SOCIAL LIFE 99 



10. When, however, the leaders are essentially honest Advantages 

 and socially minded, their leadership is still not without advantages 

 its possible disadvantages. The amount of leadership j. Ieader ~ 

 desirable depends upon a variety of circumstances, but 



it may be taken as axiomatic that the freedom of the 

 individual should be as great as his capacity permits. 

 It may even be better to have some things done poorly 

 through personal initiative than comparatively well 

 under direction, because the activities required bear 

 fruit in other ways. Aside from this, observation in- 

 dicates that there is a constant tendency to exaggerate 

 the abilities of those who have assumed leadership, and 

 to permit them to do a share of the social planning out 

 of all proportion to the superiority of their intellects. 

 They themselves, of course, are especially liable to this 

 delusion. When a leader really is far in advance of his 

 following, his greater sagacity is likely to be under- 

 estimated during his lifetime ; but he whose powers are 

 mediocre, and of whom all men speak well, is more 

 likely to be thought, and to think himself, a king by 

 divine right. It is not to be supposed that these con- 

 flicts, arising from social organization and the diversities 

 of individuals, will ever be overcome ; they are part and 

 parcel of the interplay of human life, and constitute, as 

 it were, the rules of the game. All we can do, or should 

 wish to do, is to understand these rules and play up to 

 the limit of our capacity. 



11. We have referred to the leadership by the highly Value of 

 endowed of those less so; but there is another and in- 

 creasingly more important type of leadership, which 

 depends mainly on environmental differences. In a 

 complex society people become specialists, and he who 



has mastered what humanity knows about bacteria or 

 balloons takes the leadership, in regard to his specialty, 



