d even then turns out unsatisfactory in
many ways. He is apt to be that well-known and inconvenient sort of
person who, when he comes in out of the rain to dress for his wedding,
abstractedly prepares to retire instead, and then, still more
abstractedly, puts his umbrella to bed and stands himself in the
corner. All the same, it is no less divine to create a master by slow,
laborious methods than to snatch a masterpiece apparently out of
nothing-at-all. In the eye of the evolutionist, man is not of any the
less value because he was made by painful degrees instead of having
been produced, a perfect gentleman, out of the void somewhat as the
magician brings forth from the empty saucepan an omelette, containing
a live pigeon with the loaned wedding-ring in its beak.

The master-makers have long been expending their share of the power.
It is high time they were enjoying their share of the glory. What an
unconscionable leveling up and down there will presently be when it
dawns upon humanity what a large though inglorious share it has been
having in the spiritually creative work of the world! In that day the
seats of the mighty individualists of science, industry, politics, and
discovery; of religion and its ancient foe ecclesiasticism; of
economy, the arts and philosophy, will all be taken down a peg by the
same knowledge that shall exalt "them of low degree."

I can imagine how angrily ruffled the sallow shade of Arthur
Schopenhauer will become at the dawn of this spiritual Commune. When
the first full notes of the soul's "Marseillaise" burst upon his
irritable eardrums, I can hear above them his savage snarl. I can see
his malignant expression as he is forced to divide his unearned
increment of fame with some of those _Mitmenschen_ whom he, like a bad
Samaritan, loved to lash with his tongue before pouring in oil of
vitriol and the sour wine of sadness. And how like red-ragged
turkey-cocks Lord Byron and Nietzsche and Napoleon will puff out when
required to stand and deliver some of their precious credit!

There will be compensations, though, to the genius who, safely dead,
feels himself suddenly despoiled of a fullness of fame which he had
counted on enjoying in _saecula saeculorum_. When he comes to balance
things up, perhaps he will not, after all, find the net loss so
serious. Though he lose some credit for his successes, he will also
lose some discredit for his failures. Humanity will recognize that
while the good