Part 31 (1/2)

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 n.o.ble motives behind it had produced so few artists.

It has seemed to me that it might be because Socialists as a cla.s.s, 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 ma.s.ses, and are p.r.o.ne to overlook the Spirit of the Little, the immensity of the seed and of the individual. They are p.r.o.ne 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 abolis.h.i.+ng 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, comparing, sorting, selecting, seeing the ones that wear the longest, and one by one taking the old ones down.

The crowd takes a hero up in its huge rough hand, gazes through him at the world, sees what it wants through him. Then it takes up another, and then another.

Heroes are crowd spy-gla.s.ses.

Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann for example.

Pierpont Morgan is a typical American business man raised to the n-th or hero power.

The crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Pierpont Morgan, the Tom Mann of the banks. It will see what it wants, through him.

And the crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Tom Mann, too, the Pierpont Morgan of the Trades Unions. It will see what it wants, through him.