Let us take another case. You think that what is needed is to raise a standard. You call your twenty friends about you. They are not corrupt. Nevertheless, let us see who they will be. We are not dealing with an imaginary community, but with American citizens as they exist, with men every one of whom trusts his instincts to a different extent. Each man believes in principle in the abstract, but thinks it is sometimes hopeless to be severely virtuous in politics. This “sometimes” is the _crux_. “Is it the time? Is this the year? Can you do it this way?” Now, of course, it is always the year. It is never hopeless. Absolute honesty is always the way. But an age of corruption destroys faith. This is the essential injury. This is the disease. You yourself have a little stronger belief, a little more political enterprise than your twenty friends. Otherwise it would be they who were summoning you to a conference. It is certain that their joint wisdom will result in action less radical than you believe in. They outvote you in council. The standard they set up is not absolute. But this outcome will prevent you from making your point at all. If you are to back your friends up publicly and are honest yourself, all you can say will be, “Here’s a makeshift.” Now, the public instinct understands this very well already. Ten per cent of your own faith you have compromised. It has cost you ninety per cent of your educational power; for the heart of man will respond only to a true thing. What is it that has led you to compromise? Why, the age you live in. You yourself, being afraid to stand alone, have dipped your flag, with the best intentions, because you cannot see that any other course is practicable. Yet you yourself can keep your own intellectual integrity only at the price of destroying your own handiwork. If you do not destroy it, you are a hypocrite. Here in the room with you were twenty men, the very flower of the idealism of the town, not chosen by accident, but coming together by natural selection. Twenty more like them do not exist in the community, for their activity would have revealed them. And yet there was not found faith enough among these to set up an absolute standard. Nay, they hang on your arms and prevent you from raising one. If you are to do it, you must do it alone. Then these men will be the first to denounce you; for your act damns them. You can only be true to the public conscience by rebuking your friends. If you fail to do this, your banner is submerged. Let us consider the cause of this weakness in Reform organizations. You wish to appeal to the people with as good a show of names as you can. And so you get a lot of well-known men to indorse you. This is considered practical. Let us see if it is.