Something like this is in the mind of the plain man of our time; but he is quite aware of his incompetence to carry on these varied activities directly, either in government or elsewhere, and common-sense teaches him to seek his end by a shrewd choice of representatives, and by developing a system of open and just competition for all functions. The picture of the democratic citizen as one who thinks he can do anything as well as anybody is, of course, a caricature, and in the United States, at least, there is a great and increasing respect for special capacity, and a tendency to trust it as far as it deserves. If people are sometimes sceptical of the specialist—in political economy let us say—and inclined to prefer their own common-sense, it is perhaps because they have had unfortunate experience with the former. On the whole, our time is one of the “rise of the expert,” when, on account of the rapid elaboration of nearly all activities, there is an ever greater demand for trained capacity. Far from being undemocratic, this is a phase of that effective organization of the public intelligence which real democracy calls for. In short, as already suggested, to be democratic, or even to be ignorant, is not necessarily to be a fool. So in answer to the question, Just what do the undistinguished masses of the people contribute to the general thought? we may say, They contribute sentiment and common-sense, which gives momentum and general direction to progress, and, as regards particulars, finds its way by a shrewd choice of leaders. It is into the obscure and inarticulate sense of the multitude that the man of genius looks in order to find those vital tendencies whose utterance is his originality. As men in business get rich by divining and supplying a potential want, so it is a great part of all leadership to perceive and express what the people have already felt. FOOTNOTES: [57] Some discussion of leadership will be found in Human Nature and the Social Order, chaps. 8 and 9. [58] So Mr. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, chap. 76. Some emphasis should be given to the phrase “pushed on,” as distinguished from “initiated.” [59] In the Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1905. [60] Who seeks to have private things loses common things. Thomas à Kempis, De Imitatione Christi, book iii, chap. 13, sec. 1. [61] In her book, Newer Ideals of Peace. [62] Newer Ideals of Peace, chap. 1. [63] De Imitatione Christi, book ii, chap. 1, sec. 7. [64] William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 319. [65] P. G. Hamerton, Thoughts About Art, 222. [66] Henry D. Lloyd, Man the Social Creator, 101. [67] I mean merely that the law graduates look sophisticated—not dishonest. They have learned to use voice and facial expression as weapons of controversy. [68] The Spirit of Laws, book xi, chap. 6. [69] From a letter written to an American correspondent in 1857 and printed in the appendix to Trevelyan’s Macaulay.