ts full sense government by, of, and for the
people--represents the most gigantic of all possible social
experiments, the one fraught with greatest possibilities alike for
good and for evil. The success of republics like yours and like ours
means the glory, and our failure the despair, of mankind; and for you
and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is
supreme. Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or
of a very few men, the quality of the rulers is all-important. If,
under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then
the nation may for generations lead a brilliant career, and add
substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the
quality of the average citizen; because the average citizen is an
almost negligible quantity in working out the final results of that
type of national greatness.

But with you and with us the case is different. With you here, and
with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be
conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman,
does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of
life, and next in those great occasional crises which call for the
heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our
republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher
than the main source; and the main source of national power and
national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation.
Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of
the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high
unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.

It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in
any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes
represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those
classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of
devotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received special
advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental
training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance
for the enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of
your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you
much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which
it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated
intellect, and men of inherited w