s shine with
beauty. Our better men _shall_ show the way and we _shall_ follow
them; so we are brought round again to the mission of the higher
education in helping us to know the better kind of man whenever we see
him.

The notion that a people can run itself and its affairs anonymously is
now well known to be the silliest of absurdities. Mankind does nothing
save through initiatives on the part of inventors, great or small, and
imitation by the rest of us--these are the sole factors active in human
progress. Individuals of genius show the way, and set the patterns,
which common people then adopt and follow. _The rivalry of the
patterns is the history of the world_. Our democratic problem thus is
statable in ultra-simple terms: Who are the kind of men from whom our
majorities shall take their cue? Whom shall they treat as rightful
leaders? We and our leaders are the _x_ and the _y_ of the equation
here; all other historic circumstances, be they economical, political,
or intellectual, are only the background of occasion on which the
living drama works itself out between us.

In this very simple way does the value of our educated class define
itself: we more than others should be able to divine the worthier and
better leaders. The terms here are monstrously simplified, of course,
but such a bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our bearings. In
our democracy, where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and
alumnae of the colleges are the only permanent presence that
corresponds to the aristocracy in older countries. We have continuous
traditions, as they have; our motto, too, is _noblesse oblige_; and,
unlike them, we stand for ideal interests solely, for we have no
corporate selfishness and wield no powers of corruption. We ought to
have our own class-consciousness. "_Les Intellectuels!_" What prouder
club-name could there be than this one, used ironically by the party of
"redblood," the party of every stupid prejudice and passion, during the
anti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the men in France who still retained
some critical sense and judgment! Critical sense, it has to be
confessed, is not an exciting term, hardly a banner to carry in
processions. Affections for old habit, currents of self-interest, and
gales of passion are the forces that keep the human ship moving; and
the pressure of the judicious pilot's hand upon the tiller is a
relatively insignificant energy. But the affections, passions,