somewhat boisterous braggardism, of
incessant pushing, and, on the other hand, of conformity, caution and
subservience. He is forever talking of his rights as if he stood ready
to defend them with his last drop of blood, and forever yielding them up
at the first demand. Under both the pretension and the fact is the
common motive of fear--in brief, the common motive of the insecure and
uncertain man, the _average_ man, at all times and everywhere, but
especially the motive of the average man in a social system so crude and
unstable as ours.

"More than any other people," said Wendell Phillips one blue day, "we
Americans are afraid of one another." The saying seems harsh. It goes
counter to the national delusion of uncompromising courage and limitless
truculence. It wars upon the national vanity. But all the same there is
truth in it. Here, more than anywhere else on earth, the status of an
individual is determined by the general consent of the general body of
his fellows; here, as we have seen, there are no artificial barriers to
protect him against their disapproval, or even against their envy. And
here, more than anywhere else, the general consent of that general body
of men is coloured by the ideas and prejudices of the inferior majority;
here, there is the nearest approach to genuine democracy, the most
direct and accurate response to mob emotions. Facing that infinitely
powerful but inevitably ignorant and cruel corpus of opinion, the
individual must needs adopt caution and fall into timorousness. The
desire within him may be bold and forthright, but its satisfaction
demands discretion, prudence, a politic and ingratiating habit. The
walls are not to be stormed; they must be wooed to a sort of Jerichoan
fall. Success thus takes the form of a series of waves of protective
colouration; failure is a succession of unmaskings. The aspirant must
first learn to imitate exactly the aspect and behaviour of the group he
seeks to penetrate. There follows notice. There follows toleration.
There follows acceptance.

Thus the hog-murderer's wife picks her way into the society of Chicago,
the proud aristocracy of the abbatoir. And thus, no less, the former
whiskey drummer insinuates himself into the Elks, and the rising
retailer wins the _imprimatur_ of wholesalers, and the rich peasant
becomes a planter and the father of doctors of philosophy, and the
servant girl enters the movies and acquires the status of a princess of
the