eedom now, is that tyranny
now is crowding around the Rock, and climbing up on the Rock,
eighty-seven million strong, and that tyranny then was a half-idiot king
three thousand miles away.

* * * * *

We know or think we know, some of us--at least we have taken a certain
joy in working it out in our minds, and live with it every day--how
people in crowds are going to be beautiful by and by.

The difficulty of being beautiful now, I have tried to express. It seems
better to express, if possible, what a difficulty is before trying to
meet it.

And now we would like to try to meet it. How can we determine what is
the most practical and natural way for crowds of people to try to be
beautiful now?

It would seem to be a matter of crowd psychology, of crowd technique,
and of determining how human nature works.

All thoughtful people are agreed as to the aim.

Everything turns on the method.

In the following chapters we will try to consider the technique of being
beautiful in crowds.

BOOK FOUR

CROWDS AND HEROES

TO WALT WHITMAN

_"And I saw the free souls of poets,
The loftiest bards of all ages strode before me
Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me
... O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not!
... I will not be outfaced by irrational things,
I will penetrate what is sarcastic upon me,
I will make cities and civilizations defer to me
This is what I have learnt from America--

I will confront these shows of the day and night
I will know if I am to be less than they,
I will see if I am not as majestic as they,
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,
I will see if I have no meaning while the houses and
ships have meaning,

... I am for those that have never been mastered,
For men and women whose tempers have never been mastered,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions can never master.

I am for those who walk abreast of the whole earth
Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all."_

CHAPTER I

THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO

I was spending a little time not long ago with a man of singularly
devoted and noble spirit who had dedicated his life and his fortune to
the Socialist movement. We had had several talks before, and always with
a little flurry at first of hopefulness toward one another's ideas. We
both felt that the other, for a mere Soci