elf, his self
of the best moments in the official great man or crowd man.

The average man in a crowd does not want to be an average man, and the
last thing he wants is to have an average man to represent him. He wants
a man to represent him as he would like to be.

He cannot express himself--his best self, in the State, to all the
others in the State, without a lifted-up man or crowd man to do it.

It is as if he said--as if the average man said, "I want a certain sort
of world, I want to be able to point to a man, to a particular man, and
say, as I look at him and ask others to look at him, 'This is the sort
of world I want.'"

Then everybody knows.

The great world that lies in all men's hearts is expressed in miniature,
in the great man.

Crowds speak in heroes.

* * * * *

I have often heard Socialists wondering among themselves why a movement
that had so many fine insights and so many noble motives behind it had
produced so few artists.

It has seemed to me that it might be because Socialists as a class,
speaking roughly, are generalizers. They do not see vividly and deeply
the universal in the particular, the universal in the individual, the
national in the local. They are convinced by counting, and are moved by
masses, and are prone to overlook the Spirit of the Little, the
immensity of the seed and of the individual. They are prone to look past
the next single thing to be done. They look past the next single man to
be fulfilled.

They feel a bit superior to Individualists for the way they have of
seeing the universal in the particular, and of being picturesque and
personal.

Socialists are not picturesque and personal. They do not think in
pictures.

Then they wonder why they do not make more headway.

Crowds and great men and children think in pictures.

A hero pictures greatness to them. Then they want it for themselves.

From the practical, political point of view of getting things for
crowds, perhaps the trouble lies, not in our common popular idea of
having heroes, but in the heroes. And perhaps the cure lies not in
abolishing heroes, but in making our heroes move on and in insisting on
more and better ones.

Any man who looks may watch the crowd to-day making its heroes move on.

If they do not move on, the crowd picks up the next hero at hand who is
moving--and drops them.

One can watch in every civilized country to-day crowds picking up
heroes, co