ndence
which he needs for his own individual fulfillment, unless he builds up a
following; and he cannot build up a secure personal following without
making his peculiar performances appeal to some general human interest.
The larger and more general the interest he can arouse, the more secure
and the more remunerative his personal independence becomes. It by no
means necessarily follows that he will increase his following by
increasing the excellence of his work, or that he will not frequently
find it difficult to keep his following without allowing his work to
deteriorate. No formula, reconciling the individual and the popular
interest, can be devised which will work automatically. The
reconciliation must always remain a matter of victorious individual or
national contrivance. But it is none the less true that the chance of
fruitful reconciliation always exists, and in a democracy it should
exist under peculiarly wholesome conditions. The essential nature of a
democracy compels it to insist that individual power of all kinds,
political, economic, or intellectual, shall not be perversely and
irresponsibly exercised. The individual democrat is obliged no less to
insist in his own interest that the responsible exercise of power shall
not be considered equivalent to individual mediocrity and dependence.
These two demands will often conflict; but the vitality of a democracy
hangs upon its ability to keep both of them vigorous and assertive. Just
in so far as individual democrats find ways of asserting their
independence in the very act of redeeming their responsibility, the
social body of which they form a part is marching toward the goal of
human betterment.

It cannot be claimed, however, that the foregoing account of the
relation between the individual and a nationalized democracy is even yet
entirely satisfactory. No relation can be satisfactory which implies
such a vast amount of individual suffering and defeat and such a huge
waste of social and individual effort. The relation is only as
satisfactory as it can be made under the circumstances. The individual
cannot be immediately transformed by individual purpose and action into
a consummate social type, any more than society can be immediately
transformed by purposive national action into a consummate residence for
the individual. In both cases amelioration is a matter of intelligent
experimental contrivance based upon the nature of immediate conditions
and equipped