re are groups of persons more successful than the average.
They are objects of curiosity, and, if they are well-behaved, of
respect. Their comings and goings are chronicled in the newspapers, and
their names are familiar. But it does not occur to the average man that
they are anything more than fortunate persons who emerged from the
crowd, and who by and by may be lost in the crowd again. What they have
done, others may do when their time comes. The inequalities are
inequalities of circumstance and not of nature.

The commonplace American follows unworthy leaders and has admiration for
cheap success. But he cherishes no illusions in regard to the objects of
his admiration. They have done what he would like to do, and what he
hopes to be able to do sometime. He thinks of the successful men as
being of the same kind with himself. They are more fortunate, that is
all.

IV

The same temperamental quality is seen in the American idealist.
His attitude toward his spiritual leaders is seldom that of meek
discipleship. It is rather that of frank, outspoken comradeship. No
mysterious barrier separates the great man from the common man. One has
more, the other has less, that is all.

The men who have cherished the finest ideals have insisted that these
should be shared by the multitude. In a newspaper of sixty years ago
there is this contemporary character sketch: "Ralph Waldo Emerson is
the most erratic and capricious man in America. He is emphatically a
democrat of the world, and believes that what Plato thought, another man
may think. What Shakespeare sang, another man may know as well. As for
emperors, kings, queens, princes, or presidents, he looks upon them as
children in masquerade. He has no patience with the chicken-hearted who
refer to mouldy records or old almanacs to ascertain if they may say
that their souls are their own. Mr. Emerson is a strange compound of
contradictions. Always right in practice, and sometimes in theory. He is
a sociable, accessible, republican sort of man, and a great admirer of
nature."

Could any better description be given of the kind of man whom Americans
delight to honor? This "sociable, accessible, republican sort of man"
happened to be endowed with gifts denied in such full measure to his
countrymen. But they were gifts which they understood and appreciated.
He was one of them, and expressed and interpreted their habitual
thought. Luther used to declare that no one who had never h