ive indifference to consequences.

Yet if the American national Promise is ever to be fulfilled, a more
congenial and a more interesting task will also await the
critic--meaning by the word "critic" the voice of the specific
intellectual interest, the lover of wisdom, the seeker of the truth.
Every important human enterprise has its meaning, even though the
conduct of the affair demands more than anything else a hard and
inextinguishable faith. Such a faith will imply a creed; and its
realizations will go astray unless the faithful are made conscious of
the meaning of their performances or failures. The most essential and
edifying business of the critic will always consist in building up "a
pile of better thoughts," based for the most part upon the truth
resident in the lives of their predecessors and contemporaries, but not
without its outlook toward an immediate and even remote future. There
can be nothing final about the creed unless there be something final
about the action and purposes of which it is the expression. It must be
constantly modified in order to define new experiences and renewed in
order to meet unforeseen emergencies. But it should grow, just in so far
as the enterprise itself makes new conquests and unfolds new aspects of
truth. Democracy is an enterprise of this kind. It may prove to be the
most important moral and social enterprise as yet undertaken by mankind;
but it is still a very young enterprise, whose meaning and promise is by
no means clearly understood. It is continually meeting unforeseen
emergencies and gathering an increasing experience. The fundamental duty
of a critic in a democracy is to see that the results of these
experiences are not misinterpreted and that the best interpretation is
embodied in popular doctrinal form. The critic consequently is not so
much the guide as the lantern which illuminates the path. He may not
pretend to know the only way or all the ways; but he should know as much
as can be known about the traveled road.

Men endowed with high moral gifts and capable of exceptional moral
achievements have also their special part to play in the building of an
enduring democratic structure. In the account which has been given of
the means and conditions of democratic fulfillment, the importance of
this part has been under-estimated; but the under-estimate has been
deliberate. It is very easy and in a sense perfectly true to declare
that democracy needs for its fulfillmen