ABSTRACT
During the great revolution the essence of democracy was accurately defined in the watchwords liberty, equality, and fraternity—the contrast between democracy and aristocracy being thus expressed. The aristocratic organization of society rests upon relationships of supraordination and subordination as between individuals and groups within the community, whereas the aim of democracy is that all should rank alike. The political and social aim of democracy is to abolish a relationship of subjection and rule. In actual working, aristocratic monarchy was always an oligarchy, so also is democracy in actual working an oligarchy. Democracy demands a new system of politics, to be established upon scientific sociology and upon all the abstract sciences concerned with the problems of social life. Knowledge, critical knowledge, is democracy; aristocracy is the offspring of the mythological outlook. Democracy wrestles with theocracy for the control of the school, the "officina humanitatis," as Comenius termed it.
