Page:Americans (1922).djvu/275

 perhaps, if we were a notch above such sensual indulgence, to our fund for the collection of cancelled postage stamps.

In the age of individualism which produced Andrew Carnegie, society had scarcely begun to "tap the resources" of collective effort for any genuine amelioration of common conditions. The people "perished" because they had no vision of powers united. In this present hour, clamoring for a high leadership which fails to appear, we average men may look back a little regretfully at our Carnegies, shrewd and level-headed in their means but whole-heartedly and aspiringly democratic in their ends, being fain to confess, we average men, that it is the pressure of the "hero's" exaction, the spur of high example, a vision not our own, a power not ourselves, that we must depend upon, if we are ever, in Pindar's great phrase, "to become what we are."