Nevertheless, if we are not to fall into a disillusionment that is speculative or subjective; if we are not to make sweeping generalizations from picked facts, this critical mood must not forthwith reduce the greatly good personages of history or of the present to the mean and the commonplace. They will henceforth have less mythological and legendary set-apartness; they will be more like plain us (a mixture of qualities), but we shall not have a flat landscape. Yonder researcher in science or history may be not a whit wiser in a thousand respects than his next-door neighbor; even in his laboratory and his library lower and higher motives may jostle each other, but in sheer fairness and objectivity we must perceive that a high end that he labels “truth” lures him on, restrains contrary motives, and rewards him from within itself. The artist who believes in his art against the odds of conventionalized criticism; the medical man who, as practitioner or as researcher, never swerves from the main purpose of the utmost increase of health; the social worker who really “believes in people”--in the human as such--when social prejudices make this belief costly; the religious prophet who at the expense of persecution or crucifixion calls upon us to lift up our eyes from our pettiness to the coming Kingdom of God--these are true specimens of what the human can be and sometimes is in point of motivation. Between the more creative, or the more favorably placed, of these persons and the common run of men there is no gap or partition in the matter of motives. When we achieve a deep acquaintance with men, though we realize as never before the extent of their foibles, we come upon a residuum that evokes our respect. But deep acquaintance means something far more intimate and therefore insightful than our classifying devices. Of course, no one who exercises coercion understands those whom he coerces, and whoever exploits men is blinded by his point of view. A mere observer, moreover, an outsider standing aloof, may perceive more clearly than others do a part of what is going on in his fellows, yet his very aloofness, because it places inhibitions upon those whom he inspects, defeats his quest. Hence it is that the generalizations of the “hard-boiled” are never quite convincing to persons who live in friendly, cooperative relations with one another. The greater authorities upon what the common man is capable of wanting are those enlightened souls whose un-self-seeking unreserve and participation in the neighbor’s hopes and fears, and ups and downs, thaw out the ordinary barriers between man and man. Now, almost universally those who have had the widest experience in dealing with men on this basis of intimacy have the firmest faith in humanity. I do not mean sentimentalists who indulge humanitarian emotions at a distance, nor yet lovers who may--or may not--deceive themselves by over-idealization, but persons like some social workers whom anyone