pted ideal. Americans have no popularly accepted ideals which are
anything but an embarrassment to the aspiring individual. In the course
of time some such ideals may be domesticated--in which case the
conditions of individual excellence would be changed; but we are dealing
with the present and not with the future. Under current conditions the
only authentic standard must be based, not upon the social influence of
the work, but upon its quality; and a standard of this kind, while it
falls short of being complete, must always persist as one indispensable
condition of final excellence. The whole body of acquired technical
experience and practice has precisely the same authority as any other
body of knowledge. The respect it demands is similar to the respect
demanded by science in all its forms. In this particular case the
science is neither complete nor entirely trustworthy, but it is
sufficiently complete and trustworthy for the individual's purpose, and
can be ignored only at the price of waste, misunderstanding, and partial
inefficiency and sterility.

A standard of uncompromising technical excellence contains, however, for
the purpose of this argument, a larger meaning than that which is
usually attached to the phrase. A technically competent performance is
ordinarily supposed to mean one which displays a high degree of manual
dexterity; and a man who has acquired such a degree of dexterity is also
supposed to be the victim of his own mastery. No doubt such is
frequently the case; but in the present meaning the thoroughly competent
individual workman becomes necessarily very much more of an individual
than any man can be who is merely the creature of his own technical
facility and preoccupation. I have used the word art not in the sense
merely of fine art, but in the sense of all liberal and disinterested
practical work; and the excellent performance of that work demands
certain qualifications which are common to all the arts as well as
peculiar to the methods and materials of certain particular arts and
crafts. These qualifications are both moral and intellectual. They
require that no one shall be admitted to the ranks of thoroughly
competent performers until he is morally and intellectually, as well as
scientifically and manually, equipped for excellent work, and these
appropriate moral and intellectual standards should be applied as
incorruptibly as those born of specific technical practices.

A craftsman whose me