The point here made is not an ethical one as to how any one of these men ought to adjust himself to the corruption about him, but the sociological point--that a civilization based upon a commerce which is in all its parts corruptly managed will present a social life which is unintelligent and mediocre, made up of people afraid of each other, whose ideas are shopworn, whose manners are self-conscious. The ill-concealed dependence of these men on each other is not resentful. They are the most good-natured men in the world. But they are unenlightened. Without free speech free thought can hardly exist. Without free speech you cannot gather the fruits of the mind’s spontaneous workings. When a man talks with absolute sincerity and freedom he goes on a voyage of discovery. The whole company has shares in the enterprise. He may strike out some idea which explains the sphinx. The moral consequences of circumspect and affable reticence are even worse than the intellectual ones. “Live and let live,” says our genial prudence. Well enough, but mark the event. No one ever lost his social standing merely because of his offences, but because of the talk about them. As free speech goes out the rascals come in. Speech is a great part of social life, but not the whole of it. Dress, bearing, expression, betray a man, customs show character, all these various utterances mingle and merge into the general tone which is the voice of a national temperament; private motive is lost in it. This tone penetrates and envelops everything in America. It is impossible to condemn it altogether. This desire to please, which has so much of the shopman’s smile in it, graduates at one end of the scale into a general kindliness, into public benefactions, hospitals, and college foundations; at the other end it is seen melting into a desire to efface one’s self rather than give offence, to hide rather than be noticed. In Europe, the men in the pit at the theatre stand up between the acts, face the house, and examine the audience at leisure. The American dares not do this. He cannot stand the isolation, nor the publicity. The American in a horse car can give his seat to a lady, but dares not raise his voice while the conductor tramps over his toes. It violates every instinct of his commercial body to thrust his private concerns into prominence. The American addresses his equal, whom he knows familiarly, as Mr. Jones, giving him the title with as much subserviency as the Englishman pays to an unknown Earl.