-sidedness compatible with a 
 directness of manner and an ease of ex- 
 ecution reflecting a proper self-respectful 
 confidence and an accomplished adjust-
 
 ENERGY AND SKILL 35 
 
 merit to our sphere and task. The forci- 
 bleness of our thinking and doing is 
 resident in the cutting edge rather than 
 in the mass and momentum of our ex- 
 pressions. 
 
 Yet in fairness let us take a parting 
 glance backward at the qualities of the 
 well-regulated, vigorous man, the man 
 of brawn and muscle, if you like, modestly 
 trained in their useful application. Sensi- 
 bilities, we are admonished, unsupported 
 by energies, are likely to spend themselves 
 feebly. Most of the business of life con- 
 sists in getting things done, not in fussing 
 about the manner of doing them. It is 
 obviously foolish to underestimate in any 
 measure the workaday qualities de- 
 manded by workaday tasks. We are all 
 ready to appreciate the position of the 
 young suitor who met his prospective 
 father-in-law's inquiries as to his assets 
 in life with the assurance that he was 
 " chuck full of days' work." On the whole 
 it seems unnecessary to enforce this form
 
 36 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 of virtue upon dogged John Bull or his 
 hustling brother Jonathan. Yet mere en- 
 ergy, no more than unrestricted oppor- 
 tunity, will accomplish none of the great- 
 er and few of the lesser things desirable 
 and worth while. Particularly as we rise 
 from the barer routines, the lowlier tasks 
 — nor need we emerge to more than the 
 plains and lowlands of human occupa- 
 tions — does the support of sensibilities 
 cease to be negligible, and as we ascend, 
 become commanding. In parallel meas- 
 ure does the slight emphasis or callous 
 disregard of sensibility cheapen the hu- 
 man product, lower standards and deaden 
 the vitality of men. Yet whatever the in- 
 dustry, however delicate the machinery, 
 motive'power is indispensable. Man does 
 not live by bread alone ; but he does not 
 live without it. The present plea sets 
 forth only that the human output should 
 not be measured in horse-power, nor 
 human intelligence by horse-sense. To 
 inherit, cultivate, and keep in good train-
 
 ENERGY AND SKILL 37 
 
 ing a thinking machine that will run re- 
 liably for an eight-hour day, that will 
 support an artisan intelligently and pro- 
 fitably at his task, is no despicable found- 
 ation for the business of a livelihood, nor 
 for the joys and responsibilities of life. 
 And though the circle of achievement has 
 a limited circumference and the radius 
 of capability does not expand materially 
 with experience, yet its adequacy proves 
 its worth. So also of endurance, patience, 
 vigor, and best of all, determination. But 
 is there any real danger that these profit- 
 able qualities, that, unlike virtue, which 
 should do so, really bring their own re- 
 ward, will fail to be rightly appraised in 
 a world so busy in weighing, and meas- 
 uring, and tabulating, so enthusiastically 
 displaying its newly acquired statisti- 
 cal sensibilities ? All this is indeed an- 
 other story. We are considering human- 
 ity qualitatively, not quantitatively ; or, 
 speaking by the book, while recognizing 
 the presence of the two variables in the
 
 38 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 human equation, we are discussing the 
 fluctuations of the one rather than the 
 other. And the justification therefor will 
 duly appear : for it is this aspect of the 
 qualities of men that appeals for empha- 
 sis and protection. It is upon the esteem 
 of the upper ranges of quality that the 
 life of civilization depends ; as it is the 
 choicer qualities that become increasingly 
 significant in the more directive and more 
 distinctive service. Any neglect or feeble 
 appreciation of the commanding worth 
 of the finer human qualities obstructs 
 human progress and endangers the fate 
 of the humanities. 
 
 Thus recognizing how the progress and 
 efBciency of sensibility requires the sup- 
 porting arm of energy on the one side, 
 of clear-sightedness on the other, — for 
 obviously we look for leadership neither 
 among the halt nor the blind, — we yet 
 adhere to the essential worth of this form- 
 ative quality in the distinctive make-up 
 of ho7no sapiens. And resuming, we ask:
 
 ENERGY AND SKILL 39 
 
 How shall we range the qualities of men : 
 as students if we are studious, or like An- 
 tony, " wander through the streets and 
 note the qualities of people"? Unques- 
 tionably the former, if we may choose: 
 presumably the latter, if we must. Clearly 
 it is through the variations of distribu- 
 tion and emphasis of the several forma- 
 tive qualities that man becomes com- 
 posite, and men most unequal. Our most 
 common term to indicate in the individual 
 the result of such endowment and experi- 
 ence IS, character ; and it is this which may 
 be said to be the proper study of mankind. 
 The study is largely empirical, partly aca- 
 demic, and but sporadically scientific; 
 though John Stuart Mill, and he not alone, 
 wished promptly to give it scientific 
 standing, and proposed the name "Etho- 
 logy." * He made a logical diagnosis of 
 
 * It is interesting to record that the term and the 
 project still survive, or have been revived. There 
 is in London an Ethological Society which since 
 1905 publishes The Ethological Journal; but the 
 tendenz of the movement varies rather widely from 
 that which inspired Mill's project. The group of
 
 40 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 its mode of procedure, gave instructions 
 for the interpretations of the records of 
 etholog-ical pulse and temperature, and 
 of waste and expenditure, when once 
 they were obtained, but was well aware 
 that he could give no very explicit di- 
 rections in regard to filling out the charts 
 which his system supplied. This perhaps 
 he regarded as more nearly the business 
 of the trained nurse than of the diagnos- 
 ing physician ; and I shall so far agree 
 with him as not to attempt it here. 
 
 investigations belonging to what is accepted as 
 " Individual Psychology " represents the most spe- 
 cific advance; while a considerable range of sugges- 
 tion and profitable analysis has been contributed 
 in recent years, particularly by French and Italian 
 writers, under the rubric of the Psychology of 
 Character. These phases of the topic will be con- 
 sidered in a forthcoming volume on Character and 
 Temperament. The pertinence of this note is to 
 direct attention, as has been done in the preface, 
 to the several aspects of the qualities of men, which 
 stand in the background of this survey. For prac- 
 tical use the charting of the smaller area on a larger 
 scale is indispensable to the more professionally 
 motived traveller.
 
 IV 
 
 Of the older solutions, — likewise the 
 issue of a mingling of casual observation 
 and studious insight — the doctrine of 
 temperaments is notable ; and this, if we 
 examine it anew, will appear very difler- 
 ently in the focus of our modern illumin- 
 ants than under the uncertain rush- 
 lights of mediaeval lore. Temperament 
 means blending. The famous blades of 
 Toledo — light, elastic, strong, durable, 
 and effective — reached their perfection 
 by careful refinement of crude ore, al- 
 loyed and annealed with expert skill, 
 forged and hammered and ground to 
 edge and fibre, the success depending 
 upon the mutual support of the processes 
 and the natural vein of the metal. Such 
 is the temper of steel, and such the tem- 
 per of man. Moreover one quality com-
 
 42 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 bats another. Make the edge too light 
 and thin, and though sharp, it nicks 
 readily and lacks strength ; thicken it, 
 and it becomes strong but unwieldy, and 
 loses"! elasticity ; make it too elastic, and 
 it will not bear the strain of a powerful 
 thrust. It was the combination of all vir- 
 tues that made wonderful the temper of 
 the Toledo blade, which, bent in a circle, 
 seemed to combine within itself the range 
 of desirable qualities. While not with 
 such versatility of talent or genius, it is 
 the temper, the blending of composite 
 qualities that makes all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men ; and for the most part makes 
 them complex and diverse, and with that 
 uncertainty of the mittabile setnper that 
 is not wholly the feminine prerogative. 
 So far, we may safely proceed in analy- 
 sis, whether from the academic or from 
 the layman 's approach : to recognize 
 that the varieties of the qualities of men 
 are in the one view few and fundamen- 
 \j tal, traceable, if our analyses were ade-
 
 TEMPERAMENT 43 
 
 quale, to typical blendings of common 
 factors of endowment, — later, widely j 
 differentiated by the moulding forces of 
 experience and the patterns and media 
 of expression ; to recognize in a supple- 
 mentary view, the compatibilities and 
 incompatibilities of quality, — how the 
 values of the factors in any one formula 
 are mutually affected by one another and 
 by their combination ; and yet to recog- 
 nize in a complementary view the trans- 
 formation and involution of quality in 
 the maze of circumstance, the stress of 
 occupation, the encouragement of insti- 
 tutions, the favor of careers. Nearer we 
 may not approach to the promised land ; 
 yet of the nature of its soil and climate 
 and products, this traditional knowledge, 
 confirmed by casual report, will prove 
 of service for our survey. 
 
 It is without question a legitimate func- 
 tion of psychological study to set forth 
 the essential varieties of character and 
 trace them to their tap-roots, to deter-
 
 44 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 mine their several sources and planes of 
 differentiation. But as Bacon ®f old told 
 us of all studies : " they teach not their 
 own use and there is a wisdom without 
 them and above them won by observa- 
 tion." In its practical phases character 
 becomes the great common denominator 
 of all human fractions. Artist, sculptor, 
 poet, dramatist, novelist, have their sev- 
 eral and suitable media for its delinea- 
 tion ; preacher, orator, editor, publicist, 
 lawyer, physician, teacher, parent, mer- 
 chant, manufacturer, have their several 
 and often discordant modes of appeal to 
 its composite qualities, as each touches 
 upon a phase of the whole. Life is but 
 character in action ; what we take from 
 it, what we put into it; how we find 
 ourselves in it ; how we express our indiv- 
 idualities, and respond in sympathy or in 
 antipathy to the expressions of other 
 fragments, measures for each his expert- 
 ness as a practitioner in the humanities. 
 So what in this wide, wide world, and
 
 THEORY AND PRACTICE 45 
 
 in the present long-range survey is there 
 for the psychologist to contribute, and 
 that in brief numbers ? Perhaps, first of all, 
 this : the wisdom of the cathedra is one, 
 and the wisdom of the agora is another. 
 To hold them apart and yet to bring 
 them together is the recurrent problem 
 of theory and practice, the rendering to 
 each of its own. Violate the spirit of the 
 former, bending all to rash uses, and you 
 emerge with fortune-telling, phrenology, 
 astrology, palmistry, and all the historic 
 and crass modern superstitions that read 
 character in stars or entrails, in cranial 
 punctuation-marks meaningless without 
 the verbal context, and in lines of palm 
 reminiscent of the arboreal habitat from 
 which we sprang, — all of them irrele- 
 vant and disordered cryptograms. Neg- 
 lect the allegiance of the other, and you 
 encourage blind pedantry, self-indulgent 
 scholasticism, sterility of dogma, and 
 high impulse spending itself weakly, 
 fanaticism without grace of compromise,
 
 46 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 or what Mr. Wells calls the unmanage- 
 able wildness of the good. The wagon 
 hitched to the stars must keep its wheels 
 on earth and accommodate its motion to 
 the vicissitudes of earthly highways. 
 
 Yet when all is said and done, the 
 man-of-the-world type of psychologist, 
 who seems to be coming to complement 
 his academic counterpart, will have an 
 authoritative voice in charting this en- 
 gaging domain. From the one approach 
 he will, as we have seen, trace qualities 
 back to their supporting sensibilities, 
 noting their type, their depth, their dis- 
 tribution ; then to the relating powers of 
 thought-sequence, the chief determinant 
 being in how far the exercise thereof 
 follows the clue of logical anticipation 
 or of the freer imagination; and lastly, 
 to the vigor, scope, and effectiveness of 
 the expressions, the functions executive. 
 Of such bearing is the academic formula 
 of character : a blending of such sensibil- 
 ities — strong or weak, coarse or fine, in-
 
 THEORY AND PRACTICE 47 
 
 tellectual or emotional, artistic or lite- 
 rary, social or commercial ; of such man- 
 ner of thinking, — quick or slow, deep 
 or shallow, broad or narrow, poetic or 
 prosaic, theoretical or practical ; and of 
 such powers of expression, — sustained 
 or flighty, energetic or anaemic, concen- 
 trated or dissipated, determined or weak- 
 kneed. And upon such basis he deter- 
 mines types of temperament, manners 
 of blending, which, though not notably 
 helpful in shaping careers nor in solving 
 special perplexities, yet in their domi- 
 nant contours, and again instructively 
 in their exaggerations, even in their 
 abnormal deviations, become deeply sig- 
 nificant. Of such stamp is the science 
 of character ; quite differently motived 
 and otherwise centred is the art of 
 character, — analytic also, yet with an 
 impressionistic bias, proceeding upon 
 sympathetic insight, upon the discern- 
 ment of a ready imagination and the 
 corrective of a rich experience. With
 
 48 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 this quality, sometimes supported by a 
 keen interest in studies psychological 
 and sometimes wholly unrelated to it, 
 there develop the psychological novelist, 
 painter, sculptor, dramatist, or musician, 
 — a George Eliot, a Sargent, a Rodin, 
 an Ibsen, a Wagner.
 
 V 
 
 In this domain wliose contours we are 
 following but not traversing, there is yet 
 another vista, a selective regard that 
 yields an available picture. As we look 
 from afar upon the landscape of human 
 character, what features, we ask contem- 
 platively, shall we regard, what formative 
 traits select as most distinctive ? But as 
 we mingle at close range with all sorts 
 and conditions of men, we are impressed 
 with the complex and, what we are in- 
 clined to call, the unjust complications of 
 our enterprise. Our difficulties are two- 
 fold : first to detect quality in achieve- 
 ment always conditioned by circum- 
 stance ; and what is equally perplexing, 
 to detect fundamental qualities in the 
 different manners of their appearance. 
 On the one hand the handicaps of
 
 50 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 poverty, of discouragement, of the few 
 against the many, of antagonistic aims, 
 and untoward fortune ; on the other a 
 shehered pampering, the open sesame 
 of gold or privilege, popularity, and the 
 subtler intrusions of influence. Amid 
 such discrepancy of circumstance how 
 can we gauge the measure of worth, dis- 
 tinguish the insignia of rank and of true 
 quality, how detect the man under the 
 ermine, the robe, the surplice, or the beg- 
 gar's cloak? If honor waited steadily 
 upon achievement, and achievement were 
 the equally constant issue of quality, 
 judgment would be simple, and secure ; 
 though a psychological discrimination 
 would still find its metier in tracing dif- 
 ferent orders and applications of the 
 qualities of men to their underlying 
 sources. But combine and confuse quali- 
 ties and achievements with circumstance, 
 and the wisdom of the schools and of 
 human institutions — though applied in 
 the spirit of Solomon — prove wholly in-
 
 QUALITY IN UTOPIA 51 
 
 adequate. The picture becomes too com- 
 plex in motive, too baffling in detail ; 
 and after the manner of mortals, we dis- 
 pose of its intricacies by substituting for 
 it another — a simplified outline in dia- 
 gram — of our own design, embodying 
 a personal preference. We equalize or 
 neutralize circumstance, and summon 
 imagination to the rescue of analysis. 
 The myth and the wish direct the adven- 
 ture. 
 
 Back to Arcadia or on to Utopia seems 
 the only way out. Let us divest ourselves 
 of circumstance, disregard convention, 
 and look upon merit face to face, not re- 
 flected darkly in the glass of fortune. 
 With the outlook thus transformed, the 
 vista may develop into a vision, the 
 problem become a dream. Thus Plato 
 fashioned his very Athenian republic ; 
 More his cumbersome Utopia ; and their 
 modern disciples — Morris, Howells, Bel- 
 lamy, and Wells — dipped in the future 
 and imaginatively " saw the vision of the
 
 52 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 world, and all the wonder that would 
 be," or should be. Yet whether or not, 
 unrestrained by a distorted reality, we 
 suit reward to merit and avail ourselves 
 of the Utopian privilege of fondly con- 
 structing a world with more conveniences 
 for being happy in it than are provided 
 for by our distressful planet, the material 
 for such constructions must ever be the 
 same, — the enduring qualities of men. 
 Yet despite the mingling of circumstance 
 with disposition, there seems to be borne 
 in upon the observer and student alike, 
 the impression of a "great divide" — a 
 two-class division of humanity, some- 
 thing more of leadership in the one, of 
 following in the other ; the imaginative 
 and the imitative ; the original and the 
 \ conventional ; the alert and the sluggish ; 
 the vibratory and the unresponsive ; the 
 digits and the ciphers in the curter and 
 severer formulation. The distinction 
 seems to extend through and beyond the 
 limit of education, clearly so of learning ;
 
 ATHENIAN AND BCEOTIAN 53 
 
 seems like a natural stream to make its 
 own way among the sorts and conditions 
 of men, leaving them for the most part 
 with approximate fitness and amid con- 
 genial surroundings on the one side or 
 the other of the meandering boundary. 
 The intellectuals of ancient Greece ap- 
 parently enjoyed the same prospect ; and 
 not wholly in the spirit of the Hellenes 
 and the Barbaroi (of Ourselves and the 
 Other Kind in modern phrase), they clas- 
 sified the men of their time as Athenian 
 and Bceotian. As we have expanded 
 their intuitive demarcation, we gather in 
 the one class the men of alert sensibility, 
 imaginatively free, with pronounced char- 
 acter, shaping their lives by principle, 
 and making of them what is worthy to 
 be called a career ; and in the other those 
 who moderately or conspicuously lack 
 these qualities. Divided at their widest 
 span, they become plainly the gifted and 
 the dull ; but nearer their merging points 
 the one towers above the other in that,
 
 54 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 while he alike with his fellow man com- 
 promises with institutions and expresses 
 his purposes through them, he yet affili- 
 ates himself with the worthier, more pro- 
 gressive aspects thereof, follows a larger 
 expediency, is not submerged in the 
 crowd whose impulses he shares. 
 
 Here and now, as of old, lie the two 
 camps ; and all that we have done since 
 they were mustered in the plains and 
 cities of Hellas is from time to time to 
 change the names on their standards. 
 Athenian has ever gathered with Athen- 
 ian, Boeotian with Bceotian, and so will 
 it ever be. True, the one never wholly 
 loses sympathy for the other, — that is the 
 saving grace of humanity, — and for 
 practical crises they may be united in a 
 common loyalty, an inclusive patriotism ; 
 whereby, in one generation or another 
 great things are done. Yet in times of 
 peaceful venture and in the freer choices 
 of life, — social, intellectual, political, 
 sentimental, sesthetic, practical, — each
 
 BROMIDE AND SULPHITE 55 
 
 will drift to his congenial milieu, will 
 circulate in his regular or irregular orbit. 
 Yet the distinction is fundamentally 
 one of endowment, of temperament, and 
 mingles with the slighter rivulets as with 
 the larger streams of life. Its modern 
 phrasing is to be found in the key of 
 pleasant banter ; but wisdom in and out 
 of Shakespeare often appears in cap and 
 bells, and to light words hang weighty 
 meanings. Let us take somewhat seri- 
 ously the experiments of Mr. Gillett Bur- 
 gess, who with the aid of kindred spirits 
 has passed the Boeotian through the 
 chemical laboratory and transmuted him 
 into a modern Bromide, and has found a 
 new value for the Athenian in the form- 
 ula of the Sulphite. The terms reflect, 
 almost expose too barely the features of 
 their appropriate subjects. His calcula- 
 bility gives the Bromide a real equation ; 
 " his train of thought can never get off 
 the track ; . . . his mind keeps regular 
 office hours " ; and blandly and happily 
 
 \
 
 56 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 he reflects his surroundings, and finds 
 in the conventional maxims of Dame 
 Grundy (revised version) the solutions of 
 his ordinary perplexities. Though he 
 grasps at the weather as at a life-preserv- 
 er, as a salvation in time of conversa- 
 tional need, he is immune to the subtler 
 meteorology of the intellectual climate. 
 Storm and stress are to him wild oats 
 and folly, and primroses primroses on all 
 occasions ; though curiously a spade is 
 not a spade for the sufficient reason that 
 in his circles a leg is a limb. For all of 
 which he is affable, steady, thrifty, useful. 
 His character is inevitably, and what- 
 ever streaks run through it, platitudinous. 
 If he belongs to the emotional variety 
 of his species, he effuses in a predict- 
 able and slenderly gushing stream. He 
 may quite legitimately be an intellectual ; 
 in which case he takes his food with a 
 bourgeois appetite, with no epicurean 
 foibles, and emerges as a good collector, 
 a middleman, an imitative exponent. As
 
 BROMIDE AND SULPHITE 57 
 
 an executive he becomes a steady prac- 
 titioner, a compromising adviser, apt at 
 routine, circumstantial, minute, orderly, 
 — the safe pillar or pilaster or spindle 
 of society. 
 
 The contrasting qualities of the Sulphite 
 find their community in their very diver- 
 sity ; for fundamentally he is refractive, 
 not reflective. " Every impression made 
 upon him is split up into component rays 
 of thought; he sees beauty, humor, 
 pathos, horror, and sublimity " ; and what 
 he sees he orders anew through the me- 
 dium of his own personality. He is not 
 predictable, though logical ; he is ever 
 himself, though true to his class allegi- 
 ance. He is decidedly a man of many 
 types and many occupations. Raised to 
 the nth power and transferred to a high- 
 potential milieu he becomes, I assume, 
 the superman. Even when casually en- 
 countered he reflects definitely, though 
 it may be limitedly, the independence 
 of leadership ; he is a factor, small or
 
 58 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 large, a digit within the ten-place, or the 
 hundred, or the thousand, never a cipher. 
 Yet he is this — so far as his Athenian 
 blood is blue — by virtue, not of position 
 but of inherent quality. He is unmistake- 
 ably to be recognized by his omissions. 
 " He eliminates the obvious" ; does not 
 go back to Adam or the Flood to find a 
 fulcrum for his advances ; and carries a 
 fitting perspective applicable though dif- 
 ferently to forests and to trees. Yet more 
 characteristically is the contrast aesthetic, 
 a touch of gentility in the one, of vulgar- 
 ity in the other. What separates one from 
 the other is in Professor James's words, 
 which though written with other reference 
 seem peculiarly apt, " less a defect than 
 an excess." ** To ignore, to disdain, to 
 consider, to overlook, are the essence of 
 the ' gentleman ' ... It is not only that 
 the 'gentleman ignores considerations 
 relative to conduct, sordid suspicions, 
 fears, calculations, etc., which the vulga- 
 rian is fated to entertain ,- it is that he is
 
 THE GENTLEMAN 59 
 
 silent where the vulgarian talks ; that he 
 gives nothing but results where the vul- 
 garian is profuse of reasons ; that he does 
 not explain or apologize ; that he uses one 
 sentence instead of twenty ; . . . All 
 this suppression of the secondary leaves 
 the field clear, — for higher flights, should 
 they choose to come. But even if they 
 never came, what thoughts there were 
 would still manifest the aristocratic type 
 and wear the well-bred form." The con- 
 trast persists: aristocrat and philistine, 
 gentleman and vulgarian, Bromide and 
 Sulphite, Athenian and Boeotian, are but 
 different portrait titles for the same sit- 
 ters, portrayed by different artists, with 
 distinctive expressions and properties. 
 
 The Utopian atmosphere has the pene- 
 trative virtue of making things seem what 
 they are. Rank, occupation, service be- 
 come the' fitting and invariable insignia 
 of quality ; virtue has an outer as well as 
 an inner reward, and develops withal a 
 prompt recognition of its prestige. Doubt-
 
 6o THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 less for most of us such clarity of atmos- 
 phere is too formidable ; it threatens to 
 dissolve our serviceable illusions along 
 with our superstitions, to disclose the 
 little tricks of our make-up, or to require 
 us to justify our prejudices and predilec- 
 tions. We are dwellers in mist-land and 
 have become used to it. Unquestionably 
 by precept and manifesto we want no 
 enveloping murkiness, no shielding fog 
 for baseness or incompetency to find se- 
 curity ; yet in less public moods we hold, 
 in George Eliot's estimable phrase, to 
 the inalienable right of private haziness. 
 Though we cling to the sheltering imper- 
 fections of our terrestrial institutions, we 
 are ready to follow, as tourists provided 
 with a limited return-ticket, so accom- 
 plished a Utopian guide as Mr. H. G. 
 Wells. In his sociological construction, 
 the characteristic institution is the intel- 
 lectual order of the elect, — the Samurai, 
 — a voluntary nobility of merit united in 
 service to the State, an aristocracy of
 
 THE UTOPIA OF MR. WELLS 6i 
 
 quality, reminiscent of the guardians of 
 Plato's Republic. His more evolved state 
 of human society tolerates no arbitrary 
 restriction of privilege, only the natural 
 cleavages : the leaders and the led ; the 
 class and the mass. For even in Utopia 
 there seems no device to accomplish what 
 has been attributed to the ambitions of 
 the managers of ostentatious American 
 hostelries : to provide exclusiveness for 
 the masses. 
 
 By quality the Utopians appear as 
 Poietic, Kinetic, Dull or Base. The Poie- 
 tics form "the creative class of mental 
 individuality" and "agree in possessing 
 imaginations that range beyond the 
 known and accepted, and that involve 
 the desire to bring the discoveries made 
 in such excursions into knowledge and 
 recognition. ... To the accumulated 
 activities of the Poietic type reacted upon 
 by circumstances, are due almost all the 
 forms assumed by human thoughts and 
 feeling. All religious ideas, all ideas of
 
 62 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 what is good or beautiful, entered life 
 through the poietic inspirations of men. 
 . . . With one interest, one endowment, 
 he is the artist, with another the man of sci- 
 ence, with yet another of affairs." Clearly 
 the Poietic is a high order of Athenian 
 with an inevitably sulphitic temperament ; 
 and what is characteristic of Utopia and 
 what contrasts it with Terrestria is the 
 large responsibilities of leadership that 
 devolve upon this favored class. Yet the 
 affairs of any society demand energy and 
 the talent of management. The intellect- 
 ual order of Samurai, the trained leaders, 
 includes large representations of the ki- 
 netic type of men. These in turn are va- 
 rious, are assimilated to the less distinct- 
 ive blends of poietic men, but have more 
 restricted imaginations and prefer very 
 wisely to limit their endeavors to the ex- 
 perienced and accepted ; within which 
 limits they imagine and think clearly, 
 and perform cleverly and capably. 
 The Kinetics form the upper middle
 
 THE UTOPIA OF MR. WELLS 63 
 
 class of Utopians, a large and valuable 
 aggregate, the bone and sinew of the 
 nation. They keep the world going by 
 getting things done. They span the great 
 arch of the social structure from medi- 
 ocrity to high and poietic excellence. 
 Every realistic Utopian and practically- 
 minded Terrestrian recognises their high 
 worth. Their real place in the real mod- 
 ern world — for so much of which they 
 are responsible — must not be judged 
 by the pages of attention they secure 
 in imaginary Utopias, nor in essays in 
 defence of appreciation. Let them find 
 honor in their description as the normal 
 exemplars of the sterling qualities of men. 
 The Dull are manifestly inevitable ; 
 there would be no hills or mountains 
 but for the lowlands and the plains. The 
 great mass of ordinary work to be done 
 demands a great mass of ordinary work- 
 ers to do it. Utopian writers dismiss 
 them curtly as stupid, incompetent, for- 
 mal, imitative. "The Dull are persons
 
 64 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 of altogether inadequate imagination, 
 the people who never seem to learn 
 thoroughly, or hear distinctly or think 
 clearly." The Base put their qualities, 
 which may be high as well as low, to 
 perverted use. Like the poor and the 
 dull, we always have them with us to 
 furnish problems to society and sociolo- 
 gists alike.
 
 VI 
 
 With a vocabulary thus extended and 
 the experience — albeit in imaginary ex- 
 ploits — enriched, we may return earth- 
 ward and consider human limitations 
 both of quality and circumstance, in the 
 end very practical worldly considerations. 
 To each of us, of all the possible careers 
 — not remotely or hy pothetically possible, 
 but reasonably available under realizable 
 conditions — one alone becomes actual. 
 Professor James writes piquantly : No man 
 can be "a great athlete, and make a 
 million a year, be a wit, bon-vivant, and 
 a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher ; a 
 philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and 
 African explorer, as well as a tone-poet 
 and saint" ; not alone, as he proceeds to 
 observe, that "the millionaire's work 
 would run counter to the saint's " ; that
 
 66 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 "the bon-vivant and the philanthropist 
 would trip each other up " ; that " the 
 philosopher and lady-killer could not 
 well keep house in the same tenement of 
 clay" ; but still more fundamentally that 
 the temperament, the endowment, the 
 primitive fibre of human quality condi- 
 tions the outer color — though this may 
 be dyed with or reflect the pigments of 
 experience — and the design, — though 
 this is variously adapted to fashion and 
 circumstance, — but as well the immut- 
 able texture of the available cloth to which 
 perforce we must cut our garments. 
 
 The incompatibilities of quality lie on 
 the surface and are readily discerned ; 
 their deeper analysis is involved in the 
 same fundamental and as yet unattain- 
 able solutions that await us in the pro- 
 mised land. But with lesser or greater 
 comprehension we note that the steel, if 
 too light, becomes weak ; if too heavy, 
 unwieldy ; if too elastic, it bends. The 
 carrying power of the freighter does not
 
 THE INCOMPATIBILITIES 67 
 
 go with the fleetness of the ocean grey- 
 hound ; pacer and dray-horse are bred 
 quite differently. We have been reminded 
 that philosophers are likely to possess 
 one set of qualities and lady-killers 
 another. But let us be very careful not 
 to exaggerate these incompatibilities. It 
 would not be difficult to find philosophers 
 properly susceptible to feminine esteem, 
 nor beaux with a taste for philosophy. 
 We think at once of the camel contem- 
 plating the eye of the needle as a possible 
 archway, and the rich man before the 
 gates of paradise. But the camel, if we 
 may trust Kipling, is a most awful ex- 
 ample of combined incongruities: "he's 
 a devil, and a ostrich, and a orphan-child 
 in one" ; and the rich man is subject to 
 slander — and investigation. The liner, 
 though "she's a lady," carries quite a 
 cargo ; and of the many cargo boats that 
 ply the charted seas, the ones of largest 
 burden are not the slowest. 
 
 The incompatibility of qualities must
 
 68 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 be carefully reckoned with. It appears 
 practically in the adjustment or malad- 
 justment of quality to service, and con- 
 versely in the wise adjustments of the 
 demands of positions and institutions to 
 the compatibilities nurtured within our 
 human psychology. Men may be versa- 
 tile in this respect or specialists in that, 
 by nature or by circumstance. The mas- 
 tery that is denied to jacks-of-all-trades 
 may be lacking through fault of training 
 or through limitation of endowment. The 
 individual aspects of the problem must 
 seek illumination in the survey at closer 
 range, and thus form the theme of an- 
 other story. Yet the purpose sought is 
 clear: to determine early for the youthful 
 career in what class or harness the pro- 
 mising colt is likely to trot. To be a square 
 peg in a round hole is about as unfortun- 
 ate for the hole as for the peg. The ad- 
 justment, I shall presently contend, must 
 be reciprocal ; careers are comprom- 
 ises between qualities and circumstances.
 
 FRAILTIES OF GENIUS 69 
 
 Through social authority the shaping of 
 the holes follows the somewhat conven- 
 tional prescriptions of human institutions; 
 the elasticity of the pegs is limited by 
 natural patterns. The two have evolved 
 together ; the determination which shall 
 be the qualities fittest to survive is partly 
 in our own communal hands ; and in this 
 responsibility lies my text. 
 
 Practically regarded, the urgent de- 
 sideratum, the vital need, is the diffusion 
 of a proper appreciation of the poietic 
 qualities, of "high and low degree ; and 
 along with it a generous realization that 
 sound originality is compatible with a 
 very large efficiency. The chroniclers of 
 the small talk of the great dwell solemnly 
 upon the idiosyncrasies of genius. They 
 find something mystically significant or 
 damnatory in the report that Schiller de- 
 rived inspiration from the odor of decay- 
 ing apples ; or that Wagner loved to pose 
 in fancy dress. People who know little 
 of Kant think of him as an absent-minded
 
 70 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 beggar who lost the thread of his dis- 
 course when the button on a student's 
 coat — his indispensable fixation point 
 — lost its retaining thread ; and those 
 similarly conversant with the personality 
 of Whistler think of him as a testy indi- 
 vidual proud of a white lock in his shaggy 
 hair. They know of Coleridge, as of a 
 host of his kind, as those who were as 
 babes in the woods in practical afiairs ; 
 and they are convinced upon slight evi- 
 dence that artists are a Bohemian and 
 undependable lot ; and that presumably 
 men with unusual ideas pay for the privi- 
 lege by a lack of common ones. The ten- 
 dency to flaw in delicately cast natures 
 is part of the hazard for the higher qual- 
 ity. The bow, to carry the arrow farthest, 
 must be stretched to near the breaking 
 point. It may be admitted for earthly 
 " originals," as Mr. Wells does for Uto- 
 pians, " that the very definition of a poie- 
 tic class involves a certain abnormality " ; 
 that the most vigorous individuals of the
 
 HAZARD OF HIGH QUALITY 71 
 
 kinetic class " are the most teachable peo- 
 ple in the world, and they are generally 
 more moral and more trustworthy than 
 the poietic types. They live, — while the 
 Poietics are always something of experi- 
 mentalists with life." Yet the admission 
 should not unduly bias the sober social 
 judgment against original or unconven- 
 tional contributors to the values of life. 
 There is ample reasonable ground be- 
 tween the self-satisfied arrogant scorn of 
 uncommon gifts and the hysterical hero- 
 worship of posing Bohemianism. Doubt- 
 less originality with poise is better than 
 originality without it ; yet the quality is 
 so precious that we mortals should be 
 grateful to accept it in any guise and on 
 any terms the gods choose to impose. 
 A patient sympathy with its methods, 
 even its vagaries, is the only wise, the 
 only civilized course. There is a note of 
 sadness in the suspicion of so evenly 
 tempered a Poietic as Mr. Howells, that 
 by the great mass of Americans the poet
 
 72 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 is regarded as " perhaps a little off, a lit- 
 tle funny, a little soft " ; and that Mr. 
 Wells should comment : " Fools make 
 researches and wise men exploit them — 
 that is our earthly way of dealing with 
 the subject, and we thank Heaven for 
 an assumed abundance of financially im- 
 potent and sufficiently ingenious fools." 
 Possibly Mr. Wendell suggests a true 
 reason for this distorted view of things : 
 " The faults of the upper classes, partly 
 by reason of their very emergence, are 
 often more conspicuous than the virtues ; 
 and the virtues of the lower classes, partly 
 by reason of their submergence, often 
 seem more instantly salient than their 
 faults. The bottom of things above you 
 is what meets the eye, whoever or wher- 
 ever you are, and the top of things 
 below." 
 
 Remembering as constantly as we care 
 to, the frailty of genius and pronounced 
 talent, it behooves us equally to remem- 
 ber the much larger class of constructive
 
 HAZARD OF HIGH QUALITY 73 
 
 intellects, free for the most part from the 
 idiosyncrasies of unorganizable genius, 
 who present in the blend of their quali- 
 ties a more than ordinary measure of 
 sound judgment, of wise management, 
 of sustaining energy. Versatility is not 
 so rare as this age of specialism is prone 
 to consider it ; the muses and graces and 
 virtues form quite a goodly company. 
 The poietics are born into the families 
 of men somewhat like the rest of us, and 
 are not as a rule so niggardly treated by 
 the dispensers of qualities as to leave 
 them with one small unsupported talent. 
 They are willing to live and be judged 
 as men among men. It is, moreover, well 
 to remember that the distrust in question, 
 the disparagement and weak encourage- 
 ment of the poietic career may lie in the 
 juries and judges and in the institutions 
 which these represent, rather than in the 
 delinquencies of the defendant. 
 
 It is instructive to recall that older so- 
 cial systems, regarded by our modern
 
 74 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 standards as inherently unsound, yet in 
 the saving graces of their raisott d'etre 
 gave encouragement to quaUties and to 
 the arts that arise from them, that now 
 languish or are overpowered by lustier 
 contestants for the energies and the de- 
 votions of men ; that the glories of ca- 
 thedrals, the splendor of castles and 
 town-halls, the magnificent appeal of the 
 master's canvas and the sculptor's mar- 
 ble, and the uniform merit and sympa- 
 thetic workmanship of minor craftsmen 
 organized into powerful guilds, — that 
 these and the institutions of the day, the 
 ordering of life and of its appreciations, 
 all stood in some vital relation to the 
 feudal system, whose privileges and 
 inequalities we are too prone to empha- 
 size, whose achievements to value too 
 slightly. 
 
 And again it is well to bear in mind 
 that other commonwealths, with no less a 
 modern spirit than our own, have found 
 worthier honor for their worthier men.
 
 OTHER CIVILIZATIONS 75 
 
 have shown a wiser appreciation of the 
 higher quality than have we. 
 
 In so far as the deficient appreciation 
 of poietic qualities is indeed a national 
 trait, it unquestionably has a reason in 
 national conditions, — conditions which 
 placed a special premium upon and per- 
 emptorily demanded antagonistic quali- 
 ties. The insistent demands of new 
 possessions, the vast and rapid trans- 
 formations of new conditions, have em- 
 phasized kinetic qualities on a wholly 
 unprecedented scale, and to the inevita- 
 ble disparagement of every other quality 
 or even virtue. Life has been lived so 
 breathlessly that the contemplation has 
 been reduced to mere glimpses ; we have 
 had to do our reading as we ran, and for- 
 sake the privilege of seeing life steadily 
 and seeing it whole. But much of this 
 apology for the unwisdom and the rash- 
 ness of our esteems has outlived its war- 
 rant, outlived it with the receding of the 
 frontier. Or to speak more critically, the
 
 76 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 exaltation of more common-place, close- 
 viewed, calculating qualities settled upon 
 the inheritors and later occupants of the 
 possessed land. Frontierdom possessed 
 a romantic admiration of boldness, origi- 
 nality, individuality ; it enjoyed an out- 
 look, hewed its own way, permitted 
 itself the luxuries as well as bore the 
 hardships of freedom and adventure. 
 The literature of this realm overflows 
 with admiration of the poietic qualities — 
 and that at times with a superb disdain 
 of constraining proprieties —- from Bret 
 Harte to The Virginian. It is the com- 
 placent bourgeoisie of the plains and the 
 micropolis, and then the purse-proud 
 managerial next generation of the me- 
 tropolis — and their following politically 
 from henchman to boss, their following 
 industrially from clerk to the captains or 
 despots of industry ; it is with them that 
 the one-sided exaltation of narrow quality 
 found its pernicious foothold. 
 
 Yet looking forward not backward, it
 
 COMPLACENT PROSPERITY 77 
 
 may be safely maintained that the intel- 
 lectual conditions for our advance are 
 for the most part equalized with those 
 of the liberal cultures in the old world. 
 The imminent danger, the internal yel- 
 low peril, is that the appreciations we 
 have thus developed and trusted, the re- 
 wards we have encouraged or permitted 
 under stress and strain of circumstance, 
 the shallow glorification of the immedi- 
 ately practical, will have so warped our 
 instinctive sensibilities and our acquired 
 judging powers as to impede seriously 
 the restoration of a more catholic, indeed 
 a more spiritual perspective, now that 
 the clearing of the promised land invites 
 possession full, free, secure. The motto 
 borne by the great kinetic metropolis, 
 — the determination of Chicago's "I 
 WILL," — at one time sufficient and un- 
 questioned, is to' a later generation but a 
 preamble to the naming of the purpose 
 to which the human will-power is to be 
 applied. Whatever that may be, it in-
 
 78 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 volves, and particularly so amid the un- 
 charted and complex streams of modern 
 life, the greatest utilization, the most 
 sympathetic appreciation, as well as the 
 devoted support of its poietic men : men 
 who can plan, and foresee, and are not 
 afraid to dream ; men moved by princi- 
 ple as well as by practice ; men cherish- 
 ing their individuality, not cowed by 
 convention nor awed by power ; men in 
 whom the very nobility and worth of 
 their theories enables them to meet ade- 
 quately the conditions that confront them.
 
 VII 
 
 I FIND yet a word to be said in 
 behalf of the poietic ingredients in the 
 composite qualities of more than ordi- 
 nary though less than extraordinary men 
 and women, and their encouragement 
 during the poietically favored period of 
 growth. We know the situation famil- 
 iarly from its favorite selection for the 
 theme of story, drama, or novel. The 
 youth — or, if you prefer, the maiden — of 
 strange parts and vague longing, throb- 
 bing with imaginative romancing, finds 
 little sympathy with family or friends, or 
 appreciation by the matter-of-fact people 
 of town or village. Less available and 
 at times less tractable than his brethren, 
 given to dreams and their interpretation, 
 this modern Joseph, in the usual setting, 
 neither reaches high place to the discom-
 
 8o THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 fiture of his brethren, nor on the other 
 hand is he cast into the pit. He is com- 
 passionately looked upon as the weaker 
 vessel, a sort of jug without a handle, 
 to be pitied, endured, but not encour- 
 aged by advances, which quite possibly 
 he would resent. Yet occasionally some 
 Pharaoh, not perplexed or grief-stricken 
 but deep-sighted, or some amiable Me- 
 caenas of the novelist's creation, or bet- 
 ter still in real life, the saving insight of 
 the small minority, eases the path of the 
 poietic youth, and with favoring fortune 
 eventually seats him among the hon- 
 ored. 
 
 It is part of the sports of the fates 
 that here, there, and elsewhere, they de- 
 posit a sulphitic offspring amid a family 
 brood of sturdy and unsuspecting bro- 
 mides. In fiction retributive justice is 
 common, possibly because the writers 
 thereof, themselves touched with the 
 poietic strain, use the opportunity to in- 
 dulge their convictions. Likewise the
 
 APPRECIATION OF TALENT 8i 
 
 stage poietic, though not a matinee idol, 
 makes a general and genuine appeal for 
 the common reason, that the novel-read- 
 ing and the play-going moods, in their 
 recoil from the routine of a work-a-day 
 world, are sympathetic with the imagina- 
 tive play of poetic justice. But the actual 
 shapers of fate, the judges on and off the 
 bench, and the juries of the people, — the 
 playgoers in their vocational and social 
 influence — and, most of all, the spirit of 
 the institutions which they have called 
 into being and which they support : 
 these are curiously unappreciative of 
 the worth, the indispensable flame of 
 poietic activity — a steady glow or a fit- 
 ful spark — that illuminates every pro- 
 gressive calling and career. 
 
 To all this there attaches a lesson that 
 may be plainly put : that the poietic 
 callings demand favoring conditions of 
 birth, nourishment and maturity ; that to 
 facilitate the growth of such conditions 
 involves the ability to appreciate them ;
 
 82 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 that the most satisfactory mode of se- 
 curing alike the inventive quality and 
 its appreciation is that of selection, 
 upon the basis of native sensibility ma- 
 tured by cultivation ; that the intellectual 
 and spiritual interests of the nation, 
 equally with its natural resources of for- 
 est, mine, and stream, must be conserved 
 and fostered ; that in each realm must 
 the interests be intrusted authoritatively 
 to those by quality and fitness endowed 
 to guide them. The gospel has as per- 
 tinent an application in academic as in 
 political and commercial circles ; it is 
 because the institutions of the higher 
 education may be looked upon as most 
 complex instruments of selection of 
 the higher qualities, that the slightest 
 shortcoming of motive or wisdom in the 
 guidance thereof is fraught with the most 
 serious consequences. For by whatever 
 reckoning of their worth, the Colleges 
 and Universities of the land radiate the 
 largest influence and set the most influ-
 
 COLLEGE LIFE 83 
 
 ential standards for the most highly se- 
 lected youth of the land. 
 
 The purpose of a college education is 
 by the inspiration of its environment to 
 cultivate in the fittest, the most uplifting 
 appraisal of the qualities of men. In that 
 formative period, the susceptibility to just 
 those influences that grow out of sensibil- 
 ities and confer the poietic leadership, is 
 at its ripest. The graduate, if the years 
 have brought wisdom, differs most from 
 the matriculate in that he has imbibed 
 or achieved a wholly revised esteem of 
 qualities. To direct that revision to a 
 worthy and enduring consummation is 
 the whole business of the higher educa- 
 tion ; though the means it creates and 
 utilizes for the purpose engage a many- 
 sided profession. 
 
 The unwholesome emphasis of boyish 
 and youthful qualities fostered by the 
 esprit-de-corps of the incidental diver- 
 sions of college life, swollen by pamper- 
 ing favor and popularity to overshadow
 
 84 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 the sterner devotion which they are de- 
 signed to reHeve, — this internal dan- 
 ger has properly engaged the concern 
 of parents and educators alike. But 
 this hypertrophy of a serviceable func- 
 tion is to be looked upon as a symptom 
 of a more extended malady, — one that 
 has invaded many of the vital tissues 
 of the academic organism. The weak 
 insistence on the part of those intrusted 
 with the interests of academic leadership, 
 upon the sound, stern, scholarly, and 
 spiritual appraisal of human quality, is 
 the critical fault ; though this in turn 
 may be referred to the complacent sur- 
 render of worthier purposes to the dem- 
 ocratic insistence of practical demands, 
 born of an impatient short-sightedness 
 and an undisciplined insensibility. If one 
 order of esteem of quality is weakened, 
 another will inevitably take its place. 
 The withdrawal of leadership from one 
 allegiance transfers it to another. If edu- 
 cators shape their esteems to the demands
 
 COLLEGE LIFE 85 
 
 of those whose appraisals they are to 
 fashion, what more natural than that the 
 transferred leadership will follow its own 
 preferences and grow by what it feeds 
 upon! Nowhere is the tyranny of too 
 conventional standards, the weak esteem 
 of poietic originality, the over-emphasis 
 of practical and narrow utility, a greater 
 and a sadder misfortune than in the form- 
 ative years of college life. Universities, 
 if they realize their functions, will con- 
 tinue to regard themselves as citadels of 
 resistance, not remote from the demands 
 of a busy competitive life, but defending 
 it against enemies from within as well 
 as invaders from without ; protecting it 
 most of all by the higher esteem of the 
 qualities of men which it cultivates, from 
 the most serious internal peril, the shal- 
 low and misguided award of popularity 
 and esteem to the qualities glorified in 
 the marts and highways, where motives 
 and measures too readily forsake their 
 finer quality. Because of the inevitable
 
 86 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 life-long exposure to the one order of 
 esteem, the resistive value exercised by 
 the conservators of the other is of unique 
 significance. Disloyalty within the aca- 
 demic citadel becomes of profound con- 
 sequence for the spiritual welfare of the 
 entire community.
 
 VIII 
 
 Yet wherever human quality is worth- 
 ily cherished — and no lantern of Dioge- 
 nes is needed to find it where men 
 most do congregate — the quality of 
 leadership and the loyalty to the higher 
 esteem shines forth as brilliantly as the 
 atmosphere permits, and attracts a fol- 
 lowing. Such social community of pur- 
 pose follows upon the sharing of similar 
 ideals, without which the esteem of qual- 
 ity would be dissipated and lost. As 
 we proceed in analysis or insight we 
 appreciate the commanding influence 
 of the collective social approval and 
 ideal ; and first of the latter. Life, as 
 practice and precept alike inculcate, is 
 character in action ; and all action must 
 be shaped to condition. In part are 
 we masters of our fate, in part are we
 
 88 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 creatures of circumstance. The mastery 
 is expressed in the imperative of the 
 ideals under whose standards we are en- 
 listed ; for it is our peculiarly human 
 privilege, and our highest, to direct con- 
 duct through ideals. In that aspect 
 ideals acquire a very real and practical 
 bearing. They serve to determine in 
 what esteem this quality or that shall be 
 held, and equally what achievements 
 shall occupy the foreground of endeavor ; 
 making one age dominantly artistic, an- 
 other religious, one political and another 
 commercial, one complacent and an- 
 other revolutionary. Yet before proceed- 
 ing, it is well in these pragmatic days 
 not to ignore the fact that indirectly the 
 place of ideals in shaping human events 
 has been much questioned. It has been 
 held that outward circumstance directs 
 activity and that the purposes thus in- 
 dicated, the satisfactions brought about 
 by so much of their accomplishment as 
 falls to one generation, in turn direct the
 
 THE PRAGMATIC POSITION 89 
 
 thoughts of another to the desirability of 
 the extension of such achievement ; to 
 which again by this process some sort 
 of ideal is attached, mainly to reinforce 
 what is really practiced for other reasons. 
 With the pertinence of the pragmatic 
 position within its own field, I should be 
 not at all concerned, did not its temper 
 encourage a jaunty leap from theory to 
 practice with light unconcern. I have no 
 immediate quarrel with the view that 
 proclaims — so far as pragmatism does 
 — that the thoughtless and the thought- 
 ful alike may believe what they choose, 
 naturally at their own risk ; that up to a 
 certain point truth is sanctioned by its 
 practical utility, — proving in the long 
 run and often in the short jump its own 
 corrective, — and that beyond this point 
 it is a landscape to be selected, contem- 
 plated and interpreted to satisfy our 
 needs. The position is secure so long as 
 the pragmatist contemplates and does not 
 explore. But in the loftier excursions,
 
 90 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 where locomotion is difficult and the 
 foothold uncertain, he becomes to me a 
 questionable guide. Ideals, I admit, shed 
 a fitful gleam ; but they momentarily dis- 
 pel the despair of utter gloom and are 
 wonderfully encouraging. I am inclined to 
 agree with Mr. Chesterton, though I cite 
 him with reluctance because of his own 
 incessant quasi-pragmatic town-cry that 
 nothing is true but what sounds untrue : 
 " Pragmatism is a matter of human 
 needs; and one of the first of human 
 needs is to be something more than a 
 pragmatist." I am keenly aware of the 
 dis-service of ideals, of the part they 
 have played in the history of fanaticism, 
 of intolerance, of pseudo-science, as well 
 as of their service in progress and re- 
 form. I appreciate more practically how 
 readily in lesser concerns an ideal, like a 
 conscience, may become a troublesome 
 burden. Ideals are often made to work 
 overtime and unseasonably ; and ideals 
 unwisely worn often restrict rather than
 
 EFFICIENCY OF IDEALS 91 
 
 illuminate the outlook. But to achieve a 
 worthy or serviceable foothold in this 
 tumultuous and competitive world of 
 ours, some decided singleness of purpose 
 and some supporting ideals are alike in- 
 dispensable. When thus assimilated by a 
 liberal mind, ideals become not a burden 
 to be borne, but part of the strength 
 that carries. And equally should it be 
 conceded that the pragmatic shaping of 
 ideals by circumstance is real and vital ; 
 and that the actual incentive to conduct 
 and the formulated grounds of conduct 
 may differ appreciably. Though ready 
 to admit that reasons may mislead and 
 the motives for action remain hidden, I 
 cannot at bottom question the real effi- 
 ciency of ideals as motive forces: that 
 ideals shape human ends, rough-hew 
 them as experience will. Indeed in this 
 larger sense they grow in the historical 
 and the actual perspective until they 
 take the form of great movements of 
 thought, massive inspirations of action.
 
 92 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 Though attached to experience and never 
 effective when detached therefrom, 
 though subject to vagary, they are vital 
 sources of energy. They interpret experi- 
 ence ; condition further belief and ac- 
 tion ; determine sympathies, allegiances, 
 affiliations, careers, and even expendi- 
 tures and votes ; and shape, all unwit- 
 tingly and imperceptibly, the grosser and 
 the finer contours of our lives. The 
 choice is not between having ideals and 
 dispensing with them, but only towards 
 which set of ideals our allegiance shall 
 extend, with what degree of loyalty or 
 enthusiasm one and another shall be 
 cherished. 
 
 And here once more we come upon the 
 great divide, the parting of the waters to 
 east and west, though fed by a common 
 moisture from cloud and hillside. We 
 find the great enduring forces of gravi- 
 tation that keep men and institutions in 
 their orbit, and opposed thereto the finer 
 energies acting centripetally, that pre-
 
 CONVENTION 93 
 
 vent history from repeating itself by 
 shifting as well as by increasing the pur- 
 poses of men. The one is definitely name- 
 able, is looking securely backward, hold- 
 ing fast to that which is seemingly true ; 
 the other is various, experimental, tenta- 
 tively groping, looking forward and out- 
 ward, proving all promising things. The 
 former is convention, perhaps not in it- 
 self an ideal, but modifying all realizable 
 ideals, and by such condition giving rise 
 to the recurrent problems of compromise ; 
 the latter is a progressive, it may be a pro- 
 phetic ideal reached through invention, 
 hypothesis, imagination, vision, faith, 
 and enlisting in its campaign the bud- 
 ding and the full-blossomed enthusi- 
 asms of men. Conservative and liberal, 
 stand-patter and radical, orthodox and 
 heterodox, faithful and heretic, catholic 
 and protestant ; contrast them as we may, 
 — these stand to us as tendencies, tem- 
 peramental predilections in some part, 
 yet potent to shape philosophies and to
 
 94 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 leave as their crystallized products, intel- 
 lectual, moral, aesthetic, religious, social, 
 and political ideals. 
 
 The history of convention would be 
 the most encyclopedic of human narra- 
 tives ; the balancing of its books not 
 lightly to be contemplated by any lesser 
 warrant than the combined qualities of 
 Solomon, Job, and Isaiah. But to read 
 the signs of the times as they point to 
 an actual situation, to reach some opin- 
 ion of its trend, and to throw one's influ- 
 ence on one side of the balance or the 
 other, — this is within the privilege of all. 
 Convention is said to be the fly-wheel 
 society ; and the simile is so far apt, 
 that at all events a fly-wheel is about 
 the least suitable object to make an idol 
 of that could be mentioned. Far from 
 being a safe subject for worship, it re- 
 presents something of a force to be re- 
 sisted. In the minor offices of life it may 
 be viewed with complacency, even with 
 gratitude ; for it is far more important to
 
 CONVENTION 95 
 
 get certain things settled than to trouble 
 minutely as to the last detail of correct- 
 ness of their settlement. I am content 
 that convention has determined in what 
 cut of clothes I shall dine or lecture, and 
 have but a modest interest in the ra- 
 tionale thereof, — and this though I 
 should not choose the garb for portrait 
 or bust. I am not content exactly, but 
 am protestingly resigned to a very large 
 range of other conventions, which I 
 shall with pleasure denounce when occa- 
 sion is favorable, and otherwise decently 
 observe. And what is indefinitely more 
 important, I avail myself of and submit 
 to convention in the professional and all 
 public attitudes of my work. For every 
 reasonable man whose work is in the 
 world must work through worldly insti- 
 tutions. He must become skillful, and 
 should enjoy becoming so, in adjusting 
 principle to practice, in utilizing the 
 great conventions of civilization. 
 
 The danger and the protest come and
 
 96 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 come emphatically, when convention too 
 dominatingly, too interferingly tampers 
 with ideals ; and this all-inclusive danger 
 is concisely set forth in the masterly 
 handling of the problems of "Compro- 
 mise " by Mr. John Morley (now Lord 
 Morley). "We do not find out until too 
 late," he admonishes, "that the intellect, 
 too, at least where it is capable of being 
 exercised on the higher objects, has its 
 sensitiveness. It loses its color and po- 
 tency and finer fragrance in an atmo- 
 sphere of mean purpose and low con- 
 ception of the sacredness of fact and 
 reality." Admittedly, the great practical 
 problem to be solved anew by each peo- 
 ple, by each generation, by each individ- 
 ual, and almost for each situation, is 
 this of reaching a working and efficient 
 compromise between ideals and such 
 modes of their partial realization as a due 
 regard for convention, and a proper ap- 
 praisal of the status quo make available. 
 The tendency of men and peoples to
 
 CONVENTION 97 
 
 lean upon principle to guide practice, or 
 upon practice to yield its own wisdom, is 
 itself a subtle issue of temperament, rather 
 than logically determined. Emerson said 
 of the English : " They are impious in 
 their skepticism of a theory, but kiss the 
 dust before a fact." Lord Morley accuses 
 his countrymen of the same "profound 
 distrust of all general principles," and 
 of the " most pertinacious measurement 
 of philosophic truths by political tests." 
 Macaulay is reported to have said that 
 he would not lift a hand to get rid of an 
 anomaly that was not also a grievance. 
 This is temperamental pragmatism with 
 indulgence. Yet it saves from excess, and 
 makes for a stolid sanity. It is well 
 marked, though altered, in the devotees 
 of Yankee shrewdness, given to bombas- 
 tic proclamations, mushroom platforms, 
 and sophomoric debates, yet keenly re- 
 sponsive to ballots and box-receipts and 
 returns ; upholding the unalterable sov- 
 ereignty of constitutional policy, and
 
 98 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 questioning its pertinency as between 
 friends. A casual cosmopolitan observer 
 sets down both Frenchmen and Ameri- 
 cans as logical. In the pursuit of princi- 
 ples both go to the edge of a precipice ; 
 the Frenchman consistently jumps off ; 
 the American reflectively retraces his 
 steps. For the moment the fitness to oc- 
 casion of neither policy is at stake. At 
 bottom the suspicion of principles that 
 have no root in experience is sound, 
 whether expressed in the impropriety of 
 preaching without practicing, or in a per- 
 sonal distaste for the " thin, sour wine of 
 theory," or in the more critical language 
 of philosophy. But the danger of dealing 
 only with grievances and not with an- 
 omalies is that the acclimatization to the 
 atmosphere of unreason in which the one 
 thrives, lessens the sensitiveness to the 
 other. Once more it is a question of per- 
 spective and occasions, of considering 
 conditions and theories appropriately. 
 Yet it is but natural that the arts of life
 
 PROBLEMS OF COMPROMISE 99 
 
 that depend upon constant compromise 
 and the skillful pursuit of expediency- 
 tend to dominate and direct the ideals 
 and energies of men. Of these the most 
 widely appealing and persuasive is the 
 art, or shall 1 say, the game of politics ; 
 the attitude of mind resulting from a too 
 narrow absorption in such concerns may 
 be called the political temper. Properly 
 subordinated and coordinated with other 
 interests and other aspects of current 
 problems, the spirit is legitimate, helpful. 
 But politics must not be held as all, and 
 statesmanship as nought. The dominant 
 fallacy of the day and generation, for 
 which Lord Morley's classic essay is the 
 complete refutal, the political idol of the 
 market-place, in Bacon's phrase, is the 
 short-sighted confusion between the sanc- 
 tions of principle and the sanctions of 
 practice. We carry modes of conduct 
 applicable to the one most disastrously 
 into the domain of the other, and in such 
 misunderstanding "suppose that there
 
 loo THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 are the same grounds why we should in 
 our own minds acquiesce in second best 
 opinions ; why we should mix a little 
 alloy of conventional expression with 
 the too fine ore of conviction ; why we 
 should adopt beliefs that we suspect in 
 our hearts to be of more than equivocal 
 authenticity, but into whose antecedents 
 we do not greatly care to inquire, be- 
 cause they stand so well with the general 
 public." The quality of mind that lends 
 itself to this unworthy use is not exclus- 
 ively an intellectual fault, prone to soph- 
 istry, not exclusively an aesthetic coarse- 
 ness, leaning to Philistinism, but quite 
 intrinsically a moral weakness, reflecting 
 a cheap complacency and a shabby cow- 
 ardice. The reflection that unfortunately 
 comes only to the few, " counts the cost 
 of keeping peace on earth and a super- 
 ficial good will among men." It is the 
 value of the larger foresight, of the firmer 
 devotion to conviction, that we are tardily 
 realizing in trying to conserve resources
 
 THE POLITICAL TEMPER loi 
 
 outrageously wasted in a cruel service of 
 narrow expediency, nursed, fostered, and 
 abetted by the political spirit. It is pre- 
 cisely this higher wisdom, this loyalty to 
 principle that is demanded in developing 
 the intellectual resources of the nation. 
 
 Accordingly, while ideals do not create 
 human qualities, they determine what 
 kinds of quality shall develop freely and 
 profusely ; they give prominence and ef- 
 fectiveness to one set of qualities and not 
 to their opposites ; and thus by mould- 
 ing public appreciation stamp with ap- 
 proval or neglect the selected qualities 
 of men. In large measure is this accom- 
 plished through leadership and the con- 
 ditions affecting a ready following ; and 
 this in turn through the temper of insti- 
 tutions that place in positions of leader- 
 ship men of one endowment or another. 
 Thus are communities to be judged : by 
 the quality of men they choose for the 
 highest places and the next high ; by the 
 encouragement they offer, the provisions
 
 I02 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 they make for the desirable and the high- 
 est ranges of human quality. By our faith 
 in the wisdom of such judgment, whether 
 confident of democracy or looking to a 
 social order yet to be, is the sturdiness 
 of our optimism brought to the test. For 
 the point of consolation lies where Lowell 
 has discerningly placed it. ** Now amid 
 all the turmoil and fruitless miscarriage 
 of the world, if there be one thing stead- 
 fast and of favorable omen, one thing to 
 make optimism distrust its own distrust, 
 it is the rooted instinct in men to admire 
 what is better and more beautiful than 
 themselves."
 
 IX 
 
 The closer inspection through the ana- 
 lytic glasses of psychology, of the difTer- 
 entiating varieties of human quality and 
 of their functional interplay, falls outside 
 the range of this survey. But no essay in 
 defense of appreciation can afford to 
 omit from its composition some render- 
 ing of those larger waves of influence — 
 organic in nature and, as here pertinent, 
 psychological in form — that play upon 
 the institutions of society and shape their 
 finer contours ; for to these the disposition 
 of our appreciations is intimately subject. 
 And first of all, the proper esteem of any 
 group of qualities, and particularly of the 
 poietic ones, requires a consideration of 
 the shifting importance of the ranges of 
 quality with the evolution of society. 
 Civilization is artificial and by its artifices
 
 I04 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 demands and rewards such qualities as 
 best satisfy its constituted and in large 
 measure unnatural requirements. The 
 qualities of greatest avail in one situation 
 prove relatively profitless in another. The 
 situations, though at once limited and 
 fostered by the natural qualities of men, 
 are dominantly imposed upon them, are 
 artificial by reason of their reconstructed 
 emphasis of quality. The inability to 
 conform to that radical readjustment 
 marks primitive races for extermination 
 when overtaken and dispossessed by the 
 relentless regime of civilization. Such 
 transformation of quality and standard 
 and employment is, rightly or wrongly, 
 the inevitable, if self-imposed white man's 
 burden. When confronted by its resistless 
 advances, the heirs of primitive condi- 
 tions, like our red-skinned Americans, 
 retire displaced ; or in parallel situations, 
 the new assimilation forms a serious 
 race problem, in which the conflict of 
 qualities and the standards they set is an
 
 SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION 105 
 
 essential though not the exclusive diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 In the further consideration of this 
 selective influence of an artificial environ- 
 ment, two principles appeal to our prac- 
 tical interests. The first is the recogni- 
 tion of how largely we live on and by the 
 upper ranges of our quality ; how largely 
 this circumstance shapes careers and the 
 awards of competition, and once more 
 throws the emphasis upon the due ap- 
 praisal of the higher quality. Stated in 
 terms of vocations, it means that a higher 
 differs from a lower vocation by its larger 
 demands of a nicer fitness of quality to 
 occupation. Stated in terms of standards, 
 it means that a lowering of requirement 
 or distorted distribution of award, will 
 more intimately and more disastrously 
 affect the highly differentiated orders of 
 ability than those of simpler, less exact- 
 ing employment. Specialization is itself 
 an eloquent witness of this many-sided 
 truth ; for it is but the direction of talents
 
 io6 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 pointedly to a group of interests, raised 
 to importance by social needs, made at- 
 tractive by social encouragement of serv- 
 ice and reward. The talents in question, 
 judged in terms of their value for a less 
 evolved situation, might be quite inciden- 
 tal in import and most limited in appli- 
 cation. The qualities thus made conspic- 
 uous by the social reconstruction are 
 doubtless derivatives of qualities inherent 
 in human nature, fostered in some simpler 
 and different relation, in natural social 
 environments. In this process of deriva- 
 tion, of overlaying primitive quality with 
 an envelope of civilized accretion, lies the 
 problem of analysis, — of detecting the 
 earlier nature in the later growth, the 
 seed in the fruit. Yet it is this expansion 
 and specialized nurture of qualities — de- 
 rivative, incidental, adventitious in terms 
 of an older set of values — that gives 
 them their high rating ; in them rather 
 than in their remote, closer-to-nature an- 
 tecedents, do we live and move and have
 
 DERIVATIVE TRAITS 107 
 
 our modern being. And this applies 
 equally to our sensibilities, our morals, 
 our intelligence, our social intercourse, 
 and our commercial transactions. As we 
 conform to more complex standards in 
 any of these relations, we lean more heav- 
 ily upon the higher, more specially de- 
 rivative qualities ; we come to live more 
 and more on the finer issues, the latest 
 evolved fruition of our endowment. Such 
 is the transformation effected by civiliza- 
 tion, to whose social dominion, while yet 
 we reserve the privilege of individual 
 protest, we must perforce conform and 
 therein find our place. The dangers of the 
 highly refined, highly specialized life are 
 as real as its gains. They consist in the 
 neglect or weak esteem of the underlying 
 simpler virtues, of the homely, fundamen- 
 tal, supporting qualities, which are some- 
 thing more than the scaffolding to higher 
 achievements, by the same token by 
 which man and society are something 
 more than an artificial construction : be-
 
 io8 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 cause the structure involved is organic 
 and resents a too radical departure from 
 its set patterns. Civilization may disguise 
 vices as well as transform worthy quali- 
 ties ; such is ever the hazard of the higher 
 endeavor. There is also a differently con- 
 ditioned hazard, upon which from another 
 approach attention was directed : that of 
 pronounced and unyielding eccentricity. 
 For all marked variation in a specific 
 direction carries the resulting contours 
 somewhat off their normal centre. In fix- 
 ing the esteem of human qualities as in 
 appraising human nature, it is indispen- 
 sable to appreciate how effectively the 
 demands of civilization transfer the em- 
 phasis to the upper ranges as well as to 
 the transformed derivatives of quality, 
 and away from their primitive signifi- 
 cance. True, the motives of the earlier 
 patterns remain and may in part be 
 traced by the keen psychologist, though 
 they have all but disappeared from the 
 ' consciousness of their practitioners. It is
 
 COMPLEX CONDITIONS 109 
 
 these relations that occupy the back- 
 ground and justify the perspective of the 
 present essay. 
 
 The second principle follows as a cor- 
 ollary. With the more sensitive adjust- 
 ment of quality to environment under the 
 stress of the complexities of modern life, a 
 slight change in standards affects the ap- 
 portionment of success, brings to the fore- 
 ground, to the high places and the next 
 high, this or that group of qualities and 
 the men who possess them. Stated bluntly 
 and in terms of practical success, a man 
 may be prone to fail because he is not 
 quite good enough, or because he is just 
 too good for his job ; either because his 
 proficiencies are not adequate to the 
 standards set, or because they are ad- 
 justed to a more favorable setting than 
 obtains, and cannot acquire the cruder 
 momentum or adjust themselves to the 
 coarser employment demanded.^ It 
 
 ^ It is hardly pertinent to dwell upon nor yet 
 wholly to overlook the ethical and aesthetic phrasing
 
 no THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 would be futile and foolish, insincerely or 
 uncritically to have recourse to this very 
 real cause as an excuse for personal de- 
 ficiency ; and adaptability itself is a prized 
 and practical quality of the type rightly 
 and duly enforced by practical-minded 
 communities. But the proper use of this 
 principle is helpful; and that in slight 
 contrasts of situation as well as in great 
 ones. Consider the social, intellectual, 
 commercial, and cultural contrasts of the 
 cities of the Atlantic seaboard and those 
 of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi 
 Valley, as they present themselves to a 
 cosmopolitan observer; how negligible 
 they appear in every generous rating 
 that confines itself to the larger factors, 
 
 of this alternative, which reads: that one may suc- 
 ceed because he is strong enough or weak enough for 
 his job; because he is sensitively responsive or plac- 
 idly callous to his environment; because he is stead- 
 fast and true to principle, or because he is complacent 
 and temporizing. In these aspects as well, society is 
 responsible for the adjustment of awards to qualities, 
 and is in turn judged by the judicial standards it 
 enforces.
 
 CONTRASTS OF CULTURE in 
 
 to the essential determinants of the set- 
 tings of life. And yet such admittedly- 
 minor diflerences may readily become 
 decisive in according a moderate or a 
 high or the highest favors, the fair or the 
 fairest places and reputations ; they are 
 daily considered, aflect the choice of resi- 
 dence, the careers and migrations of 
 men. The very qualities most directly 
 contributory to high success in the en- 
 couragement of the one sympathetic 
 milieu may in the less hospitable dispo- 
 sition of the other retire to a career of 
 meagre satisfaction. So decidedly do the 
 creatures of man-made cities live and 
 prosper on the upper ranges of their qual- 
 ities ; so naturally are they sensitive to 
 and shaped by the favoring dispositions 
 of their artificial environments. 
 
 Even with most imperfect knowledge 
 of what may be the fundamental factors 
 in human nature, we may quite definitely 
 and practically appreciate their bearing 
 upon the qualities of men which to-day
 
 112 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 compete in the artificial arenas of society. 
 In this view civihzation becomes nothing 
 else than a transformation of the per- 
 spective of human qualities ; bringing- 
 some to high places, retiring others, yet 
 ever building upon the motives and needs 
 sanctioned by nature, shaping its pro- 
 ducts with the grain — not too brusquely, 
 at all events, against the grain — of the 
 natural ore. Though our civilization is 
 thus carried along by evolutionary forces 
 more massive and influential than human 
 intervention, it yet remains true that in 
 the strata in which we live, whose con- 
 tours determine our outlook, the decisive 
 forces are due in large measure to the 
 preferential selection of collective and in- 
 dividual ideals ; and the direction of these 
 motives, I have tried particularly to en- 
 force, places a peculiar value upon the 
 higher ranges, the latest contributed con- 
 tours of the social structure. It is in these 
 characteristically that we live and move 
 and have our being. Such is the law of
 
 THE SLIGHTER CONTRASTS 113 
 
 our social psychology as of our material 
 economics. 
 
 Society indeed artificially encourages 
 these finer differences to mark off the 
 significant qualities of men, and supplies 
 some outward indication of their pre- 
 sence, — inevitably introducing barriers 
 along with accessible gradations in a 
 consistent effort at once to secure the 
 benefit and avoid the disservice of both 
 democratic and aristocratic ideals. A 
 conspicuous issue of this decisive status 
 of the minor differentiations of men is 
 the slight barrier that is sufficient to 
 create misunderstanding and thwart use- 
 ful assimilation. The fact that in spite of 
 so much community of the fundamental, 
 the accessory, and the yet more deriva- 
 tive traits, English and French, or Eng- 
 lish and German, or English and Ameri- 
 can, are so instantly and persistently 
 impressed with their differences, demon- 
 strates how markedly men live and judge 
 by the finer shadings of their national
 
 114 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 color-schemes. Indeed, Mr. Kipling re- 
 gards the assimilation of a high-class 
 American to high-grade English sur- 
 roundings as so unattainable as to call the 
 attempt the story of " An Experiment in 
 the Fourth Dimension." And within our 
 own vast and yet efficiently assimilated 
 domain, Northerner and Southerner, 
 Easterner and Westerner, profession and 
 trade, urban and rustic, mass and class, 
 are acutely conscious of their differentia- 
 tions. The law of social specialization 
 obtains ; it presents the minor yet real 
 danger of raising fences and promoting 
 feuds ; it performs the larger service of 
 perfecting and developing the social 
 value of the higher ranges of the qualities 
 of men.
 
 X 
 
 The assignment of cause and effect 
 in the larger movements of general 
 ideas, particularly under the character- 
 istic dominance of social forces in a con- 
 crete setting, can never be simple. The 
 direction of progress is not in a straight 
 line, but inclines to an ascending spiral ; 
 the encouragement of a partial achieve- 
 ment strengthens the favoring factors of 
 circumstance ; and their increased effi- 
 ciency induces further achievement of the 
 same order. Ideals guide achievement ; 
 but achievement equally vitalizes ideals; 
 each grows in the sympathetic medium 
 supplied by the other. Stated abstractly, 
 it is not very clear how either gets a 
 foothold or matures to independent stat- 
 ure. The dilemma recalls the Hibernian 
 demonstration of the impossibility of
 
 ii6 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 constructing an underground tunnel : the 
 excavation requires the presence of the 
 scaffold-arch which supports the open- 
 ing until the masonry is set ; and to find 
 a place for this arch necessitates a pre- 
 pared excavation for it. Yet by modest 
 advances each step is accommodated to 
 the exigencies of the other ; and how- 
 ever paradoxically, tunnels are built, and 
 however wanting in strict logical pro- 
 cedure, intellectual movements are ad- 
 vanced. 
 
 In its bearing upon the pertinence of 
 the pragmatist's position, the relation 
 has been touched upon ; an indisputable 
 fact of observation is involved. It may 
 be illustrated in a concrete setting, which 
 is indispensable to convey its practical 
 meaning. As others see us, and as we 
 can hardly avoid seeing ourselves, the 
 characteristic of the American man's me- 
 chanical equation is its restless energy, 
 its push or hustle. In so far as hustling 
 brings results, it gives the incentive to
 
 AMERICAN PUSH 117 
 
 still more vigorous hustling. At the same 
 time, those complex ingredients in the 
 situation that made hustling successful 
 to begin with are encouraged, and in 
 turn reward more amply the strenuosity 
 of its devotees. Presently, hustling is a 
 standard, a social ideal ; and the man of 
 sober pace is looked upon as a weaker 
 or a wayward straggler. The neglect of 
 this reciprocal relation is at once a psy- 
 chological fault and a practical error. It 
 is inherent in the psychology of adver- 
 tising, which proceeds by an appeal to 
 the varied qualities of men. That the 
 qualities appealed to are but in small 
 measure fixed by human nature is suffi- 
 ciently clear ; custom, morals, prejudice, 
 fashion, above all social and national 
 standards enter into the composite ap- 
 peal. The bid for commercial favor that 
 attracts one class repels another, or that 
 works well in the United States fails in 
 England ; automobiles and biscuits ; pi- 
 anos and stocks ; soaps and rifles, cannot
 
 ii8 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 have their excellencies set forth in the 
 same way. That is clear and recognized ; 
 but what is less clear is that the suscep- 
 tibility to an advertising appeal is at 
 once facilitated by the accepted achieve- 
 ments of publicity, and favors the exten- 
 sion of its service. This factor introduces 
 a precarious element ; the susceptibility 
 concerned may be checked by a change 
 of ideal. It might become bad form to 
 have an advertised article in the house- 
 hold ; and with a larger pride in inde- 
 pendence of action, the too familiarly 
 presuming advertisement to which our 
 complacency surrenders, might offend 
 our self-esteem. Public sentiment might 
 be so aroused to the aesthetic outrage in- 
 volved that the enterprise that disfigures 
 places of natural beauty w^ould bring 
 about a boycott rather than an extension 
 of custom. 
 
 The principle in question has other as- 
 pects. Employment follows the clue of 
 quality. Individually each likes to do
 
 SUPPLY AND DEMAND 119 
 
 what he can do well ; the possession of 
 skill leads to its exercise, and the exer- 
 cise develops skill. Communities are sim- 
 ilarly affected and introduce the most 
 influential — and it may be the most dis- 
 turbing — factor in the social sanction or 
 approval. The economic determination 
 is of an allied nature but more direct and 
 commanding in action. Each productive 
 area develops — though not free from 
 accidental and artificial encouragement 
 — the industries best suited to its re- 
 sources. Yet once more, ideals enter to 
 determine fashions and use, which affect 
 the demand, that affects the supply, that 
 affects the production, that affects the 
 prosperity, that affects the ideals; and 
 thus repeats, House-that-Jack-built-wise, 
 the circle, or more accurately (because 
 the modes of influence are so various), 
 the irregularly advancing spiral of cause 
 and effect. The favoring influence of the 
 environment in intellectual affairs acts 
 similarly though covertly. The satisfac-
 
 I20 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 tions sought are analogous, the modes 
 of finding them distinct. In a decline of 
 demand, the economic community turns 
 to a changed output ; in an unpromising 
 environment, the possessor of a special- 
 ized quality seeks a more favorable mi- 
 lieu. The more highly specialized, the 
 more marked the poietic dependence, the 
 greater the sensitiveness to the help or 
 hindrance of the environment. In this 
 aspect what has been said of Boston — 
 that it is not a city but a state of mind — 
 is true of every environment ; for the 
 purposes of the census enumeration, it is 
 a material collection of habitations and 
 institutions for the shelter of the hives and 
 homes of men ; for the purposes of a cul- 
 tural appraisal, it is a complex embodi- 
 ment of thus encouraging, thus indiffer- 
 ent, and thus inhospitable appeals to the 
 diverse qualities of the dwellers therein. 
 Incidentally, yet by no means negligi- 
 bly, the warmth of the hospitality ex- 
 tended to one or another selected order
 
 ADJUSTMENT 121 
 
 of human quality affects intimately the 
 flavor and the yield of the output. Ad- 
 justment is the law of organic life whether 
 lowly or complex. The sense of intellect- 
 ual adjustment brings the contentment 
 of coming to one's own, of finding 
 one's place, which is again a distinctive 
 achievement in life, directed by the sen- 
 sibilities. The finding thereof is tradi- 
 tionally and socially, as well as tempera- 
 mentally and vocationally directed. The 
 national bent finds ready expression in 
 idiomatic coloring; the German seeks 
 an environment that is gemuthlich ; the 
 Italian, if you appreciate the setting that 
 appeals to him, finds you simpatico ; the 
 French demands and responds to the es- 
 prit in every situation ; the Anglo-Saxon 
 retires to the snug and cosy privacy of 
 his home. The adjusted organism finds 
 positive contentment, and negatively — 
 in obedience to the law of the acuter con- 
 sciousness of displeasure — finds relief 
 from the constant irritants of an uncon-
 
 122 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 genial environment that sours disposi- 
 tions and dissipates energy. The artist 
 insists upon finding his inilieu somewhere 
 and somehow : theoretically, by virtue of 
 inner quality and acquired skill, he should 
 work as well in Chicago as in Paris ; ac- 
 tually, the inspiration of Paris abides with 
 him in Chicago ; and the artistic migra- 
 tion between the two cities is as yet in 
 the one direction only. In brief, the 
 higher quality requires the nicer adjust- 
 ment, remains more acutely sensitive to 
 the meteorology of the social climate. 
 You cannot command a man to write a 
 poem as you would to dig a ditch. 
 
 The actual presence of irritations im- 
 pedes activity more disastrously than the 
 mere absence of mild encouragements 
 suggests ; and whatever does not make 
 for adjustment makes against it. Natu- 
 rally a reasonable vigor and self-confi- 
 dence rise superior to circumstance ; and 
 the story of neglected genius in a garret 
 has real pertinence quite apart from its
 
 ADJUSTMENT 123 
 
 dramatic convenience. But in the affairs 
 of men the average and the fair minority- 
 count ; the cumulative force of environ- 
 mental factors remains ever impressive. 
 Untoward environments are unfair odds 
 against any pursuit ; and environments 
 will ever be sought for their favoring 
 nurture of cherished qualities, for their 
 ability to supply the contented adjust- 
 ment that brings inherently promising 
 seed to fine flower and fruit. That, with 
 changing emphasis under varying ideals 
 and circumstances, is what Athens or 
 Rome or Paris or London have meant 
 or now mean ; what New York or Bos- 
 ton, Chicago or San Francisco assert ; 
 what Oxford or Cambridge, Harvard or 
 Yale cultivate ; what democracy or aris- 
 tocracy, science or religion, conservatism 
 or socialism include within their distinc- 
 tive, yet commonly inspired ideals. 
 
 Before dismissing this notable princi- 
 ple of interaction of purpose and condi- 
 tion, a beneficent aspect of the suscep-
 
 124 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 tibility of ideal to bend to circumstance, 
 and of circumstance to yield to the shap- 
 ing nurture of ideals, may be touched 
 upon. Nature supplies the varied quali- 
 ties of men ; nurture selects and de- 
 velops their employment, giving promi- 
 nence to favored groups, — in one set- 
 ting to the artistic, in another to the 
 mechanically inventive, in one to the 
 philosophical, in another to the political ; 
 and so on in manifold combination. All 
 the several factors are constantly present 
 in every complex society ; what varies is 
 the prominence of one or the other. The 
 quicker changes of fashion show the 
 process at work more convincingly than 
 the slower evolutions by which we meas- 
 ure the larger onward movements of 
 culture. A peculiarly interesting illustra- 
 tion of such preferential selection is the 
 effect of the ideals developed by men in 
 regard to the desirable qualities of wo- 
 men. From the harem to collegiate co- 
 education seems an impossible contrast
 
 FEMININE QUALITY 125 
 
 to have been bridged by slow, irregular, 
 and halting advances. What it really 
 proves is the plasticity of quality — 
 shared by women and men alike, though 
 perhaps not equally — which permitted 
 the opening of the buds when the climate 
 softened and the gardener withdrew his 
 nipping disfavor ; what it still leaves in 
 doubt are the intrinsic capacities of those 
 powers when freed from restraining im- 
 pediment, when equalized (so far as they 
 may be) with the favoring encourage- 
 ments of the masculine career. These 
 slower, longer, deeper changes are too 
 involved to yield a ready index of effi- 
 ciency of any designated factor; but it 
 is unmistakable that gradual reform of 
 ideal has brought the qualities suited to 
 each stage of growth to the foreground, 
 selecting and strengthening at once. 
 The unrest, suggestive of ill-adjustment, 
 that inspired reform, gave it headway. 
 The removal of social disfavor anent the 
 higher education for women brings the
 
 126 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 academically trained woman into pro- 
 minence, encourages the qualities and 
 aspirations needed for active participa- 
 tion in intellectual interests. The respon- 
 siveness of women to a shifting- environ- 
 ment merits special consideration by 
 virtue of their distinctive and restricted 
 share in the shaping of the ideals which 
 in turn they are to satisfy. 
 
 In the more capricious domain of fash- 
 ion, the movement is brisker and more 
 discernible. When men idealized a type, 
 delicate, frail, prone to tears and swoons, 
 shocked at the least invasion of pro- 
 priety, sheltered from direct contact with 
 worldly crudities, compromised in every 
 innocent expression of candor, the type 
 seems to have been prominent and pop- 
 ular. With the favoring of the robust, 
 athletic, confident, even domineering 
 young woman of the day, this type was 
 in turn selected and developed. It is 
 even reported that when society prefers 
 its belles to be tall or dark, or in turn of
 
 FEMININE QUALITY 127 
 
 fashion, casts its favor upon the blondes 
 or the petites, the prominent debutantes 
 of the season complacently assume the 
 preferred graces of complexion and sta- 
 ture. The significance of preferential 
 selection remains; it does not create, 
 but it gives prominence to selected qual- 
 ities. The beneficent character of such 
 plasticity is two-fold. It gives play to 
 a range of quality, favors versatility, pre- 
 vents too rigid a set of character, miti- 
 gates the fatality of misapplied favor, 
 facilitates reform, and gives the needed 
 touch of optimism to those with faith in 
 the future of human nature and human 
 institutions. Secondly it gives special 
 value to those slighter advances which 
 alone one generation, even one voice fur- 
 thers. Though we consider forests, what 
 we plant or help to mature are the in- 
 dividual trees in our modest and limited 
 nurseries. Whether men of high inclin- 
 ation and rare quality will make good 
 or yield to importunity, the drift of fav-
 
 128 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 oring influence determines ; or as the 
 observant Mr. E. S. Martin observes : 
 " Many men to whom high thinking 
 might have been possible, have suffered 
 an aversion to plain living to turn their 
 intellectual energies into more common- 
 place channels." Particularly is this true 
 of the direction of ideals by the leaders of 
 men. Here, as Lord Morley contends, the 
 matter of real importance " is the mind 
 and attitude not of the ordinary man, 
 but of those who should be extraordin- 
 ary. The decisive sign of the elevation of 
 a nation's life is to be sought amongst 
 those who lead or ought to lead," 
 
 These comments suggest the yet more 
 direct applications of the standards of 
 award to the qualities of merit, which are 
 to be the theme of the concluding con- 
 siderations. Yet the pointedness at this 
 juncture of the moral of the tale will ex- 
 cuse a slight anticipation and a modest 
 repetition. Applying these conclusions 
 to the distribution of ability, particularly
 
 IMPORT OF LEADERSHIP 129 
 
 of its higher, more readily blighted va- 
 rieties, it follows with fair presumption 
 that for every case of marked success, 
 there must be many more competitors of 
 quite equal capacity whom the discour- 
 agement of circumstance, or the distrac- 
 tion of interests, or the ill-adjustment of 
 appraisal, has deprived of a like meas- 
 ure of reward. In a later context I speak 
 of this doctrine as the recognition of the 
 "mute and inglorious Miltons"; and to 
 forestall abuse, I have issued the warn- 
 ing that this principle is not to be used 
 to console failure by assuming unrecog- 
 nized merit ; it may well be used to check 
 self-esteem and prevent too ready assump- 
 tion of high quality through the success 
 of circumstance. But its chief pertinence 
 consists in the plea, which it shelters, 
 that the qualities of men have in one, 
 though but one, aspect of their apprai- 
 sal, the right to be judged in reasonable 
 independence of the uncertain issues of 
 achievement. This is what is meant by
 
 I30 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 being critical ; not to disdain popular 
 approval, but to value it at its true worth ; 
 not to confuse being conspicuous with 
 being able. It follows that in every real- 
 izable social system, men of very un- 
 equal quality will hold like positions ; 
 and again, that men of very equal qual- 
 ities will hold vastly different positions. 
 So once more, we return to the consid- 
 eration that is at once the conclusion 
 and the plea of our premises : that the 
 institutions of society are to be judged 
 by their fitness to place the right men in 
 the right places ; that a decisive circum- 
 stance in this adjustment is the manner 
 of exercise of the aristocratic wisdom 
 that throws the largest reponsibility upon 
 those most capable of critical judgment. 
 The mute and inglorious Miltons will 
 continue to be present in our midst, 
 awaiting their discoverers or their pa- 
 trons, or yet more favorably, the trans- 
 forming social appreciation, that will re- 
 lieve them of their muteness and mod- 
 estly assign them recognition.
 
 XI 
 
 It is only in Utopia that condition is 
 so nicely fitted to merit that success be- 
 comes of itself significant. A mundane 
 people must first itself be judged before 
 approving the type of men to whom it 
 awards success. It is not only conceiv- 
 able but, I fear, demonstrable, that a 
 people can legislate mediocrity into 
 power, and make shallow expediency 
 effective, while yet they ignore the wiser 
 ones in their midst and place obstacles 
 in the path of the more discerning. There 
 is indeed no more abused word in all 
 language than this fetich-monster, Suc- 
 cess, unless it be the object of its prey. 
 Human Nature. Surely for a psycholo- 
 gist to question the validity of human 
 nature and its comprehensive law-abid- 
 ing character would be to argue himself
 
 132 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 out of a profession ; but the notions, ten- 
 dencies, and traits ascribed to it by press 
 and people and Mother Grundy make 
 of it not a principle nor a category but a 
 waste-basket. It is the nature of some 
 humans not to pay their debts ; it is the 
 nature of others not to feel comfortable 
 so long as they have any debts. It is the 
 nature of students to exhibit their legit- 
 imized follies where all the world and 
 his sweetheart may hear and see ; it is 
 the nature of their contemporaries more 
 soberly occupied to keep their indiscre- 
 tions as private as possible. It is the na- 
 ture of some portions of the amphibious 
 public to eat and drink and buy what 
 the didactic counsel of the street-cars ad- 
 vises ; it is the nature of others to look 
 with extreme suspicion upon any article 
 that is extensively advertised. It is the 
 nature of janitors, hotel clerks, and rail- 
 way officials to be supercilious and su- 
 perior ; and it seems the nature of the 
 perfect American to put up with it. I
 
 HUMAN NATURE 133 
 
 have yet to learn of any wisdom or folly, 
 virtue or foible, habit, usage, prejudice, 
 or predilection, that is not ascribed by 
 somebody to human nature. Assuredly, 
 the underlying make-up, the basal tem- 
 peraments, the primeval instincts and 
 impulses are bred in the bone and show 
 through the tout ensemble. But what we 
 look upon in the flesh-and-blood-covered 
 body, and still more significantly in the 
 conventionally clothed, adorned, tailor- 
 made, civilized man or woman is not an 
 anatomical specimen. Indisputably po- 
 tent as human nature is and will ever be, 
 the variations played upon this primitive 
 theme by civilizations, and the revolu- 
 tionar}' as well as evolutionary transform- 
 ations it effects, make impossible any 
 ready determination or enumeration of 
 the humanly natural traits. And for the 
 most part the aspects of things which we 
 observe about us, and then in turn those 
 aspects thereof for which we have a con- 
 siderable responsibility, are due far more
 
 134 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 to what our complacency permits, our 
 beliefs approve, our efforts support, our 
 ideals sanction, than to the sheltered 
 kernel of our common nature. The prob- 
 lem is again to render unto the earthly 
 and temporal Caesar what is Csesar's, and 
 not to ascribe to an inscrutable agency, 
 what the temporal cannot account for 
 or does not care to assume. 
 
 And similarly of success ; there are as 
 many varieties as of human nature, and 
 some of them quite as superficially signi- 
 ficant. Material success and tangible re- 
 ward, and the tallies of crops, we may 
 leave to the estimable if dismal science 
 of statistics. But the adjustment of social 
 approval to social forces and conditions 
 must affect and be affected by just these 
 variable, educable, appraisable qualities 
 — this interplay of ideals, purposes, en- 
 dowments, and fortunes — whose inter- 
 actions we are setting before us. And 
 to the reflective and responsible, the 
 question is never narrowly what does
 
 SUCCESS 135 
 
 succeed, where the pomp and glitter, but 
 critically what should succeed, where the 
 laurel and the palm, from whom the 
 stamp of approval. The French, with a 
 nicer sense of the fitness of term and 
 situation, have the redeeming phrase, 
 succes d^estime, which hits a very pivotal 
 nail precisely on the head. Loftiness of 
 aim is in itself an inviolable factor of suc- 
 cess, though vagueness, inconsequence, 
 impracticability, lack of tact and poise 
 quickly neutralize its worth. Lowness of 
 aim is yet more reprehensible than ab- 
 sence of capacity, as a cause of common 
 failure. Success as we witness or experi- 
 ence it should please and be cherished ; 
 but it should not dazzle and confuse. 
 Homely thrift triumphant and prodigal 
 wile baffled will do well enough for melo- 
 drama ; but the complexity of actual re- 
 lations at once commands circnm.spection 
 and gives to esteem a deeper value. 
 Life is not simple, and for us and those 
 like us to come, will never be so. The
 
 136 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 insistence that it is so, is but a mark of 
 our insensitiveness or of our other limi- 
 tations. For those who have faith in the 
 worth of the higher ranges of human 
 quality, the simple life and the life stren- 
 uous present the most misleading of all 
 ideals. For such, neither the simplicity 
 of the tread-mill nor the strenuosity of 
 the pile-driver offers a worthy model for 
 human endeavor. 
 
 It is probably not accidental that in 
 the early days of this commonwealth — 
 whose totem is the far-sighted eagle — 
 we should have in our practical and pro- 
 verbial philosophy focussed our vision at 
 short range — penny wise and pound 
 foolish. Poor Richard's Almanac scat- 
 tered broadcast an amount of ostrich- 
 like sapience, which even the transcend- 
 entalism of an Emerson failed to retire. 
 To promise not wisdom alone but health 
 and happiness in addition as the reward 
 for so simple a device as setting an alarm 
 clock upon unfinished slumbers, is a bit
 
 SIMPLIFICATION 137 
 
 of vapid sententiousness, which, along 
 with a goodly company of similar saws, 
 inculcates as a complete philosophy, in- 
 dustry, thrift, temperance, prudence, and 
 the bourgeois virtues ; all this sign-paint- 
 er's appreciation of the arts of life pro- 
 duces a wholly misleading simplification 
 of the world in which we live, indeed, of 
 any endurable world in which life would 
 be worth living. Yet in fairness and in 
 gratitude let it be added that this ** age 
 of innocence " doctrine is rapidly disap- 
 pearing. It survives in copy-book max- 
 ims, in the inconsequential hortatory 
 appeals of the baccalaureate address, and 
 in the confessions of genial plutocrats in 
 the columns of the popular press. 
 
 And thus, however regretfully, let us 
 discard any illusion of a golden age, and 
 equally free ourselves from the dissem- 
 bling atmosphere of convention. Let us 
 view human nature understandingly, 
 judge success critically, and appraise 
 quality worthily, not superstitiously —
 
 138 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 which in Lowell's definition is " the habit 
 of respecting what we are told to respect 
 rather than what is respectable in itself." 
 When so judged, the common and con- 
 stant standards prove once more to be 
 the qualities of men, but qualities set in 
 circumstance, and reflecting the varying 
 approval of ideals. Without losing their 
 logical perspective, cause and effect shift 
 and interact, making success equally a 
 measure of the efficiency of personal 
 quality when adjusted to circumstance, 
 and a criterion of the conditions under 
 which quality must develop. As a soci- 
 ety, as a nation, as a community, as 
 members of institutions — all highly com- 
 plex, elaborately artificial, deeply histori- 
 cal, and yet consistently human — we 
 are not passive spectators of our own 
 evolution, but active determining partici- 
 pants ; we award even as we compete, — 
 are judge, and jury, and contestants in 
 turn. Out of this relation emerges, though 
 at times uncertainly, the categorical im-
 
 TEST OF A COMMUNITY 139 
 
 perative of the ideal, that checks the 
 hand turning to grasp the prize of un- 
 worthy success, or inspires in protest or 
 appeal the voice of the critic, the re- 
 former, the poet, the philanthropist. More 
 subtly, yet no less effectively, the same 
 motive force, though much involved with 
 other considerations, determines the trend 
 of opinion, the balance of votes, the push 
 of influence, that gives vitality to the bet- 
 ter or to the worse cause. For it is not 
 so much the sophistry of the intellect as 
 it is the fiabbiness of purpose and the 
 callousness of the sensibilities, that inter- 
 feres with the assertiveness of the higher 
 aims and of the nobler qualities of men. 
 It is as critics of our own success that we 
 are best judged. In that judgment there 
 is a failure that is worthy and a success 
 that is base. The succbs d^estime becomes 
 the court of last appeal ; and the traits 
 which are selected to qualify for a place 
 in that body, become the truest test of 
 the purposes of a community. So long
 
 I40 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 as Utopia remains an ideal, we shall be 
 wasteful, and what is worst and saddest, 
 wasteful of just what is most precious, — 
 the unusual, poietic qualities of men. It 
 seems at times as though in our perver- 
 sity or our ignorance, or in our immer- 
 sion in other affairs, we set in operation 
 a vast educational machinery, in the 
 hope thus to foster qualities, which we 
 then weakly encourage or forcibly retire 
 in favor of others that maintain them- 
 selves apart from the very institutions to 
 which we point as our contribution to 
 ideals. And because of this it is neces- 
 sary from time to time to review our sta- 
 tus ; for discussion, like confession, is 
 said to be good for the soul. It will be so 
 if the searching it involves sharpens in- 
 sight, and quickens resolve. If in any 
 measure the consideration of human 
 quality will have aided the substitution 
 of criticism for complacency, of weighing 
 for counting ; if it makes less easy the 
 impressiveness of glitter, and more ac-
 
 HIGHER APPRECIATION 141 
 
 cessible the practice of discrimination, it 
 will have practically furthered the wor- 
 thier service of the qualities of men. It 
 will also have inculcated the obligation 
 of endeavor as well as of insight. Of 
 cultural no less than of familiar practical 
 concerns is it conspicuously true that 
 things do not get better of themselves. 
 "The improvement of the community 
 depends not merely on the elevation of 
 its maxims but on the quickening of its 
 sensibility."
 
 XII 
 
 By way of refrain, I propose to rehearse 
 the themes of the several movements 
 of this expansive opus. First, last, and 
 throughout, runs the theme that sen- 
 sibility makes the man. It is the hub 
 of the wheel into which the several 
 spokes of our capabilities and interests 
 are set ; together they make possible the 
 encompassing conduct and achievement, 
 the rim upon which we travel — child, 
 youth and man — through our uncertain 
 and irregular journey. Commanding in 
 the aesthetic nature, the sensibilities are 
 no less determinant in the intellectual, the 
 moral, the social, and the practical phases 
 of our activity. I set the theme domi- 
 nantly in the aesthetic key, but expanded 
 it by variations in the related ones of 
 thought and conduct. I am persuaded
 
 THE SENSIBILITIES 143 
 
 that the theme is appropriate to all its 
 settings ; that despite the possible con- 
 fusion of outer show and inner worth, 
 much of morality is alike aesthetic, and 
 fastidiousness a helpful companion to 
 virtue ; that the finer edge of capacity 
 and insight is acquired through the sup- 
 port of sensibilities. 
 
 While mindful of the dangers of over- 
 refinement and the enfeebling of energy 
 by hesitation of scruple or shock, the 
 more immanent peril lies in a crude sen- 
 sationalism, in the insensitiveness that 
 takes to strong stimulants, and bully-like 
 overrides what it cannot appreciate. Yet 
 the common form of the difficulty is that 
 of an unwise neglect of the gifts of sen- 
 sibility in favor of the more tractable, 
 the more tangible acquisitions, — of fash- 
 ioning our educative principles and pro- 
 cedures upon the offsets and comple- 
 ments to sensibility, to the detriment of 
 the social tone and ideals of the people. 
 The issues of personality, reflected in the
 
 144 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 manners, traditions, customs, and envi- 
 ronment that jointly contribute to the 
 standard of living, are the only means as 
 yet discovered that will intimately edu- 
 cate ; for they are education personally 
 embodied and conducted. The arts that 
 our college students need most to ac- 
 quire in order to emerge as cultivated 
 men and women are not altogether in- 
 cluded in the curriculum ; nor need they 
 be so, if only the atmosphere to which 
 the novitiates are exposed, while so much 
 of the curriculum is administered as each 
 is fitted to imbibe, gives the proper in- 
 spiration for right living. The admixture 
 of sensibility with training and capacity 
 makes a marvelous instrument, and by 
 infusing mediocrity or patient drudgery 
 with the power of appreciation, brings 
 it within the range of invention, criticism, 
 and the higher quality. 
 
 With this interlude, I repeated the 
 theme in the intellectual key and illus- 
 trated how stupidity is not so character-
 
 THE BLENDS OF QUALITY 145 
 
 istically lack of logical capacity — of 
 which despite democratic schooling there 
 remains a sufficient supply — as it is defi- 
 ciency of observation or responsiveness, 
 combined with inertia. And I established 
 the reasonableness of my plea by intro- 
 ducing into the concluding chord, the 
 convincing admission that there were 
 doggedly practical affairs in life demand- 
 ing only practical qualities, — skill, train- 
 ing, poise, clear-sightedness. Thus the 
 toilers and spinners were reconciled to 
 the lilies of the field. 
 
 The second movement, piu allegro, 
 introduced the complexity of the temper- 
 aments, the blendings of traits ; and yet 
 sought for unity, for some principles of 
 composition whereby to separate the 
 higher from the lower, or at least dis- 
 tantly to follow the natural boundaries 
 of human quality. We found confusion, 
 owing mostly to the disturbing masquer- 
 ading bent of Dame Fortune, to the un- 
 certainties of fate, the conventions of in-
 
 146 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 stitutions, the distortions of circumstance. 
 Executing a flourish of fancy, we drifted 
 Utopia-ward, and with Mr. Wells as 
 guide, found profit in our excursion upon 
 return to earth. With the usual experi- 
 ence of travelers, we found near at home 
 the analogues of our discoveries abroad ; 
 and in the distinctions approximated by 
 such classic terms as Athenian and Boeo- 
 tian, or such engaging parodies as Bro- 
 mide and Sulphite, found food for 
 thought. With these as stepping stones, 
 we made our way to other aspects of 
 human condition, and first to the incom- 
 patibilities of one order of quality with 
 another. These are as likely to be over- 
 looked as exaggerated. Versatility is it- 
 self a desirable and generously distrib- 
 uted quality. Yet the incompatibilities 
 are real and to be reckoned with. They 
 bring no ready consolation. The deter- 
 mining bases of quality seem so largely 
 dowers of birth, as to make efforts to at- 
 tain them proportionately futile. Hence,
 
 CIRCUMSTANCE 147 
 
 incidentally, the tribute to quality in the 
 outward assumption of its manner, and 
 the confusion of sham and glitter and the 
 penetration thereof by the discerning. 
 But truth and consolation come with the 
 response that while the sensibilities de- 
 termine our ability to acquire taste, 
 they do not determine what manner 
 of taste we so acquire. Education and 
 the influence of environment do not 
 lack for occupation. Next in our path 
 lay the special avenues of capacity, and 
 most to be emphasized, the conven- 
 tional and unconventional drifts of en- 
 deavor. 1 here indulged in an inter- 
 mezzo, closely related to the main motif, 
 a plea for a more appreciative rating of 
 the poietic temperament, potent to save 
 and redeem mankind. And thus plead- 
 ing — a plea that is intended to haunt 
 the memory when all other phrases have 
 faded — I found myself anticipating and 
 gliding into the theme of the succeeding 
 movement, — which is, that life is charac-
 
 148 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 ter in action : that however moulded by- 
 circumstance, we yet remain individu- 
 ally, and above all in our social solidar- 
 ity, master-moulders of our fate. 
 
 Yet before yielding to the transition, 
 I claimed attention in behalf of certain 
 derivative issues of quality, which the 
 psychology embodied in a complex and 
 sophisticated world interestingly reflects. 
 The values of the several qualities, set by 
 nature and enforced by nurture, change 
 with the favoring environment. Sensi- 
 bility is retained, but is so overlaid with 
 convention, so transformed by circum- 
 stance, so redirected by ideals, and so 
 reconstructed by institutions, that the 
 earlier interpretations require liberal 
 transcription. The qualities are much the 
 same, the modes of their excitation and 
 expression notably different. As appears 
 later, in this combined natural and nur- 
 tural situation, the determining status of 
 one's quality is measured by the af^lia- 
 tion with the finer or the coarser, the one
 
 THE UPPER RANGES 149 
 
 type or the other of a common quality, 
 and by the sturdiness of the temperament 
 to withstand, while yet it is responsive to 
 the social sanction. The most decisive 
 change is the transformation of primitive 
 traits in the altered perspective of civili- 
 zation, the overlaying of the fundamen- 
 tal impulses by an envelope of acquired 
 readjustment ; and in this comprehens- 
 ive evolution the change of emphasis is 
 consistently upon the upper ranges, the 
 refined differentia of human qualities. 
 Slight though these differences of qual- 
 ity and circumstance are in a generous 
 rating of values, they more consciously 
 affect preferences and careers, because it 
 is at the level at which they contribute 
 their influence, that the efficient life of the 
 day is lived. 
 
 Equally though differently pertinent is 
 the more directive influence of quality or 
 environment in cultural evolution, as in 
 turn each becomes cause and effect ; as 
 each furnishes the favoring medium for
 
 I50 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 the other. The complexity of the advance 
 suggests graphically an ascending spiral, 
 in following which the sense of direction 
 is easily confused. Concrete illustrations 
 prove helpful ; and such varied interests 
 of the day and hour as push and adver- 
 tising, supply and demand, vocations and 
 the esprit of communities and peoples, 
 the responsiveness of the qualities of 
 women to the ideals of men, were drawn 
 upon with impressionistic effect. A more 
 serious refrain was added, pointing the 
 moral of responsibility to the practical 
 adornments of the tale, — then developed 
 to meet its consummating phase. 
 
 The completing phase of the movement 
 opened upon the sea of circumstance, 
 with the human qualities in their frail 
 bark tossing upon it. The ports however 
 are of human construction and location ; 
 and we reach them through ideals. All 
 depends upon the captain's sagacity and 
 nobility of purpose as well as upon his 
 practical seamanship. Once more we
 
 CONVENTION 151 
 
 lean upon the poietic qualities of the 
 leaders of men. Convention persists as 
 a fundamental limitation, in its embodi- 
 ment in institutions at once a force to be 
 utilized and to be resisted. Pilotage, 
 though true to the compass, becomes an 
 art of compromise. The captain yields to 
 wind and weather if need be, yet is ever 
 alert to make these serve his charted 
 purpose. He does not drift, nor tack to 
 every political gust ; he has a plan, a pur- 
 pose, and follows it ; he is ready to face 
 opposition, to quell mutiny if he must 
 His captaincy is the warrant for the quali- 
 ties of leadership. 
 
 Nearing shore in quieter waters, we 
 surveyed the human fleet contemplatively 
 riding at anchor, and considered what 
 forces make the captains of men. Human 
 responsibility is great, and in the manner 
 of its assumption are tested the qualities 
 of nations. We may shirk it by ascribing, 
 in ignorance or fatalism, our own defi- 
 ciencies to human nature. We may show
 
 152 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 ourselves unworthy of it by making an 
 idol of success erected upon a pedestal 
 of convention, and renounce the specifi- 
 cally human privilege of following the 
 higher or the lower illumination, the 
 deeper and larger experience or the nar- 
 rower expediency ; and by such following 
 give effective sanction to the worthier or 
 the less worthy qualities of men.
 
 XIII 
 
 It may appear that the promise to 
 carry the purpose of this essay domi- 
 nantly in the practical vein has been too 
 Hghtly or too Hberally construed. If the 
 argument of the work holds good, such 
 is not the case. The bonds that join the- 
 ory and practice are subject to the com- 
 plications of the higher quality. As we 
 leave the simpler situations, finer distinc- 
 tions grow in significance. Longer-range 
 skirmishes in the territory of theory are 
 necessary to safeguard the advances of 
 practice. Yet with the outlook secured, 
 reconnoitring for occupation becomes a 
 practical concern. It is peculiarly appro- 
 priate as the concluding procedure. 
 
 Leadership and a following are indis- 
 pensable to practical steps, as likewise 
 they have been found characteristic of
 
 154 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 the two divergent orders of human qual- 
 ity. The practical problems of society- 
 radiate from the central purpose of hu- 
 man institutions, to secure the fairest 
 favor for the worthiest qualities of men. 
 In whatever measure or manner we fail 
 to rest leadership with the more worthily 
 responsible, we place it in the hands of 
 the less responsible. At bottom there is 
 no scrupled objection — only a Philistine 
 protest — against privileged classes. We 
 may confidently trust the democratic sen- 
 timent of Lowell that " the highest privi- 
 lege to which the majority of mankind 
 can aspire, is that of being governed by 
 those wiser than they." It is the false 
 warrant of privilege that has aroused the 
 indignations and the revolutions of re- 
 formers and their following. The privi- 
 leges which wise provisions aim to con- 
 fer upon men of wisdom, if thwarted in 
 purpose, will inevitably be assumed by 
 men of another stamp. Thus every soci- 
 ety finds its equation in the values it
 
 COMPLACENT DEMOCRACY 155 
 
 assigns to the factors whose interactions 
 have been surveyed ; and expresses the 
 result practically in its selection of lead- 
 ers of men. 
 
 The consequences of the complex pre- 
 ferences thus exercised, though seemingly 
 remote, are practical, even intimately so. 
 Every society has its prejudices and its 
 predilections. They are by no means 
 unreasonable, and for the most part are 
 consistently related to the more con- 
 sciously entertained principles of its 
 creeds and platforms. Certain idols of 
 the times have supplied motives to the 
 interludes of protest and appeal, which 
 fell to a writer's privilege. They served 
 as illustrations to adorn the tale. They 
 are of yet greater service in pointing a 
 moral. 
 
 Among the unexpected side-issues of 
 democracy is complacency, on the whole 
 an optimistically tempered, self-satisfied 
 good-will, that goes far to justify itself 
 by its solvent virtues. Its practical dis-
 
 156 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 service lies in its undue tolerance of dis- 
 sent, its too slighting regard for the re- 
 former's part. It is true that the by no 
 means gentle art of "muck-raking" has 
 sprung quickly into favor ; but with a 
 more habitual, critical outlook and a less 
 complacent tolerance of minor infringe- 
 ments, there would have been less occa- 
 sion for this unsavory occupation. The 
 refusal of the remedies offered by the 
 small voice of sensibility has compelled 
 resort to a harsh-toned sensationalism. 
 In such an intellectual climate the re- 
 former's lot is not a happy one. Pecu- 
 liarly timely protests may chance to be 
 well received ; but the approval that goes 
 out to the stickler for his rights — like 
 the virtuous glow of duty nobly done 
 that rewards the writers of protesting let- 
 ters to the " London Times" — is decid- 
 edly paled on this side of the Atlantic. 
 " Life is short ; missionaries do not pass 
 for a very agreeable class, nor martyrs 
 for a verv sensible class," as Lord Mor-
 
 IMPATIENCE WITH REFORM 157 
 
 ley finds occasion to remark. To be- 
 come a "kicker" or a "knocker" is to 
 join the most unpopular of American or- 
 ders. Quite apart from the silly boasting, 
 and the ostrich-like disregard of danger 
 and obstacles, and the Boeotian spread- 
 eagleism that all recognize no wrong, and 
 jointly warrant the occasional caricatures 
 of our true qualities in foreign estima- 
 tion, there is displayed on the part of 
 those unaffected by these obvious foibles, 
 a very unfair suspicion of the reformer ; 
 and this suspicion shelters a menace to 
 the appreciation of quality. It is sup- 
 ported by an impatience that objects to 
 stopping the machinery, even to oil it 
 or to correct a defect. The infatuation 
 of locomotion, of keeping a-going, dis- 
 tracts attention from the direction of 
 movement. There is a too ready sus- 
 picion that the objector or would-be re- 
 former is suffering from a soured dispo- 
 sition or is nursing a personal "grouch." 
 There is an extreme reluctance to recog-
 
 158 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 nize in the critical insight or in the re- 
 forming temper the quaUties desired in 
 our leaders. " The scold," as has been 
 neatly said, "at his princeliest is but a 
 poor leader ; he rebukes with a trumpet, 
 he leads with a penny whistle." Yet the 
 clarion call, even though it arouse men 
 to thought and not to action, is at times 
 the most indispensable of alarums ; and 
 the cry in the wilderness in time pene- 
 trates to the crowded haunts of men. 
 Doubtless for our greater happiness 
 though not greater security, we shall 
 avoid the Cassandras of either sex ; but 
 the wiser of their generation have given 
 heed, commonly with impatience over- 
 come, to the poietic counsels however 
 ominous, from Jeremiah to Carlyle. 
 
 An essay in the appreciation of quality 
 may indicate the practical incorporation 
 of its principles in a plea for the high 
 valuation of individuality, for a like en- 
 couragement of the social sentiment that 
 makes for independence of opinion, for
 
 INDIVIDUALITY 159 
 
 freedom in its expression. The same at- 
 titude eases the path of worthy reform, 
 is well-disposed to minorities. The fun- 
 damental privileges of free speech and 
 free thought, and the toleration of beliefs 
 and practices wherein men most naturally 
 differ, are secure. But it is not at this 
 level that timely reforms are propagated. 
 The wrongs of society have moved up- 
 ward with the elevation of its secured 
 rights. The atmosphere that surrounds 
 the militant or insurgent individualist is 
 quite inhospitable enough to make him 
 feel unwelcome ; and what is more perti- 
 nent, it is quite sufficiently austere to 
 turn those inclined to his standards away 
 from the narrow rougher paths and into 
 the smoothly paved highways. By this 
 attitude a general intellectual habit of 
 originality and independence is more 
 tolerated than cherished ; and thereby is 
 society the loser by a relative loss of the 
 uncultivated possibilities of the poietic 
 men.
 
 i6o THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 This loss is as difficult to demon- 
 strate as is the saving power of the patron 
 saints of seamen. " Where are the votive 
 ships of those who went down at sea ? " 
 the skeptic asks, when the models of 
 vessels rescued by saintly protection are 
 displayed, suspended from the rafters of 
 the church. " Where are your mute, in- 
 glorious Miltons ? ' ' Assuredly their silence 
 and lack of fame effectively obscure them. 
 None the less I have faith in their exist- 
 ence, at all events in their potentiality. 
 Social encouragement and the favor of 
 appreciation may loosen the vocal chords 
 as well as the heart-strings ; and the 
 glory that comes only after the unrecog- 
 nized singer's voice is hushed, is too 
 common an incident to be without sig- 
 nificance. The theory of the " mute, in- 
 glorious Miltons" is rich in speculative 
 suggestion. Are comparable generations 
 and peoples equally productive of great 
 men ? Do occasions breed them or find 
 them ? Is the power of the social environ-
 
 MUTE INGLORIOUS MILTONS i6i 
 
 ment to cultivate or neglect more potent 
 than that of endowment to provide ? Let 
 the fact stand that the Athenians of Peri- 
 cles supported his rule, and appreciated 
 the dramas of vEschylus and the sculp- 
 tures of Phidias, to prove the glory of 
 that age. The rest is too large a question ; 
 yet the issue is practical ; and as we fol- 
 low the bent of our presumptions, we 
 shall be confident or skeptical of the dis- 
 covery of unrecognized talent/ 
 
 ^ Upon these issues Mr. Benson's comments are 
 interesting and apposite. "Now there are two modes 
 and methods of being great; one is by largeness, the 
 other by intensity. ... A great man may be cast in 
 a big magnanimous mould, without any very special 
 accomplishments or abilities; it may be very difficult 
 to praise any of his faculties very highly, but he is 
 there. ... I do not, then, feel at all sure that we are 
 lacking in great men, though it must be admitted 
 that we are lacking in men whose supremacy is recog- 
 nized. . . . What so many people admire is not 
 greatness but the realisation of greatness and its 
 tangible rewards. The result is that men who show 
 any faculty for impressing the world are exploited 
 and caressed, are played with as a toy and as a toy 
 neglected. . . . The human race is, speaking gener- 
 ally, so anxious for any leading that it can get, that
 
 i62 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 But the practical emphasis bears not 
 upon muteness, — for be it conceded 
 that genius will assert itself even though 
 it cries not lustily, — but upon the spon- 
 taneity of song ; upon the issue that the 
 lesser than Miltons deserve high consid- 
 eration. Reduced from exalted to more 
 ordinary setting, the charge against even 
 a mildly distorted distribution of favor 
 remains : that it brings into prominence a 
 somewhat less worthy, intrinsically less 
 capable order of men ; that it favors the 
 less distinctive or less worthy qualities 
 of its best men. The principle from which 
 issues this criticism may be stated in 
 terms of individual as well as of social 
 endeavor. As such it ofiers an ideal to 
 measures of self-culture and education. 
 
 if a man or woman can persuade themselves that 
 they have a mission to humanity, and maintain a 
 pontifical air, they will generally be able to attract 
 a band of devoted adherents, whose faith, rising 
 superior to both intelligence and common-sense, will 
 endorse almost any claim that the prophet or proph- 
 etess likes to advance."
 
 SECOND-BEST QUALITIES 163 
 
 For it sets forth that the purpose of indi- 
 vidual culture is to discover and develop 
 the best qualities of one's endowment ; 
 as it is the purpose of society to utilize 
 and encourage the aristocracy of capa- 
 city which it commands. Educational 
 measures are but means to facilitate this 
 end. By cooperation society and the in- 
 dividual bring to fruitage the choicest 
 products of their best exemplars. 
 
 The loss that follows upon a feeble ap- 
 preciation of, or a negligent interest in, 
 these influences may be pointedly if 
 crudely put. Such a tendency makes it 
 quite too easy to place second-rate men 
 in first-rate places, and to give the 
 second-best qualities of first-rate men a 
 more favorable field than is provided for 
 their first-best qualities. It may be differ- 
 ently put by saying that in the callings 
 affected, it brings undue success to quali- 
 ties conforming to a "lower-grade rather 
 than to the highest-grade standards pre- 
 scribed, but not always lived up to, for
 
 i64 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 such callings. It may mean — let the ex- 
 amples stand without prejudice — that to 
 join the select rank of the most successful 
 merchants, or brokers, or lawyers, im- 
 plies a selection by dint of a combination 
 of qualities, some of which might well 
 debar their possessor from membership 
 in desirable clubs frequented by their 
 somewhat less successful but more scru- 
 pulously loyal or refined colleagues. In- 
 deed, if the esteem of qualities followed 
 in election to such social privileges were 
 more largely considered in business re- 
 lations, it could hardly fail to afifect fa- 
 vorably the distribution of the more not- 
 able awards. This shifting of esteem 
 naturally affects the callings and men 
 most sensitive to social encouragment, 
 most dependent upon the congeniality 
 of the atmosphere ; by kinship of quality, 
 it affects conduct and ideas alike. Men 
 of high inclination may yield to impor- 
 tunity and engage in morally question- 
 able but not socially disqualifying trans-
 
 INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE 165 
 
 actions. Men of no less high inclination, 
 otherwise directed, may yield to neces- 
 sity or popularity by sacrificing their 
 best to their next-best impulses. And 
 herein lies the saddest if not most dis- 
 astrous consequence of ill-disposed social 
 approbation. It leads to a double mis- 
 fortune, from which the Poietics in Amer- 
 ican society suffer more or less acutely 
 according to their temperament, their 
 station, their fate. The one is the expo- 
 sure to an uncongenial or at least uncer- 
 tain intellectual climate ; the other is that 
 their service is inevitably judged by un- 
 suitable, unsympathetic standards. These 
 standards are derived from the callings 
 richly rewarded by the institutions of the 
 day, and are applied in terms of the qual- 
 ities demanded for the lucrative careers. 
 And thus does the contrast of station per- 
 vert the comparison of quality to the dis- 
 paragement of the one and the glorifica- 
 tion of the other. 
 
 Concrete statement is again desirable,
 
 i66 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 but inevitably touches upon debatable 
 ground. But since I have maintained 
 that the disposition of appreciation in 
 the academic life is peculiarly significant, 
 I must not shrink from at least stating 
 the dangers incurred. They all threaten 
 to dull the edge of high-grade qualities, 
 and may be thus summarized : that the 
 obstacles in the academic career make it 
 needlessly uncertain that the fittest serv- 
 ice will find fittest station or suitable 
 provision ; that second-best qualities lead 
 to preferment more rapidly and more 
 regularly than first-best ones ; that the 
 environment in which academic men 
 are required to labor is not as stimulat- 
 ing as it might well be ; that their activi- 
 ties are too much beset with uncongenial 
 routine, too interferingly hampered by 
 unappreciative control. Here or there 
 the charges may or may not hold. Some- 
 where the shoe fits. Everywhere im- 
 provement must seek the illumination of 
 guiding principles.
 
 ACADEMIC EVILS 167 
 
 The remedy more sharply defines the 
 indisposition. It is first directed to the 
 most disturbing symptoms, and suggests 
 as urgent the larger participation in the 
 making of their own environment, on 
 the part of those who live in it and by 
 it. It suggests yet more emphatically 
 the reduction to a minimum of adminis- 
 trative control unrelated to academic ef- 
 ficiency. It suggests most emphatically 
 greater reserve in the exercise of that 
 pressure from the outside, whether of the 
 official guardianship of public interests 
 or of public sentiment more popularly 
 voiced, that compresses and represses 
 the vital tissues of the academic organism 
 to a stunted and misshapen growth. The 
 situation is convincing because it shows 
 so clearly how seemingly unlike imped- 
 iments are of a nature all compact ; for 
 the uncertainties of academic fortune, 
 the abuses of preferment, the languor of 
 the enviroment, the dominance of exter- 
 nal standards and control, the dictatorial
 
 i68 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 assertiveness of popular demands, are 
 alike direct issues of the faulty per- 
 spective of appreciation. The ill-adjusted 
 camera is responsible for all the faults of 
 the distorted picture. 
 
 And so once more and finally, the reply 
 is available to those who ask, not to 
 challenge but to relieve : What can you 
 do about it? Rest a larger directive 
 authority in the hands of poietic men, 
 particularly in callings that require 
 special qualities of appreciation. The 
 "safe" man may be safer; the larger 
 prizes involve the larger risks. The 
 larger wisdom determines when and how 
 they shall be taken. Make more gener- 
 ous allowances for the differences of 
 standards that vocations of distinctive 
 temper and service require and develop ; 
 again especially, do not apply commer- 
 cial standards to non-commercial pur- 
 suits. Business may be business ; but 
 there are other interests that are not. 
 Deliver gifted men from the temptation
 
 UNSUITABLE STANDARDS 169 
 
 to use their gifts cheaply. The value of 
 their talents depends appreciably upon 
 the market which your appreciation cre- 
 ates. Avoid the penny-wise and pound- 
 foolish expediency of permitting the 
 immediate and often shallow demands of 
 the following to shape the policy of the 
 leaders. Be patient with genius, respect- 
 ful to dissent, responsive to reform, atten- 
 tive to criticism, grateful to leadership, 
 considerate of principle, appreciative of 
 quality. 
 
 The conservation of our intellectual 
 resources must proceed upon the appre- 
 ciation of their worth. Nothing is more 
 unjust and unwise than the appraisal of 
 the products of human quality by unsuit- 
 able standards. The all-embracing desid- 
 eratum remains, and becomes the simple 
 but commanding requirement. It is alike 
 the lowliest and the highest wisdom, and 
 is akin to the specialization approved by 
 nature, which secures for each cherished 
 growth the conditions best suited to its
 
 I70 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 nurture. If in difficult positions of honor 
 and trust we want wise and conscientious 
 men, we must see to it that these quaUties 
 have free play and ready reward in the 
 manifold and minor relations of life. If 
 in business competition we want only 
 men of energy, shrewdness and thrift, 
 combined with the ever commendable 
 judgment, and care little for the re- 
 straints of fair dealing, humane treat- 
 ment, economic policy, or honest repre- 
 sentation, we shall develop as successful 
 captains of industry the men who in he- 
 roic stature are energetic, shrewd, and 
 thrifty, as well as more or less relentless, 
 tyrannical, self-seeking, and unprincipled. 
 If we have a concern for courtesy, good 
 manners, refinement, we shall accord 
 these graces some part in the esteem 
 that leads to preferment. If we want 
 high-grade artists or musicians, crafts- 
 men or designers, statesmen or adminis- 
 trators, scientists or engineers, spiritual 
 leaders or educational experts, we must
 
 UNSUITABLE STANDARDS 171 
 
 be willing to supply the conditions needed 
 to stimulate and perfect these several 
 pursuits. If above all we cherish the ele- 
 vation of interest and delicacy of appli- 
 cation that culture confers as its distinc- 
 tive quality, we must give first place to 
 the intangible and subtle, but no less 
 real and practical provisions indispen- 
 sable to the choicer consummation. 
 
 Qualities cost, and should willingly be 
 paid for. To the practical vision it is 
 sufficiently evident to what extent one 
 virtue is obtained at the expense of an- 
 other. The situation involves the homely 
 lesson that we must not ask to eat our 
 cake and have it too, nor complain that 
 one kind of sweet has not all the plums 
 and flavors of another, nor that bread 
 for the common pilgrim is the more sat- 
 isfactory stafi of life. Yet there is more 
 involved ; for it is not so simple a task to 
 distinguish between necessities and lux- 
 uries and to value each correctly. Lux- 
 uries in one situation become necessities
 
 172 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 in another. Liberal generosity may be 
 the truest economy. It is not even good 
 poHcy to bully or sneer at such question- 
 able " poor relations " of these influential 
 social forces, as indulgences, hobbies, 
 caprices, or affectations. A congenial in- 
 dulgence of the environment is a redeem- 
 ing fault. Yet at bottom the difficulty of 
 valuation lies largely in the partial but 
 real conflict between the values set by 
 one group of methods and purposes and 
 another, in the common life that envelops 
 both. At bottom the practical interfer- 
 ences with progress and the dangers of 
 disaster are due to simple homely traits : 
 to the lack of finer feeling that tolerates 
 lower standards, overrates cheap success, 
 toadies to the gallery, and gains glory 
 for the inglorious. The glare of a popu- 
 lar success is so regrettably apt to distort 
 the perspective of values. The critical 
 judgment and the loyalty to standards 
 must ever be the defenses of society for 
 the saner adjustment of social rewards.
 
 BUSINESS AND EDUCATION 173 
 
 The insensibility to this situation is as 
 baffling as stupidity, and by assumption 
 of authority ten times as disastrous. If 
 hard work, long hours, attention to de- 
 tail, reduction of wants, calm unconcern 
 for remote consequences, stern discipline 
 of dependents, bring desired results in 
 one business, why should they not in 
 another ? Education is unfitting for busi- 
 ness, says the self-made man with marked 
 deference to his maker, quite oblivious 
 that this may be a reflection on the char- 
 acter of an occupation for which educa- 
 tion is a handicap, quite as well as upon 
 the futility of the educative process at- 
 tempted. Even a university, we have re- 
 cently been informed, is to be judged as 
 a plant for turning out at the least cost 
 and waste a definite article of public de- 
 mand ; and the message has been enforced 
 in the same spirit that would judge the 
 merit of artists, not by the inspiration and 
 skill of their canvases, but by their inge- 
 nuity in getting their effects with least ex-
 
 174 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 penditure of materials, or by their repu- 
 tation in keeping their contracts. It is not 
 very clear what reply the business man 
 would make to Mr. Howells, who in 
 speaking of the poet says : " From a busi- 
 ness point of view, he is also an artist ; and 
 the very qualities that enable him to 
 delight the public disable him from de- 
 lighting it uninterruptedly." But that is 
 precisely the wise business point of view 
 even as applied to so uncommercial a 
 product as poetry. If honesty is the best 
 policy in business, the business man, 
 whether influenced by or insensitive to 
 other motives, endorses it for that reason 
 at all events. If an eight-hour day brings 
 greater efficiency in the long run than 
 a ten-hour day, the business policy of 
 the shorter day will carry. There is a fur- 
 ther business aspect of the same prin- 
 ciple ; it is that every worker works best 
 under the conditions best adjusted to his 
 pursuit. This is not a truism, or it would 
 not be so commonly disregarded. It has a
 
 THE TOP RANGE 175 
 
 profound psychological import. It means 
 that every worker and above all the 
 worker of higher quality — who may al- 
 ways be called an artist — must work 
 with something of that spontaneity and 
 loss of the sense of a crowding purpose, 
 that characterizes play. It is the infusion 
 of the play-interest that removes the 
 curse of labor. It does so by an appeal 
 to the freer play of unchained interests. 
 The higher callings, it has been set forth, 
 live more and more upon the upper 
 ranges of human quality ; for like reason, 
 every man working upon his top range 
 is potentially a man of mark. To further 
 the stimulation that lifts endeavor to 
 within sighting distance of the next 
 higher achievment is the policy of wis- 
 dom, solvent in its own right, but ready 
 to accept the endorsement of business if 
 its credit is thereby assured. In reflective 
 moments as in self-forgetful ones, the 
 business man becomes aware that he is 
 playing a game, not doing chores. There
 
 176 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 is nothing sordid about money-making 
 except the sordidness with which much of 
 it is made. It doubtless has readier affin- 
 ity with low qualities, but has so large a 
 clientele that it takes on the manner of 
 all sorts and conditions of men. The 
 "inspired millionaire" is proposed by 
 Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee as the prototype 
 of the true servitor of civilization. The 
 game of money-making takes on the 
 quality of the players. The advice prof- 
 fered by the plea in behalf of apprecia- 
 tion is to play with insight and an out- 
 look. The presence of the stakes adds 
 zest to the sport ; but it may be played 
 with very different stakes or without 
 them. It is the small man who plays for 
 points alone. Raise the underlying prin- 
 ciple of this theorem to a higher power, 
 complicate it with the larger values for 
 quality and the smaller for quantity ; and 
 the principle gains in force. At whatever 
 cost, every calling, if worth its pursuit, 
 is worth providing for. The specialization
 
 THE POLITICAL TEMPER 177 
 
 and complexity of these provisions are 
 inherent in our complexly specialized 
 lives. The wisest policy will furnish them, 
 and proceed first and sympathetically to 
 find out what they are. The unwisest 
 policy is to impose upon one order of 
 occupation the utterly unfit standards of 
 another. Any measure of domineering 
 control of the intellectual interests by 
 business standards is a serious peril. In 
 the actual situation it is far from being 
 an imaginary one. 
 
 Every reasonable man will admit that 
 the adjustment to their mutual support 
 of the divergent standards growing out 
 of the several orders of human vocation 
 is among the legitimate arts of compro- 
 mise. And here, once more, the temper 
 in which it is carried out, becomes deci- 
 sive. The service, in many situations, of 
 the political temper and its disservice 
 in usurping powers in domains subject 
 to the dominion of principles, I have 
 relied upon Lord Morley's essay to make
 
 178 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 clear. The temperamental phases of the 
 two divergent tendencies are in a prac- 
 tical discussion the most important. In 
 general, and irrespective almost of spe- 
 cial issue and circumstance, there is dis- 
 tinguishable a general bias towards a 
 hand-to-mouth, temporizing, political 
 mode of handling questions, impatient 
 of delay, elated with bustle, indifferent 
 to finer issues, not over-sensitive to moral 
 restraint and logical caution ; and op- 
 posed thereto, a loyalty to reasoned 
 purpose, to sensitive conviction, to the 
 commanding imperative of right and 
 wise ideals. The contrast weakens in less 
 pronounced personalities, with elements 
 of both allegiances. Either may combine 
 with a temperamental quality, near of 
 kin : that of the analytic temper, the issue 
 of schooling and logical bent ; or of the 
 impressionistic temper, that finds its 
 compass in impulse and insight. As met 
 with in the walks of life, these tempera- 
 mental divergences illustrate how incom-
 
 DIVERGENT TENDENCIES 179 
 
 patibilities may yet associate by sympa- 
 thy of purpose. In considering the uncer- 
 tainty of relation between inclination and 
 achievement, a contemporary observer 
 announces that some men have morals 
 and others principles. The simpler situa- 
 tions of life doubtless yield a prompter 
 and a truer solution in the rectitude of 
 the habits, — the issues of sensibility, — 
 of " happy instructive choice and whole- 
 some sentiment," as Professor Royce calls 
 them. The complexities of intellectual 
 interests and social institutions compel 
 reasoned analysis, notably on the part of 
 those who would lead or influence. The 
 consoling consideration is that the affilia- 
 tion of purpose, like the underlying sen- 
 sibilities, is capable to join morals and 
 principles in a mutual efficiency. The 
 large-minded politician and the large- 
 minded philosopher will understand one 
 another and find common arts of compro- 
 mise, despite difTerences of opinion, far 
 more readily and worthily than represent-
 
 i8o THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 atives of these interests with narrow out- 
 look and more convergent views. On the 
 larger ground of appreciation, those ex- 
 pert in determining the social encourage- 
 ments most stimulating to the higher 
 ranges of human quality, and those in- 
 fluential in promoting measures to se- 
 cure them, may meet in sympathy of 
 purpose, with the promise of the largest 
 service to their common loyalty. 
 
 I began this essay by suggesting the 
 difficulties as well as the grounds of a 
 personal optimism. I conclude it by add- 
 ing the assurances thereof. It has been 
 duly set forth that the qualities of men are 
 intimately conditioned by the organically 
 ordained institutions of human nature ; 
 that these must be relied upon to furnish 
 the motive force and the skill for all en- 
 deavors set by ideals of human desire. 
 Viewed as a limitation, it would appear 
 that human nature cannot change ; it 
 has usually been so construed and mis-
 
 ASSURANCES OF OPTIMISM i8i 
 
 construed. Viewed as a fundamental re- 
 source, the expansion of qualities nat- 
 ural to men furnishes the commanding 
 basis of faith in the progressive future 
 of humanity. It is not so much that hu- 
 man nature is the one condition that we 
 cannot change — which is true with the 
 truth of the part ; but that the change- 
 ability of human nature is all that we 
 have to work upon — which is the rest 
 of the truth. Both for the guidance of 
 practice and the support of optimism 
 the advantage is with the latter. I cited 
 Mr. Kipling on his side of the Atlantic, 
 as one skeptical of the ability of even a 
 high-grade personality to grow beyond 
 the limits of its inheritance. Let me cite 
 Professor James on our side, for an op- 
 posite conviction. " Though it is no 
 small thing to inoculate seventy millions 
 of people with new standards, yet, if there 
 is to be any relief, that will have to be 
 done. We must change ourselves from 
 a race that admires jerk and snap for
 
 i82 THE QUALITIES OF MEN 
 
 their own sakes, and looks down upon 
 low voices and quiet ways as dull, to one 
 that, on the contrary, has calm for its 
 ideal, and for their own sakes loves har- 
 mony, dignity, and ease." As we are 
 impressed by the limitations of nature, 
 or by the possibilities of nurture under the 
 guidance of ideals, we shall place our al- 
 legiances and shape our endeavors. The 
 variability of human nature by gift of 
 endowment and by stress of circumstance 
 as well as by the stimulus of ideals, re- 
 mains the consistent prop to optimism. 
 With wholly altered and more grateful 
 application, we may repeat Goneril's ex- 
 clamation : " O, the difference of man 
 and man ! " 
 
 Large subjects, like small countries, 
 have an advantage for the observant 
 tourist. He obtains a variety of aspects 
 of both nature and man, and retains the 
 sense of homogeneity that makes for a 
 singleness of impression. By successive 
 excursions to outlying boundaries, he
 
 CONCLUSION 183 
 
 appreciates without undue effort the traits 
 that make all mankind kin, and the va- 
 rieties of nature that make possible alike 
 misunderstanding and the progress to- 
 wards better things. He sees much or 
 little, the vital things or the superficial, 
 according to the depth and range of his 
 vision. If of large mind and wholesome 
 sympathies, his survey not only brings 
 home the time-tested dictum of the Ro- 
 man dramatist, that in the country of the 
 humanities no true man is a foreigner, but 
 supplements it with the increasing con- 
 viction that it is the deeper appreciation 
 of human quality and its vicissitudes 
 that makes the best of human achieve- 
 ments humane.
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A
 
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 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 503 609 o 
 
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