Thus considered, what becomes of this majority opinion? It is revealed as, at bottom, itself only a very small minority opinion. And such a minority! An idea to be apprehended virtually without thought must be so simple that in a complex world it can have no more relation to truth than Rollo of the Rollo books had to a human boy; and since it must, to appeal, be melodramatic, it must also be cheap. From a few score individuals, all appallingly cheap, superficial and incompetent, from the Northcliffes, the Edward Boks, the Lloyd Georges of the world, springs this dread majority opinion. In personal contact they cannot for a moment hold their own with men of real ability, and are considered by these with disdain or, more often, with careless amusement, for they are without quality, and their thought is too superficial to deserve the name; but they have a knack of charlatanry (though mostly they are not intelligent enough to know it for this, but fancy themselves inspired voices of God--_vox populi, vox Dei_) which enables them to get across to the multitude their tawdry ideas and ideals. Strong, a civilization based on the thinking of such mountebanks? A single clear truth, ringingly expressed, would slay it; though no doubt it would yet go along for some time, not knowing it had been hurt, like the neatly decapitated giant of the fairy-tale, till something shook it and its head tumbled off. The conception of success is a good deal better than most of the pabulum on which these masters of a civilization feed the multitude, presumably because in this case a not inconsiderable portion of the majority have devoted some thought to the matter and evolved from it a sort of philosophy. There _are_ those merits about what they mean by success. But, with truly Northcliffian repetition, I insist that if success is the ideal, it can be judged only by its results. If what is meant by success is good, then its results will be good. That is no more than saying the same thing twice in one sentence. What are its results? Oh, not any longer on ‘civilization.’ That is too big and vague a word. Let us descend happily to the concrete, to the only indivisible reality. Estimate the results of success on individuals, enough individuals, and you will then, and only then, have a true test of its value. No one can do this honestly save through his own personal experience, through his own sincere and careful estimates of other human beings. Obviously, any one man can know but a few of his fellows--so few that it is risky work drawing conclusions from that knowledge. Moreover, his own personal traits limit the amount and kind of knowledge he can, even so, acquire, and render his conclusions dubious. Yet, so far as I can see, there is no other way. So I will take my experience, and do you take yours.