Undoubtedly popular government will, in the main, be like any other popular thing,--it will partake of the conditions of popularity; it will seldom elevate the greatest; it will never elevate the meanest; it is based upon the average virtue and intelligence of the people. There have been great men in all countries and times who possessed the elements of popularity, and would have commanded the suffrage of the people; on the other hand, there have been men who possessed many elements of popularity, but few traits of true greatness; others with greatness, but no elements of popularity. These last are the reformers, the innovators, the starters, and their greatness is a discovery of after-times. Popular suffrage cannot elevate these men, and if, as between the two other types, it more frequently seizes upon the last, it is because the former is the more rare. But there is a good deal of delusion about the proneness of the multitude to run after quacks and charlatans: a multitude runs, but a larger multitude does not run; and those that do run soon see their mistake. Real worth, real merit, alone wins the permanent suffrage of mankind. In every neighborhood and community the best men are held in highest regard by the most persons. The world over, the names most fondly cherished are those most worthy of being cherished. Yet this does not prevent that certain types of great men--men who are in advance of their times and announce new doctrines and faiths--will be rejected and denied by their contemporaries. This is the order of nature. Minorities lead and save the world, and the world knows them not till long afterward. No man perhaps suspects how large and important the region of unconsciousness in him, what a vast, unknown territory lies there back of his conscious will and purpose, and which is really the controlling power of his life. Out of it things arise, and shape and define themselves to his consciousness and rule his career. Here the influence of environment works; here the elements of race, of family; here the Time-Spirit moulds him and he knows it not; here Nature, or Fate, as we sometimes name it, rules him and makes him what he is. In every people or nation stretches this deep, unsuspected background. Here the great movements begin; here the deep processes go on; here the destiny of the race or nation really lies. In this soil the new ideas are sown; the new man, the despised leader, plants his seed here, and if they be vital they thrive, and in due time emerge and become the conscious possession of the community.