I must confess to a feeling of disgust when I read preachments on the joys of work, on consecrating one's self to one's task. I can do that, because I do about what I please and when I please, and so do you, Mister Preacher, and so do the exceptional and the able and the fortunate here and there and everywhere. But this is mathematically and socially impossible for the great majority, and unless a plan of life fits that majority it is best to call the plan what it is,--an aristocratic creed, meant for the more able and the more fortunate. CHAPTER XIII. THE QUALITIES OF THE LEADER AND THE FOLLOWER The social group, in its descent from the herd, has become an intensely competitive, highly cooperative organization. There are two sets of qualities essential to those phases of society that concern us as students of character. Out of the mass there come the leaders, those who direct and organize the thought and action of the group. The leader, in no matter what sphere he operates, excels in some quality: strength, courage, audacity, wisdom, organizing ability, eloquence,--or in pretension to that quality. The leader is a high variable and somehow is endowed with more of a desired or desirable character than others. As fighter, thinker or preacher he has made the history of man. A dozen million common men did not invent the wheel; it was one aboriginal genius who played with power and saw that the rolling log might transport his goods. The shadow may have interested in a mild way every contemporary and ancestor of the one who discovered that it moved regularly with the sun. And when a group is confronted by an unknown danger, it is not the half-courage of the crowd that adds up to bravery and fearless fighting spirit; it is the one man who responds to the challenge with courage and sagacity who inspires the rest with a similar feeling. The leaders of the world stand on each other's shoulders, and not on the shoulders of the common man. Democracy does not lie in an equal estimate of men's abilities and worth; it is in the recognition that the true aristocrat or leader may arise anywhere; that he must be allowed to develop, no matter who his ancestors and what his sex or color may be; and that he has no privileges but those of service and leadership.