hem; the simplicity of peasants and
lowly communities is not merely unlettered. One does not need to deal
with one small town; it is everywhere. The ways of the crowds are small
ways. We wrong ourselves and bring imperfection to our tasks when we
forget that. We love the Indian crossing the stream in the great and
gracious night--but God pity the Indian's dog. We must look close at
life, and not lie to ourselves, because our ways are cushioning a
little.

All idealism that turns back must suffer the fate of mere sentiments. We
must know the stuff the crowds are made of, if we have a hand in
bringing in the order and beauty. You have heard men exclaim:

"How noble are the simple-minded--how sweet the people of the
Countryside--how inevitable and unerring is the voice of the people!" As
a matter of truth, unless directed by some strong man's vision, the
voice of the people has never yet given utterance to constructive truth;
and the same may be said of those who cater to the public taste in
politics or the so-called arts. The man who undertakes to give the
people what the people want is not an artist or a true leader of any
dimension. He is a tradesman and finds his place in his generation.

The rising workman in any art or craft learns by suffering that all good
is ahead and not elsewhere; that he must dare to be himself even if
forced to go hungry for that honour; that he must not lose his love for
men, though he must lose his illusions. Sooner or later, when he is
ready, one brilliant little fact rises in his consciousness--one that
comes to stay, and around which all future thinking must build itself.
It is this:

When one lifts the mask from any crowd, commonness is disclosed in
every change and movement of personality. At the same time, the crowds
of common people are the soil of the future, a splendid mass
potentially, the womb of every heroism and masterpiece to be.

All great things must come from the people, because great leaders of the
people turn their passionate impregnation of idealism upon them. First
the dreamer dreams--and then the people make it action....

What we see that hurts us so as workmen is but the unfinished picture,
the back of the tapestry.

To be worth his spiritual salt, the artist, any artist, must turn every
force of his conceiving into that great restless Abstraction, the many;
he must plunge whole-heartedly in the doing, but cut himself loose from
the thing done; at least, he mu