owing, they
will have made the task of their successors easier. Higher technical
standards and more adequate forms of expression will have become better
established. The "public" will have learned to expect and to appreciate
more simple and appropriate architectural forms, more sincere and
better-formed translations of life in books and on the stage, and more
independent and better equipped political leadership. The "public," that
is, instead of being as much satisfied as it is at present with cheap
forms and standards, will be prepared to assume part of the expense of
establishing better forms and methods of social intercourse. In this way
a future generation of leaders may be enabled to conquer a following
with a smaller individual expenditure of painful sacrifices and wasted
effort. They can take for granted a generally higher technical and
formal tradition, and they themselves will be freed from an
over-conscious preoccupation with the methods and the mechanism of their
work. Their attention will naturally be more than ever concentrated on
the proper discrimination of their subject-matter; and just in so far as
they are competent to create an impression or a following, that
impression should be more profound and the following more loyal and more
worthy of loyalty.

Above all, a substantial improvement in the purposes and standards of
individual self-expression should create a more bracing intellectual
atmosphere. Better standards will serve not only as guides but as
weapons. In so far as they are embodied in competent performances, they
are bound also to be applied in the critical condemnation of inferior
work; and the critic himself will assume a much more important practical
job than he now has. Criticism is a comparatively neglected art among
Americans, because a sufficient number of people do not care whether and
when the current practices are really good or bad. The practice of
better standards and their appreciation will give the critic both a more
substantial material for his work and a larger public. It will be his
duty to make the American public conscious of the extent of the
individual successes or failures and the reasons therefor; and in case
his practice improves with that of the other arts, he should become a
more important performer, not only because of his better opportunities
and public, but because of his increase of individual prowess. He should
not only be better equipped for the performance of