is elected to vote not in the light of his
own mind, but in obedience to the dictates of those who send him; the
newspaper circulates not because it is filled with words of truth and
wisdom, but because it panders to the pruriency and prejudice of its
patrons; and a book is popular in inverse ratio to its individuality and
worth. Our National Library is filled with books which have copyright,
but no other right, human or divine, to exist at all; and when one of us
does succeed in asserting his personality, he usually only makes himself
odd and ridiculous. He rushes into polygamous Mormonism, or buffoon
revivalism, or shallow-minded atheism; nay, he will even become an
anarchist, because a few men have too much money and too little soul.
What we need is neither the absence of individuality nor a morbid
individuality, but high and strong personalities.

If our country is to be great and forever memorable, something quite
other than wealth and numbers will make it so. Were there but question
of countless millions of dollars and people, then indeed the victory
would already have been gained. If we are to serve the highest interests
of mankind, and to mark an advance in human history, we must do more
than establish universal suffrage, and teach every child to read and
write. As true criticism deals only with men of genius or of the best
talent, and takes no serious notice of mechanical writers and
book-makers, so true history loses sight of nations whose only
distinction lies in their riches and populousness.

The noblest and most gifted men and women are alone supremely
interesting and abidingly memorable. We have already reached a point
where we perceive the unreality of the importance which the chronicles
have sought to give to mere kings and captains. If the king was a hero,
we love him; but if he was a sot or a coward, his jeweled crown and
purple robes leave him as unconsidered by us as the beggar in his rags.
Whatever influence, favorable or unfavorable, democracy may exert to
make easy or difficult the advent of the noblest kind of man, an age in
which the people think and rule will strip from all sham greatness its
trappings and tinsel. The parade hero and windy orator will be gazed at
and applauded, but they are all the while transparent and contemptible.
The scientific spirit, too, which now prevails, is the foe of all
pretense; it looks at things in their naked reality, is concerned to get
a view of the fact as