ABSTRACT
Our present acute social unrest is not due to an attempt to return to the conditions and principles of the eighteenth century, but is merely a symptom of a painfully evolving democracy, at once industrial, political, and social. There are many men, expurgated democrats, who, while they desire a certain extension of democracy, fear its complete rule more than they fear the rule of tyrant or dictator. The supposed incompatibility of democracy with progress rests on the assumption that democracy means an intolerable "tyranny of the majority" over the minority, of the ignorant over the wise, of the careless over the prudent, of the mediocre over the men of genius and spirituality. To-day a part of our educational initiative is due to social capillarity, to a desire to rise from one social or economic class to another. But such desires and such opportunities would also exist under a socialized democracy.
