en unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right: "The most dangerous
enemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact majorities,
the damned compact majority." Without ambition or initiative, the
compact mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It has always
opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new
truth.

The oft repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the
Socialists included, that ours is an era of individualism, of the
minority. Only those who do not probe beneath the surface might be
led to entertain this view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth
of the world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of the
situation? Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but
to the inertia, the cravenness, the utter submission of the mass.
The latter wants but to be dominated, to be led, to be coerced. As
to individualism, at no time in human history did it have less chance
of expression, less opportunity to assert itself in a normal, healthy
manner.

The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or
writer of original ideas, the independent scientist or explorer, the
non-compromising pioneers of social changes are daily pushed to the
wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become decrepit
with age.

Educators of Ferrer's type are nowhere tolerated, while the
dietitians of predigested food, a la Professors Eliot and Butler, are
the successful perpetuators of an age of nonentities, of automatons.
In the literary and dramatic world, the Humphrey Wards and Clyde
Fitches are the idols of the mass, while but few know or appreciate
the beauty and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman; an Ibsen, a
Hauptmann, a Butler Yeats, or a Stephen Phillips. They are like
solitary stars, far beyond the horizon of the multitude.

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality
inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it
suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping
ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a
result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the
chief literary output.

Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts?
One has but to inspect our parks and thoroughfares to realize the
hideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacture. Certainly, none
but a majority taste would tolerate such an outra