f dullness and the
ponderous patronage of self-complacent folly.

Conventional judgment as to Mary Anderson's acting expressed itself in
one statement--"she is cold." There could not be a greater error. That
quality in Mary Anderson's acting--a reflex from her spiritual
nature--which produced upon the conventional mind the effect of coldness
was in fact distinction, the attribute of being exceptional. The
judgment that she was cold was a resentful judgment, and was given in a
spirit of detraction. It proceeded from an order of mind that can never
be content with the existence of anything above its own level. "He
hath," said Iago, speaking of Cassio, "a daily beauty in his life that
makes me ugly." Those detractors did not understand themselves as well
as the wily Italian understood himself, and they did not state their
attitude with such precision; in fact, they did not state it at all, for
it was unconscious with them and involuntary. They saw a being unlike
themselves, they vaguely apprehended the presence of a superior nature,
and that they resented. The favourite popular notion is that all men are
born free and equal; which is false. Free and equal they all are,
undoubtedly, in the eye of the law. But every man is born subject to
heredity and circumstance, and whoever will investigate his life will
perceive that he never has been able to stray beyond the compelling and
constraining force of his character--which is his fate. All men,
moreover, are unequal. To one human being is given genius; to another,
beauty; to another, strength; to another, exceptional judgment; to
another, exceptional memory; to another, grace and charm; to still
another, physical ugliness and spiritual obliquity, moral taint, and
every sort of disabling weakness. To the majority of persons Nature
imparts mediocrity, and it is from mediocrity that the derogatory denial
emanates as to the superior men and women of our race. A woman of the
average kind is not difficult to comprehend. There is nothing
distinctive about her. She is fond of admiration; rather readily
censorious of other women; charitable toward male rakes; and partial to
fine attire. The poet Wordsworth's formula, "Praise, blame, love,
kisses, tears, and smiles," comprises all that is essential for her
existence, and that bard has himself precisely described her, in a
grandfatherly and excruciating couplet, as

"A creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily fo