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MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 WILLIAM A. McKEEVER 
 
MAN AND THE 
 NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 By 
 
 WILLIAM A. McKEEVER, Pn.M., LL.D. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "TRAINING THE BOY," "TRAINING THE GIRL," 
 
 "PSYCHOLOGY AND HIGHER LIFE," "FARM BOYS 
 
 AND GIRLS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 NEW ^Sir YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1919, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
TO 
 
 THE MILLIONS OF SPLENDID YOUNG AMERICANS 
 WHO MARCHED BRAVELY AWAY TO THE WAR 
 FOR HUMAN LIBERTY AND THERE THROUGH RIGID 
 DISCIPLINE DISCOVERED FOR THEMSELVES MUCH 
 OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMING DEMOCRACY, 
 THIS BOOK IS HUMBLY DEDICATED 
 
 J 
 
A CHALLENGE 
 
 The greatest tragedy in the history of mankind is 
 now in its closing stages : 
 Ten million slain. 
 A hundred million homeless. 
 Countless millions wretched and sad. 
 
 But the cause of this terrible affair has not been 
 sounded to its depths. And the reconstruction the 
 general plan for healing the awful wound is that not 
 in danger of being dominated by superficialities and 
 threatened with a descent into the old rut out of which 
 society for the time being has floundered ? 
 
 So it is the purpose of the discussions which follow 
 to offer a radically new interpretation of the world 
 war and a plan for the reconstruction of civilization 
 which would practically reverse the old order of 
 things. 
 
 Wherefore, this text is meant as a modest but posi- 
 tive challenge to thinking men and women to throw 
 themselves into the momentous problem of designing 
 some new plan of existence for the common individ- 
 ual. The old one is threadbare and can scarcely ever 
 be satisfactorily mended. 
 
 WILLIAM A. MCKEEVER. 
 LAWRENCE, KANSAS. 
 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 PART ONE: THE QUEST OF SOCIETY 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I SEEKING THE HEART or HUMANITY . . 13 
 
 II A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM . . 23 
 
 III THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN .... 34 
 
 IV CREATIVE DEMOCRACY 43 
 
 V THE REGENERATION OF BUSINESS ... 53 
 
 VI WORK AS A MEANS OF SALVATION ... 63 
 
 VII A NEW INTERPRETATION OF MOTHERHOOD 73 
 
 VIII ADOLESCENT LOVE AS HUMAN WELFARE . 83 
 
 IX RELIGION AS A PART OF DEMOCRACY . . 94 
 
 X HEALTH AS AN ELEMENT OF CIVILISATION 105 
 
 XI A CHANGED CONCEPTION OF LOYALTY . 117 
 
 XII WAR AS DRAMATISED ALTRUISM . . . 127 
 
 PART TWO: THE QUEST OF THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 XIII ARE WE READY FOR DEMOCRACY? . . . 141 
 
 XIV REORGANISATION FROM WITHIN . . . 148 
 XV MAKING LIFE WORTH WHILE .... 159 
 
 XVI THE SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE 167 
 
 XVII OPTIMISM AS COMMON SENSE . . . . 175 
 
 ix 
 
x CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVIII THE DANGERS OF OBSESSION . . . . 181 
 
 XIX SENSE AND SENTIMENT 191 
 
 XX THE WAR ON WHITE SLAVERY . . . 204 
 
 XXI THE INDIVIDUAL AND ALTRUISM . . . 214 
 
 XXII ANOTHER GREAT STRUGGLE COMING . . 223 
 
 XXIII PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN BETTERMENT . 233 
 
 XXIV BRINGING UP THE NEXT GENERATION . 242 
 
MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
MAN AND THE 
 NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 SEEKING THE HEART OF HUMANITY 
 
 Out of the wreck of the recent inglorious past I 
 ?l*e a new heaven and a new earth arising and coming 
 with arms outstretched to meet each other in the 
 heart of common humanity. The endless tangle of 
 the great implements of warfare which lie scattered 
 over the vast battle area in Europe representing 
 billions of wealth and the best which the scientific 
 effort of man could produce that mountainous heap 
 of wreckage is symbolic of the contempt of the 
 Almighty for the so-called achievements of modern 
 civilisation. And all this amounts to a demand for 
 a revolutionary change in man's mode of directing 
 his own life on the earth. 
 
 But now a new, strange hour was struck. Old 
 things are passing away, all things are to be defined 
 anew. Merchandise, material goods, money; these 
 are but trash in a heap. Common Man is the greatest 
 thing in the world, while all things else are to be 
 interpreted in terms of his nature and needs. To 
 
 13 
 
i 4 MAN &&0THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 have value, to have a part in the world's real progress, 
 other things must first be related to him. 
 
 A wounded soldier who lay in the hospital in un- 
 conscious delirium for four days suddenly awakened 
 at morning and asked, "Is it the rising or the setting 
 sun?" An attendant quickly replied, "It is the rising 
 sun and the beginning of a bright new day." So with 
 the great nations for more than four years drawn 
 into a mad delirium of slaughter forced upon them 
 by the insane lust of Prussia. For them a new light 
 is now breaking and the answer to their earnest in- 
 quiry is this: It is the rising sun and the dawn of 
 a new era for the human race. 
 
 RECOVERY OF LOST MAN 
 
 Yes, the greatest thing in the world is Man. And 
 yet, during the recent epoch of material prosperity 
 he became gradually submerged. Science, art, com- 
 merce, business affairs these were being pursued as 
 ends in themselves and not for tfye sake of that greater 
 thing, common humanity. And when once Man had 
 been lost out of them, then, Good was lost also and 
 they had to go down in a momentous crash. 
 
 Now, the way we are to get these over-prized mate- 
 rials back and into their true place in the world is 
 through a sort of re-discovery of Man. "When I 
 consider Thy heaven, the work of Thy fingers, the 
 moon and stars which Thou hast ordained, what is 
 Man that Thou art mindful of him and the Son of 
 Man, that Thou visitest him?" The ancient poet 
 and seer has thus voiced the momentous question of 
 
SEEKING THE HEART OF HUMANITY 15 
 
 the ages. And in this day of confusion and turmoil 
 it stands out as the problem around which all the 
 others centre. What is Man? What is in the great 
 common human nature? What is the great store- 
 house of potential qualities which an Infinite Wisdom 
 has placed inherently in the heart of common 
 humanity? 
 
 Once let the people all become acquainted with the 
 answer to the foregoing mighty question and we shall 
 have the key to the best possible after-war reconstruc- 
 tion and the guide to a continuous upward climb of 
 the race. To know humanity is to know one's self; 
 to understand the great universal human nature is to 
 love it; and thus to love one's own life is to possess 
 the secret of individual self -direction and of racial 
 self-government. So, a re-discovered, redeemed, re- 
 directed common humanity ; this is the task of the cen- 
 turies. It is not a just division of the spoils, a distri- 
 bution of the goods, a re-alignment of the opportuni- 
 ties; it is rather a cordial understanding of what is in 
 the nature of Man, and the resultant happy fellow- 
 ship of all men in bringing the world back out of 
 chaos such is the mighty spiritual transformation 
 which now holds in promise the remaking of human 
 society. 
 
 A FALSE PHILOSOPHY OF MAN 
 
 But let us see how a false philosophy has thrown 
 the world down, and we shall then understand how 
 a greater spiritual power must be depended upon to 
 lift it up. If we accept the statement that the greatest 
 
16 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 thing in the world is Man we must likewise agree that 
 the greatest thing in Man is mind. That is, mind is 
 the greatest agency of his progress and achievement 
 here on the earth. It is right or wrong thinking which 
 makes or breaks a people. Philosophy, the effective 
 ideal, the habitual, unified way in which a people think 
 of themselves and of the other peoples of the race 
 such is the most powerful instrument in the posses- 
 sion of Man to-day. Let me prescribe the philosophy 
 of any people as thus defined and I will outline their 
 destiny in advance. Science, art, commerce, human 
 traffic large and small these will in time likewise 
 become mere instruments to be used constructively or 
 destroyed wantonly at the demands of the philosophic 
 ideals held in common by any nation of people. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SUPERMAN 
 
 So with the philosophy of the superman of 
 Nietzsche. A half century ago it was an innocent, 
 enticing plaything for the select few, the parlour group. 
 Then it became a topic for passionate study among 
 the universities and the secondary schools. Finally, 
 its phrases, its language, began to roll easily upon the 
 tongue of common speech. The superman, the cold 
 intellectual genius, the brilliant manipulator of power 
 and authority, intolerant of human sympathy, impa- 
 tient with petty states which would get in the way of 
 his purposes; the proclaimer of an infatuating scheme 
 of dominating the world and of building upon the 
 ruin a mighty empire; a deified being whose might 
 makes right and who is therefore justified in circum- 
 
SEEKING THE HEART OF HUMANITY 17 
 
 venting all known morals of people and nations such 
 is the monster who first enticed the Prussians, whose 
 ideals slowly became a national obsession and finally 
 plunged them into an insane lust for power and 
 supremacy. 
 
 It was this obsession of the superman which created 
 the terrible war machine, which mobilised a blood- 
 thirsty army and which drew all mankind into a hide- 
 ous dance of death. Wrong thinking on the part of 
 the masses, false ideals about Common Man and his 
 mission in life, a murderous philosophy of divine 
 right of kings and of common men as their helpless 
 pawns, this is the devilish power which overthrew 
 the world and the converse of which is to set it up 
 again. 
 
 THE GREAT COMMON MAN 
 
 And so, we of the allied nations were compelled to 
 engage in not one but two great wars: the war of 
 material and the war of mind, the war of physical 
 force and the war of philosophy. We were com- 
 pelled to mobilise a great and terrific war machine, 
 more powerful than the enemy's, with which to crush 
 him. To the shops, the factories, the mines, the 
 forests and the laboratories we hurried away and 
 finally brought out a mountain to roll over him. To 
 the farms, the marts of trade, the centres of indus- 
 try and the schools we turned quickly and called and 
 disciplined a vast horde of hitherto untrained warriors 
 to push this rolling mass along. In its physical as- 
 pects the gathering of our war forces was perhaps the 
 most magical drama of the ages. 
 
i8 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 But let us not have our finer vision obscured by the 
 easily observed and tangible achievements of a mate- 
 rial nature, for such is but a by-product of the 
 mightier thing undertaken, through the organisation 
 of a new cosmic philosophy and through the reor- 
 ganisation of the common mind. In ten thousand 
 places at once and through a series of many months, 
 in ten thousand published prints and through a series 
 of many publications, we engaged the millions in an 
 effort to think of humanity in terms of the stirring 
 world events and to interpret the war drama in the 
 light of a possible new destiny. 
 
 Wherefore, to match and finally overcome the cruel 
 and lustful philosophy of the superman we slowly or- 
 ganised and gave to the public mind the clear and 
 startling philosophy of the Common Man. And, 
 outside of Heaven's old established laws, this is the 
 greatest force at work in the world to-day. 
 
 The Great Common Man born here and there and 
 yonder among the so-called high and low alike; pos- 
 sessing potentially the great inherent qualities which 
 God has implanted in all the normal children of the 
 race; slowly trained and developed through the trial- 
 and-error experiences common to all the children of 
 all people; imbued with a passion to laugh, to labour, 
 to love and to look up toward heaven in fellowship 
 with all; stirred by an ardent desire to be of service 
 to mankind and sympathetically to help lift the race 
 to higher things. This is the type of the Great Com- 
 mon Humanity which is the material expression of 
 that mightiest thing with which the world must 
 reckon to-day the accepted ideal of a new democracy. 
 
SEEKING THE HEART OF HUMANITY 19 
 
 THE RE-DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
 
 Columbus discovered America in 1492 the plains, 
 the mountains, the valleys the physical America. 
 But, since our entrance into the war, all of us have 
 been busy as never before discovering America anew 
 the great soul of America which lay dormant here 
 in the heart of humankind. It is a thrilling story, this 
 re-discovery of ourselves, of the superb human nature 
 hidden within us and the ways whereby this treasury 
 of divine gifts might be opened and put into the 
 service of the world. Such a charming affair deserves 
 the inspired pen of the poet to do it full justice. 
 However, a prose sketch may serve our purpose here 
 reasonably well. 
 
 There was a day of darkness after we first entered 
 the war. The throngs of young men who volun- 
 teered for the army were piteously unfit. More than 
 seventy-five per cent of them, by the traditional rules 
 of recruiting should have been rejected. They were 
 flat chested, flabby muscled, knock-kneed, bent over, 
 slouching, shambling, underdeveloped, diseased. 
 What was the country to do for men? A national 
 scandal was threatened if the people should learn 
 the facts regarding this supposed inherent physical 
 weakness of our young manhood. 
 
 After a serious consultation of the leaders a policy 
 was finally decided which led to what will prove to 
 be the most startling educational fact of the century, 
 namely, that the alleged degeneracy of our common 
 manhood was false, that the inherent and superb racial 
 qualities simply lay hidden in the inner nature of 
 
20 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the ordinary individual and had been obscured there 
 and almost forgotten from lack of proper training. 
 So, some one wiser than his age demanded : Let us 
 take this weak, fragmentary young manhood and see 
 if a rigid course of training and medication will not 
 bring something good out of it. And lo, it came to 
 pass. The results were magical. A strict regime of 
 exercise, marching, manual of arms, medicine, inocu- 
 lation, balanced diet, adequate sleep and rest, freedom 
 from dissipation, direction of the mind upon the task 
 at hand and the great altruistic purpose of the nation 
 all this, I say, brought results that were most start- 
 ling. 
 
 Under the magic course of enforced discipline the 
 so-called degeneracy of the young men in training was 
 literally driven out of their systems. Hard, tense 
 muscular tissues; broad, expanding chests; clear, 
 ruddy skin; straight, erect forms; firm, elastic foot- 
 steps; freedom from pain and disease; almost super- 
 human power of resistance; a mind set strong and 
 high on the lofty ideals of the new mission of the 
 race; a spirit that reached in strange and delectable 
 ways out toward the great mysteries of human exist- 
 ence such is an outline of the re-discovered, reor- 
 ganised and redeemed human nature which was found 
 to lie potentially within practically all our young army 
 recruits. 
 
 This greatest find of our age, this discovery of the 
 eternal una wakened soul of divinity slumbering in 
 the heart of our common nature, has placed a badge 
 of falsity upon the cry of the pessimists and all the 
 proclaimers of racial degeneracy. On the other hand, 
 
SEEKING THE HEART OF HUMANITY 21 
 
 it has given us, both as individuals and as a people, 
 the basis for the most stirring vision, the most cheer- 
 ing hope, that has thus far come to us within the 
 present generation. 
 
 A GREAT SPIRITUAL QUEST 
 
 And now we begin to catch a glimpse of the mighty 
 mission of the world war which began as a struggle 
 for domain and for selfish supremacy. It slowly de- 
 veloped into a great spiritual crusade, a whole world 
 seeking the heart of Humanity. Its bloody battles 
 were the necessary and terrible consequences of the 
 beastly philosophy of the superman materialised into 
 a ponderous machine of murderous destruction. The 
 slowing up of this sickening slaughter gradually 
 cleared the atmosphere so that the generous and sym- 
 pathetic ideals of the Common Man could manifest 
 themselves. As the hosts of the Allies moved on, meet- 
 ing the enemy with his own stern force as the only 
 means of stopping his murderous work, it began to be 
 observed by warriors and non-combatants alike that a 
 spirit of sympathy and altruism was doing its work 
 among the conquerors. The sick and starving civil- 
 ians were being tenderly cared for, the maimed and 
 wounded were receiving every help which a humane 
 purpose could devise, and even the yielding enemy 
 himself was accorded a form of treatment so generous 
 that it almost stunned him. 
 
 So, having of necessity at first rushed forward with 
 their physical defences, the Allied nations slowly be- 
 came infatuated with the wonderfully generous spirit 
 
22 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 which marked their closing campaigns. More and 
 more their hearts warmed with the mission which 
 God seemingly had placed in their hands; to carry to 
 all the peoples of the world the story that they had 
 found the heart of humanity and that the heavenly 
 message from this great source was an exhortation 
 to bring freedom, contentment and a peaceful good- 
 will to all who dwell upon the earth. 
 
II 
 
 A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM 
 
 On a certain day, when the trenches of the two 
 great opposing armies were drawn close together, a 
 little three-year-old child suddenly ran out upon No- 
 Man's-Land. Quickly the roar of the big guns nearby 
 was hushed and every form of fighting at that part 
 of the line stopped as if the ammunition were all spent. 
 In the midst of this quiet a big, sturdy soldier walked 
 out upon the deadly zone unmolested, and carried the 
 child back to the trench. There was applause from 
 both sides, and then quickly the battle was renewed. 
 
 So a little child shall lead them. At that particular 
 time it was the only thing under heaven which could 
 have stopped the struggle, even for a moment. And 
 the appearance of this infantile visitor is symbolic 
 of the startling challenge which innocent childhood, 
 rightly understood, is ready to present to this blood- 
 stained age. Man is indeed the greatest thing in the 
 world, but the greatest thing among all mankind is 
 the normal, unspoiled infant. 
 
 CHILDHOOD WINS THE WAR 
 
 No war is ever finally won on the field of battle no 
 matter how completely one side may be vanquished. 
 The real winning of the conflict is tested out and 
 
 23 
 
24 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 proved in the years of reconstruction and redirection 
 which follow. For nearly a half century the German 
 people lived under the belief that they had won in the 
 Franco-Prussian war, but recent events have proved 
 that they lost ignominiously. They conquered on the 
 battlefield, it is true, but they won no real victory 
 there, simply because they afterward failed to deal 
 justly and magnanimously with a yielding foe. 
 
 And now I see no great and inspiring hope for the 
 temporal salvation of the race to come out of the 
 results of the great world war except as the way is 
 revealed in the nature of our common childhood. If 
 there is to be permanent peace on the earth its out- 
 line is written in the potential nature of the human 
 infant. If a real democracy is possible for mankind, 
 then its implications and guiding forces will be found 
 by an examination of the age-old racial qualities in- 
 herent in the unspoiled childhood of the race. 
 
 THE CHILD ETERNAL 
 
 If the would-be rulers of the earth could only pause 
 for a time upon some high position and witness the 
 coming into the world of the great constant stream of 
 infantile life, it seems to me that they might be stag- 
 gered by its apparent significance. If they could look 
 far back into Time as well as completely around the 
 globe, as observers of this miraculous procession, they 
 might discern two aspects of infant nature which 
 most prominently suggest the key to human progress : 
 the one, the eternality of the child nature; the other, 
 its universality. 
 
A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM 25 
 
 There is positively no evidence to show that the 
 essential elements of human nature have taken on a 
 fundamental or specially significant change since the 
 beginning of recorded history. Man is not only the 
 greatest but he is also the most persistent thing in 
 the world. Terrific wars may come and go, disease 
 and pestilence may decimate the ranks of the living, 
 mighty catastrophes among the elements may in places 
 dissever the very continents, but in his sturdy racial 
 form Man will always come out of it with a smiling 
 face. Thus it is with the innocent, helpless progeny 
 of Man. The same bright, childish play and prattle 
 cheers the scene everywhere as it did at the time 
 when, thousands of years ago, the phrase heading this 
 chapter was significantly coined. The same general 
 set of instincts, impulses and desires awaken serially 
 out of the young growing life to-day as was the case 
 when Good Old Socrates discoursed so ably upon the 
 immortality of the soul. 
 
 Nothing in the foregoing is intended to imply a 
 disbelief in the accepted theory of evolution. But 
 "a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday 
 when it is passed, and as a watch in the night." The 
 processes of evolution are so slow that for practical 
 matters of education and self -direction any given gen- 
 eration may well-nigh ignore them. 
 
 THE CHILD UNIVERSAL 
 
 Perhaps even more significant than the eternality 
 of childhood, as defined above, is the universality 
 thereof. There is positively no evidence to show any 
 
26 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 fundamental difference in the inherent qualities of 
 the infants among the different nationalities. There 
 is some difference in degree of the common attributes 
 but there is no essential difference in kind. That is to 
 say, all the normal children of all the people the 
 world round are born with a definite set of potential 
 qualities which tend to work themselves out in a 
 universal serial order during the period of growth, 
 training and general experience. In other words, all 
 the great and significant racial qualities, all the natural 
 traits, appetites, desires and aspirations important for 
 the unity and self -directed progress of mankind 
 these are practically the same among all tribes and 
 nations. 
 
 The reader must certainly appreciate the point of 
 view presented above and the conclusion of the mat- 
 ter; namely, that the human child as we have him 
 to-day may be accepted as the surest guide to the 
 way out of the bloody tangle into which our so-called 
 civilisation has recently fallen. Because of the per- 
 sistence, the comparative invariableness and the uni- 
 versal character of the qualities in this common infant 
 he is worthy of the most profound study of the states- 
 men, the rulers and the leaders of human affairs every- 
 where. The legislative, the judicial, the executive 
 measures which do violence to the ordinary child na- 
 ture or which fail to recognise the fact that a firm 
 civilisation can only be built along lines indicated by 
 this ever recurring infant humanity such measures 
 will sooner or later lead us upon the shoals. 
 
A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM 27 
 
 THE BASIS OF UNITY 
 
 The all-sufficient tie which binds the race together, 
 therefore, and which makes possible an eternal unity 
 of fellowship and progress is the world-round com- 
 mon nature of the common child. And to study this 
 infantile inheritance in a systematic, and yet not 
 necessarily an intensive, manner is to hasten the day of 
 universal peace and good-will upon the earth. It is 
 not blood but experience which unifies a people. It is 
 not hearsay and guess or traditional belief which 
 finally determines human progress, but a presenta- 
 tion of the facts before the public mind. 
 
 And, now, at the close of this period of bloody tur- 
 moil there should be ushered in an epoch of universal 
 child study. I care not who makes the laws of the 
 land or those for governing the nations, provided the 
 law-makers all possess an adequate knowledge of the 
 nature and the needs of the ordinary child. I care not 
 who is appointed to execute the laws, provided the 
 executives likewise know the juvenile life and are ac- 
 quainted with its inherent demands for a normal de- 
 velopment. Quite as strict as the universal require- 
 ment that each child attend school and master the 
 rudiments of our common stock of knowledge, should 
 be the rule that every ordinary citizen should under- 
 stand the basic principles of human growth and devel- 
 opment. The franchise should not be a privilege of 
 the one who can "read and write," but "read and 
 right" of another form should be included; that is, 
 ability to read the child nature and to right through 
 intelligent effort some of the wrongs which society 
 
28 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 is all the time ignorantly perpetrating against the 
 young. 
 
 To know the child is to love him, and to love him 
 is to wish to serve and direct his career. With every 
 one a lover of little children the majority of our great- 
 est problems would be automatically settled. To 
 know the common child is to be tolerant of juvenile 
 faults and failures, is to see each one as a growing 
 and learning personality, and to regard every normal 
 young human being as a participant in the general ex- 
 perience of the race. 
 
 PLAY THE FIRST GREAT ISSUE 
 
 And, now, as we proceed to examine the general 
 inherent nature of childhood in thought of this nature 
 as a guide to human progress and self-control, we 
 find the first great dominant trait to be the disposi- 
 tion for play. All the normal children of every tribe 
 and nation under the sun instinctively long for play; 
 and, without being urged to do so, reach out for the 
 experiences which will give the play instinct definite 
 meaning for their lives. 
 
 There will be a great gain in the progress of society 
 when the common people once open their understand- 
 ings to the fact that the play of the children is not 
 fundamentally for the sake of fun and amusement but 
 for health, and morals and growth in character de- 
 velopment. During the earlier years play, rightly ex- 
 ercised, is by far the greatest instrument for the edu- 
 cation of the young. 
 
 Under the discussion of democracy we shall con- 
 
A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM 29 
 
 sider the meaning of juvenile play in the making of a 
 substantial society. For similar reasons the great 
 fundamental inheritances of the child will be only 
 lightly outlined here. 
 
 INDUSTRY AS LIFE AND GROWTH 
 
 Only yesterday I witnessed the work of three small 
 boys who had been sweating for hours while excavat- 
 ing two tons of heavy earth in order to make them a 
 cave. No man could possibly pursue his own self- 
 chosen business with any greater delight than that 
 which gladdened the hearts of these three very tired 
 boys, just now roofing over their den. 
 
 So with work everywhere and of all ordinary kinds. 
 There is a divine creative impulse in the childish 
 nature which yearns for its performance. Until we 
 adults, misjudging the situation, spoil the beautiful 
 response of childhood to industry by calling it drudg- 
 ery, by pointing to its mean aspects, by making it an 
 indication of low rank, and the like until we disar- 
 range nature's delightful attitude, we find all normal 
 children manifesting a keen instinct for creative and 
 constructive industry. 
 
 There is no important industry in the world 
 whether it be producing, manufacturing or distribut- 
 ing some portion of the merchandise of general trade 
 and commerce but that the heart of young humanity 
 may be made glad through its performance under 
 right and easily arranged conditions. And since work 
 is one of the greatest racial practices and is an expres- 
 
30 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 sion of one of the oldest racial instincts, is it not plain 
 that the child which is denied the opportunities of 
 common work is thereby cheated out of one of the 
 most important racial types of education? 
 
 THE RIGHT TO COMBAT 
 
 A third mighty universal racial instinct is that for 
 personal and group combat. The very essence of 
 warfare, therefore, is hidden in the eternal inherent 
 nature of man. But the type of warfare in which he 
 shall engage whether it is to be constructive or de- 
 structive, whether it is to be with instruments of death 
 and destruction, or instruments of life and salvation 
 that will always be determined by the way in which 
 Man directs the belligerent instinct in his youthful 
 progeny. It is interesting to notice that boys in- 
 stinctively fight with their fists and with heavier 
 weapons, while girls more naturally fight with words 
 and vent their feelings with such instruments as quar- 
 rels and contentions. But it is all a matter of bel- 
 ligerency. The instinct is thoroughly racial. The 
 tendency to fight and quarrel is animal-like and com- 
 mon to the children of all peoples. 
 
 But, of all the great racial instincts the peoples of 
 the world have seemed to understand least the one 
 here under discussion may be cited. The intensive 
 treatment of the subject is therefore reserved for a 
 succeeding chapter. However, it seems advisable to 
 reiterate that the study of the child universal as herein 
 repeatedly urged, forces us to the unavoidable con- 
 
A LITTI^E CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM 31 
 
 elusion that Man's first duty toward his own nature 
 is not to try to change that persistent inheritance but 
 to learn better how to direct it, not how to change 
 himself but how to manage himself. It is almost 
 futile for man to try to change himself into another 
 kind of creature by scientific or eugenic methods. It 
 is highly possible for him to discover by scientific and 
 eugenic self -study a progressive series of new ways 
 for making a better use of the superb nature which 
 he already possesses. 
 
 YOUTH AND THE SOCIAL HUNGER 
 
 Nothing could be more fundamental as a means of 
 insight into the direction of human society than for the 
 intelligent people of all lands to acquaint themselves 
 with the tremendous social instinct which dominates 
 the mind and heart of youth. Here we find for the 
 first time in his life the individual ready to exchange 
 every other consideration for an opportunity to mingle 
 with his age and kind, to know their desires and mo- 
 tives and to gauge their opinions of one another and 
 of himself. 
 
 Now, while the heart is pulsating with adolescent 
 love it is the supreme opportunity for acquainting the 
 young with the life of society and the race, and for 
 laying a firm foundation through such knowledge 
 universally acquired for the upward direction of hu- 
 manity. Those who have charge of the momentous 
 task of reconstruction of the waste of the great war 
 which must require years for completion cannot pos- 
 
32 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 sibly find a more reliable key to progress than to study 
 carefully the normal behaviour and the possibilities of 
 social re-direction during this buoyant age of love's 
 young dreams. The social instinct, or the love-mak- 
 ing disposition, of youth is therefore far more than a 
 mere whim to be brushed aside or an idiosyncrasy to 
 be permitted for the time to run its course and die out. 
 This stirring epoch is tremendously potent in signifi- 
 cance for self -direction and for solving the larger 
 problems of social guidance. 
 
 OTHER INSTINCTS LISTED 
 
 It is probable that the contention of this chapter has 
 been made clear to all, whether its points are accept- 
 able or not. To restate the matter in a sentence, the 
 universal and unchangeable child nature is the best 
 explanation of the blundering and somewhat inglori- 
 ous past of mankind; and, rightly studied and under- 
 stood by all, it becomes the most reliable key to his fu- 
 ture self-direction. 
 
 If time and space warranted us in doing so we 
 should consider here in a similar brief manner as 
 above the other powerful human instincts for reli- 
 gion, for vocation, for marriage, and for service. 
 However, all these matters will come in their true 
 relation to the problems of reconstruction of human 
 society, to be discussed later. 
 
 And now it seems fitting to close the chapter with 
 a beautiful and epoch-making prophecy, the allegorical 
 meaning of which is, in this troublesome day and age, 
 
A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM 33 
 
 coming to pass far more rapidly than some would 
 believe 
 
 "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
 
 The leopard shall lie down with the kid. 
 
 The calf, the young lion and the fatling together, 
 
 And a Little Child shall lead them." 
 
Ill 
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN 
 
 The general-in-chief of the American army, once 
 a Missouri mule driver; the President of the Nation 
 and the chief international interpreter of the world 
 war, a former humble schoolmaster; the Prime Min- 
 ister of the British Empire and one of the most force- 
 ful personalities in the world, a Welsh coal-miner; the 
 Generalissimo of all the allied armies, one time a plain 
 member of the proletariat. Thus we might support 
 by a long line of evidence the theory that only the 
 Common Man may become the truly great man. 
 
 A NEW MASTER APPEARING 
 
 The leading nations of the world are just now 
 entering the age of the Great Common Man, the epoch 
 of discovery of the brilliant and all-sufficient qualities 
 inherent at birth in all normal children and made real 
 and highly effective through well-balanced develop- 
 ment. Not only is Common Man the greatest thing 
 on the earth to-day but there is also nothing greater 
 needed here to bring about the realisation of the fond- 
 est dreams of achievement of which the human mind 
 is capable. Shattered as it was by the world war the 
 
 34 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN 35 
 
 philosophy of the superman proved to be only a hollow 
 and infamous falsehood. The superman fell because 
 there was really nothing within of the sound elements 
 of human nature to support him. A single and reliable 
 test of any plan or device large or small is this : Does 
 it fit into the nature and requirements of ordinary 
 humanity? Likewise must any philosophy apply to 
 the sturdy and ever- forceful mid-stream of the race. 
 Supermanism did not. 
 
 So, there is a new Master arising in the world, and 
 he is to be recruited numerously from the ranks of 
 the ordinary, the tremendously prolific mid-population. 
 Just as the superman has disappeared in a terrible 
 dramatic wreck of matter so is the Common Man as- 
 suming shape out of a vast outburst of spiritual ideals. 
 The divine right of kings is already a sad and bitter 
 memory, the divine right of man is a bright and lur- 
 ing promise. In India, once upon a time, it was an- 
 nounced that the dreadful man-eating tiger had been 
 slain, whereupon all the people rushed into the open 
 and shouted for joy. At the beginning of the Renais- 
 sance the word went abroad that the devil of fear and 
 superstition was dead, and in response all of Enlight- 
 ened Europe hurried forward with feverish excite- 
 ment to enjoy the new religious and intellectual free- 
 dom. And now the devil incarnate, the blood-eating 
 superman is no more, and the rejoicings of all the 
 peoples of the earth are at hand. The celebration of 
 November n, 1918 was the most momentous event 
 of the kind ever known. 
 
36 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 A NEW CONCEPTION OF GENIUS 
 
 But the failure of the superman and the discovery 
 of the Common Man is a world movement with which 
 the people themselves must be made more familiar if 
 the best fruitage of the terrible sacrifice is to be ex- 
 pected. Among other things there must certainly be 
 a reconsideration of the type of man commonly desig- 
 nated as the genius. The Prussians exalted him 
 almost to the point of deification. They especially 
 worshipped those in the places of power and authority ; 
 whereas these should all be regarded as public 
 servants. The genius is not greater than the average 
 individual, he is simply different. He participates to 
 a less degree in the great stream of racial inheritance 
 and is therefore a less factor in the perpetuity of the 
 common stock of humanity than is the average man. 
 The genius is one-sided; there is some element piled 
 high in his make-up and some other one well-nigh 
 omitted. He is both long and short. 
 
 The genius so-called is born only occasionally, and 
 is simply an odd variant. No amount of scientific 
 effort or social propaganda can possibly make him a 
 normal type. He is so one-sided that a race of beings 
 like him would be unthinkable and really suicidal. 
 Like the subnormal type which is never a matter of 
 special alarm to society because of lack of some of 
 the fundamental race ingredients the genius can 
 never perpetuate his kind in any considerable num- 
 bers. The world was created to fit the common and 
 to defeat the uncommon. 
 
 The schools, the colleges, the nations themselves, 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN 37 
 
 all, must cease to worship the genius, for such is 
 merely supermanism. They may revere and exalt to 
 the highest pinnacle the common individual. Down 
 with the genius as a master, as an autocrat, as a super- 
 man. Give him his valued place as a servant. Make 
 his rare ability do its splendid work as contributing to 
 the general progress. Whenever he is placed on a 
 throne or in supreme and autocratic power the rights 
 and opportunities of the masses become submerged. 
 
 DIVINITY IN THE COMMON 
 
 It is fundamental for our theory of the reconstruc- 
 tion of society that the element of divine ability be 
 sought, trained and put into service in the case of 
 every common child. Every normal child has in his 
 make-up the possibility of an organised and created 
 genius. For a common child to grow up in the 
 midst of ordinary surroundings, to attend a common 
 school and mingle freely with all classes and condi- 
 tions of young humanity, to have adequate experience 
 and discipline in all the great inherent lines of en- 
 deavour, as listed above; and finally to have his best 
 talent singled out as an instrument of vocational em- 
 ployment verily, here is the thing for the people to 
 exalt. This superb yet common, divine yet human 
 material, organised within and without, until it shines 
 brightly with a light of its own creation this is the 
 charming thing to which the attention of the whole 
 world must be drawn during this, the latest and great- 
 est renaissance of all time. 
 
 In some respects the one who polishes my shoes 
 
38 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 is brighter than I am. The ten-year-old boy out yon- 
 der flying his kite could put me to shame in a contest 
 with him in that pastime. The eleven-year-old girl 
 over the way with her beautiful needle work is my 
 superior. I could go to school for a year to the car- 
 penter at work on my house and still be learning some- 
 thing from him. I recognise every ordinary person 
 as in some respects my superior and I ask only for a 
 like consideration for my own talents. 
 
 If I had a school of one thousand boys and girls 
 I should make it a conspicuous affair that every one 
 of them might become worthy of the exalted opinion 
 of all the others. Under my plan of direction every 
 one should shine in a light of his own and yet not 
 obscure the light of any of the others. It is possible 
 to take the thousand-and-one elements of ability in- 
 herent in any common child and weave these into 
 a personality which is not quite like any other one. 
 All are alike in general, yet every one is different in 
 particular. It is this commonality which I should 
 exalt in order to fix a universal tie of fellowship. It 
 is this difference which I should exalt in order to fix 
 in each one a peculiar mark of reverence for the 
 others to observe in him and a peculiar sense of satis- 
 faction for himself. 
 
 The worship of the genius has led us astray, the 
 worship of the common individual awakened, quick- 
 ened, inspired through right training will bring the 
 whole world back to its senses and usher in the mil- 
 lennium. It is not, therefore, the one-sided "natural- 
 born genius" which must be depended upon to lead 
 the race out of darkness ; but the many-sided, naturally 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN 39 
 
 developed, and finally differentiated common indi- 
 vidual who will lead the way onward over mountains 
 of difficulty. 
 
 THE NEW SCHOOL 
 
 The successful school is not merely one where les- 
 sons are well recited and where promotions are made to 
 the next higher course. It is not a place, moreover, 
 which combines these traditional processes with a quan- 
 tum of training in the so-called practical affair of life. 
 The real school is one where all these matters are 
 attended to incidentally, but where the teacher and 
 the taught are consciously at work sifting out and 
 organising the best talent of every individual pupil, 
 as suggested above. The true school is a finding sys- 
 tem. It helps all to find the peculiar and practical 
 combination of abilities in themselves and at the same 
 time to observe and recognise this exalted worth in all. 
 
 Any form of individual contest in the serious duties 
 of the school is at once an acknowledgment of its 
 fundamental weakness. No fair and even contest be- 
 tween any two is possible from the simple fact that 
 no two are alike. Likewise here no individual con- 
 test for prizes or honours is permissible because of 
 its emphasis upon the weakness of the loser and its 
 humiliation of him, and because of the violence done 
 to the mutual good-will of the pupils. The school 
 contest is one of the roots of the recent world catas- 
 trophe. 
 
 The contest, the sharp individual competition in all 
 the serious phases of our general welfare, must be done 
 away with. It exalts the unusual genius too much ; it 
 
40 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 over-emphasises artificial and adventitious talents, it 
 is on a par with the supermanism which has thrown 
 the world into chaos. It is a pitiable situation, to 
 witness a body of intelligent persons urging an indi- 
 vidual child to struggle in a contest to outdo one of 
 his innocent fellows. It is even more pathetic to see 
 persons of reputed intelligence engaged in promoting 
 a contest to determine which mother has the most 
 "perfect" child. The little one thus favoured is usu- 
 ally a child which happened to combine in his inherent 
 make-up a set of such-and-such points, and no amount 
 of parental trial and training will make more than one 
 out of every five hundred like him. 
 
 God made all the normal children potentially per- 
 fect. His plan made it possible for all to show forth 
 a form of supreme beauty. When we learn how to 
 look into the common yet divine infantile nature and 
 see there the many latent talents and possibilities of 
 accomplishment, we shall be so inspired at the sight of 
 any ordinary child that we shall not think of contests 
 or odious comparisons. 
 
 A CHANGE OF ATTITUDE 
 
 Our idea here must be made clear and emphatic, 
 since we are attempting to defend the common in- 
 herent nature of man as the only reliable guide to the 
 future reconstruction of society and the steady upward 
 trend of the race. To reiterate: The contest, or 
 competition plan of getting things done in the school 
 or in business centres the attention too much upon hu- 
 man weakness and detracts the attention too much 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF MAN 41 
 
 from the splendid elements of human strength to be 
 found in all. The contestant studies the weak side of 
 his opponent and generalises upon that. He at the 
 same time acquires an over-exalted or a perverted 
 opinion of his own worth. 
 
 What we must work for, therefore, is a radical 
 change of attitude toward the ordinary plodder along 
 life's upward way. With knowledge of the fact that 
 every normal person inherits in some measure all the 
 racial qualities, and of the fact that this general body 
 of inherited forces is really what counts most in keep- 
 ing the race alive and going steadily upward, it be- 
 comes a comparatively easy matter to observe at a 
 glance the splendid latent values in the common child 
 or young person. Thus each one becomes an inter- 
 ested on-kx)ker at the side of the young struggling for 
 a wider definition of his life. Thus each one becomes 
 a sympathetic monitor for the procession of young 
 humanity passing on its way toward a realisation of 
 its destiny. 
 
 Wherefore, the divine right of kings will give 
 place to the divine right of man. All normal per- 
 sons shall enjoy the respect and reverence due them 
 because of their fundamental place in the great life 
 of the race. All shall be seen as struggling hope- 
 fully on to an ever higher perfection guaranteed them 
 through the divine heritage which they embody. The 
 prized things of life will be centred around this built- 
 up and exalted commonality of human kind whose seed 
 has always inherited the earth. Being far-and-away in 
 the majority, this Common Man attentive to his own 
 nature, and directing his effort toward the perpetuity 
 
42 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 of his natural interests his will, his purpose must 
 always prevail; and a true democracy will be the fine 
 fruition of his career on the earth. Under such a 
 direction of his thought and action, the common mind 
 of man will continue to discover within himself an 
 ever-increasing series of splendid achievements. In- 
 deed, if we count the brain cells in an ordinary indi- 
 vidual and measure the lightning effects of his intri- 
 cate nervous system we are led to believe that he was 
 created for eternity rather than for time. As he con- 
 tinues to delve more and more into the hidden depths 
 and beauties of his own nature this Great Commoner 
 will carry his achievements on from glory unto 
 glory. 
 
 What greater thing should the Lord of All Creation 
 have placed here upon the earth? What finer exam- 
 ple of his infinitude is desired than that of ordinary 
 human beings developed to that point of excellence 
 and charm which the masses of normal children are 
 now known to be capable of reaching under wise and 
 sympathetic direction? All hail, The Great Common 
 Man, the greatest discovery of the age, the world's 
 second Redeemer! 
 
IV 
 
 CREATIVE DEMOCRACY 
 
 If there is ever to be any such thing in the world 
 as a real, universal democracy man will evolve it out 
 of his own nature. Democracy cannot be taught. 
 You cannot tell a man what it is any more than you 
 can tell a blind man what blue looks like. Men can 
 never understand the meaning of democracy from 
 studying books or listening to lectures. This knowl- 
 edge can come only from experience. They must live 
 democracy from childhood and thus produce it in a 
 living form. 
 
 A DEMOCRACY OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 The work of the great industrial world, the develop- 
 ment and application to society of the vast material 
 resources of the earth, will doubtless always occupy 
 the time of the mighty masses of mankind. And yet, 
 out of these masses the knowledge and understanding 
 of free self-government must come. Too long it has 
 been falsely assumed that a free government can be 
 handed down to the masses by the kings or rulers or 
 intellectual classes. The origin of a free administra- 
 tion of authority must travel up from the great com- 
 mon throng and never down to them. 
 
 43 
 
44 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 But the typical individual in the vast central stream 
 of humanity will always be too busy to stop for a 
 lengthy and fixed course of instruction in govern- 
 mental affairs, and need not do so. He can learn 
 the meaning of democracy best by producing it. He 
 must literally grow his own free government by liv- 
 ing from childhood the deep and fundamental experi- 
 ences of the race. The only way to know how paw- 
 paws taste is to taste paw-paws ; the only way to know 
 how camphor smells is to smell camphor ; the only way 
 to know how toothache hurts is to have toothache. 
 To know these things is to live them. Wherefore, 
 the only way to know what democracy is like is to 
 live democracy. But to live any and all of these 
 things is to produce them, to create them, to build 
 them into one's experience and usable knowledge of 
 what they are like. 
 
 A REVISED TRADITION 
 
 I have no faith in a democracy that is merely on 
 paper. I have no faith in the permanence of a de- 
 mocracy based upon a mere legislative decision per- 
 haps forced upon some legislative body. Man will 
 have a free government just as soon as he creates it 
 through his personal, living experience. The real 
 source of righteous rulership is in the inherent race 
 life. The power and authority of the self -direction of 
 the race can only take true form in a living expres- 
 sion on the part of the masses of what has been stored 
 up by Providence in the common human frame. 
 
 "Where shall wisdom be found and where is the 
 
CREATIVE DEMOCRACY 45 
 
 place of understanding?" It is the thesis of this text 
 that the "fear of the Lord" which is the "beginning 
 of wisdom" is to be found in the storehouse of energy 
 resident in the Lord's highest anointed in all the earth, 
 namely, Common Man. The essence of righteous 
 self-government is latent there. The Great Book of 
 Life here is the rich heritage within the unsullied in- 
 fant nature. It is a mistake to think that nations 
 can acquire a democracy directly by fighting for it. 
 What they get by fighting besides the vast wastage 
 of human blood and material is disillusionment. As 
 they fight on till one side gradually becomes too weak 
 to struggle longer, they both continue to define them- 
 selves and to re-discover the real issues. It is a process 
 of slow attrition of the men and materials and of slow 
 transformation of the ideals of both belligerent 
 powers. In the usual case, the conqueror leads and 
 the vanquished follows back to the people and even 
 to the proletariat for a sanction of the new rulership 
 to be established. That is precisely what has followed 
 in the inglorious world conflict. Back to the heart of 
 common humanity they have been forced to go in 
 order to secure a basis for the peace to follow. 
 
 STUDY INHERENT CAUSES 
 
 Not by power of mountainous war instruments, but 
 by the subtle might of a vast spiritual force, is the 
 earth to be governed ; that is the disillusionment which 
 has come out of the war. But even here we are apt 
 to study symptoms and treat symptoms when we ought 
 to be studying causes. The cause of the bloody catas- 
 
46 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 trophe was not fundamentally preparedness and bold 
 aggression on the part of any government. The 
 deeper cause of the war was an unsatisfied human 
 nature. The great divine inheritance in Common 
 Man was not getting its own. Coarse, material means 
 were being set up for spiritual ends. The vast in- 
 dustry of the world, which should have been so ad- 
 justed to mankind as to ripen and sweeten his nature 
 through its achievements this was being subordinated 
 to the indulgence of his baser instincts and passions. 
 So, there is danger here that we observe too exclu- 
 sively the noise and clamour and confusion among the 
 newly liberated peoples and attend not enough to the 
 inherent and eternal source of the true re-organisation 
 of society to be found within. The definite outlines 
 of this inner guide and sanction of free government 
 will be presently described. 
 
 ALL ONE PEOPLE 
 
 Another aspect of the disillusionment which has 
 resulted from the gigantic struggle is the discovery of 
 the commonality of certain much heralded human 
 qualities. For example, it was thought that one na- 
 tion was heroic and another cowardly. But that 
 proved to be a traditional falsehood. White men, 
 black men, yellow men, red men, round heads, square 
 heads, long heads, short heads all these have fought 
 and died heroically side by side. All these have 
 rushed voluntarily into the very jaws of death. 
 Heroism is a great racial trait, and not merely the 
 prized virtue of certain nations or classes. 
 
CREATIVE DEMOCRACY 47 
 
 Indeed, from the start to the finish the struggle was 
 simply a gigantic family affair. The stronger and 
 larger European nations involved Great Britain, 
 Germany, France and Italy these are all made up 
 chiefly of a mixture of the three great Caucasian ele- 
 ments : The Nordic, the Alpine and the Mediterranean. 
 The radical difference in the conduct of the war on 
 the two opposing sides was not a difference in blood 
 or race but a difference in the social inheritance and 
 ideals. It was a tragic disagreement as to the inter- 
 pretation of man, which grew fundamentally out of the 
 lack of any systematic attempt to inquire into his 
 eternal inheritance for wisdom and divine guidance. 
 
 TRAGIC FALSEHOOD 
 
 Now we begin to see that the world crisis through 
 which we have recently been passing is traceable to 
 a few traditional and mammoth falsehoods as to the 
 general inherent quality of the race life. And the 
 first of these was the false assumption of racial and 
 individual degeneracy. As explained above, we were 
 at the outbreak of the war obsessed with the idea that 
 our young manhood was degenerate, but subsequent 
 events proved that it was merely under-developed and 
 potentially superb. But the classical example of the 
 assumed degeneracy of a whole nation was the civil- 
 ised world's opinion, at the beginning of the conflict, 
 of the French people. "Thoroughly run down," de- 
 pleted," "dwindled out," "hopelessly degenerate" 
 these were the epithets applied to them from every 
 quarter. It was all an international lie. The strug- 
 
48 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 gle forced the French people back to their own re- 
 sources of strength, of intelligence and of endurance. 
 The result was miraculous. "A superb, brilliant race 
 of people, unsurpassed by any of the nations of the 
 globe." Such is now the common verdict. 
 
 And this absolute reversal of decision as to the 
 sterling qualities of the French people tends to pile 
 up argument for the main thesis of this dissertation; 
 namely, that the entire human family was never poten- 
 tially greater than it is to-day; that all the valued in- 
 stincts and attributes of the race remain within as a 
 hidden inheritance, no matter how much one genera- 
 tion may blunder; that this persistent heritage is so 
 profound and rich and resourceful as to furnish all 
 the necessary foundation for a far higher state of 
 civilisation than the world has ever yet known; that 
 the essential elements of this relatively permanent 
 human nature are so common to all as to furnish a 
 deep sanction for an enduring racial unity of action 
 and government; that, finally, the only reliable and 
 inspiring guidance which man can possibly find for his 
 peaceful contentment here on the earth is this age-old, 
 God-given nature within his own frame. 
 
 BACK TO THE CHILD 
 
 And now we must come back more directly to our 
 creative democracy, to the enticing highway over 
 which all mankind must travel in order to create his 
 own free self-government. Experience is the great 
 Book of Life here, and experience which must first 
 be characterised as racial. Provide that each and all, 
 
CREATIVE DEMOCRACY 49 
 
 during the formative years of childhood and youth 
 may indulge through a reasonable course of training 
 the great racial elements within their own natures and 
 you will have a striking example of good government 
 in the making. Man will never perfect himself. His 
 racial inheritance is too nearly infinite in possibilities, 
 but he will ever continue to perfect himself. Where- 
 fore, the greatest possible freedom that can ever be 
 accorded to the individual is not merely lack of re- 
 straint by law and non-interference with his posses- 
 sions, but freedom to work out his own destiny, 
 guided by the inner sanctions of his own personal ex- 
 periences as they come to him through a healthy and 
 normal life. 
 
 Back to the little child is therefore our watchword. 
 Sit at the feet of this charming piece of eternal in- 
 fantine divinity. Find out how he grows and knows 
 and continues to define his life and enlarge his under- 
 standing through the normal indulgence of his in- 
 stincts and desires. In its general outlines all this en- 
 ticing programme of growth and unfoldment may be- 
 come practically the same the world round. The 
 common child, his universal nature, can and should 
 define the course which his proper training is to take. 
 We must reverse the ideal that the child is to be 
 trained for society or for the state and hold that these 
 things must be made to fit him. 
 
 A COMMUNITY OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 The idea here is that of a possible commonality of 
 experience, and that based on the commonality of 
 
SO MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 inherent qualities. Now, this procedure becomes at 
 once a distinctively intimate and unifying one. The 
 man whom I played with during childhood, fought 
 with during boyhood, romanced with during youth, 
 toiled with during early manhood, fraternised with 
 during maturity it matters little as to his race or 
 blood or colour this man is inviolably bound to me, 
 his heart to my heart ; and no human force can widely 
 dissever us. This commonality of experience is the 
 only known unbreakable tie of mutual regard and 
 peaceable co-partnership. And, applied upon a larger 
 scale, it is the one great promise of bringing order 
 out of the chaos into which man has fallen. 
 
 But to urge that the common child must reproduce 
 the fundamental elements of the life of the race as he 
 proceeds along his individual way is not to imply that 
 he is to undergo the sum total of all human experience. 
 Under our broad definition here it simply means that 
 the common child must play, under wise guidance, 
 with other common children; that he must work inti- 
 mately at their side; that he must fight (construc- 
 tively) with his young mates; that he must socialise 
 himself within the ordinary group; that he must wor- 
 ship in the freedom of the open court ; and so on. 
 
 The eight seemingly greatest instinctive dispositions 
 named above as most significant for the training, the 
 guidance and the social direction of the race and as 
 found to be present in the inheritance of all the young 
 are these : 
 
 I. Play, the instinct for exuberant physical orienta- 
 tion. 
 
CREATIVE DEMOCRACY 51 
 
 2. Work, the instinct for reconstruction of the 
 material world. 
 
 3. Fighting, the instinct for overcoming the hin- 
 drances in individual progress. 
 
 4. Sociability, the instinct for an intimate ac- 
 quaintance with human behaviour. 
 
 5. Religion, the instinct for reaching out into the 
 unknown for a spiritual definition of life. 
 
 6. Vocation, the instinct for bread-winning and 
 physical self-support. 
 
 7. Marriage, the instinct for sexual mating and for 
 the rearing of a family. 
 
 8. Service, the instinct for rendering a return to 
 those who have sustained one during his period of 
 helplessness or dependency. 
 
 Train all ordinary, normal children and young peo- 
 ple in connection with a full variety of other young 
 personalities, through all the epochs of the foregoing 
 schedule of human instincts and you get as a result a 
 thorough consciousness of kind and a deep and last- 
 ing sympathy among all. 
 
 THE MELTING POT 
 
 The public school is our only really democratic in- 
 stitution in service of all the young. And, as an or- 
 ganisation supplementary to this, the Boy Scout move- 
 ment is without a peer. It is our magical melting pot. 
 We may take the infant children of French, and Ger- 
 man, and Slavs, and Italian and Japanese, and what 
 not. By giving them all the same general course of 
 training and interchange of experience, as indicated in 
 
52 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the outline above, we most certainly put them through 
 the wonderful melting pot. We thus give them a reli- 
 able basis of mutual understanding and good-will, a 
 bond of fellowship that will tie them together during 
 any or all the great experiences or crises that may fall 
 to the lot of a people. Matured under this heaven- 
 ordained programme of development, the great mass 
 of mankind will laugh and labour and love and look 
 up together in reasonable harmony during the entire 
 period of their existence. 
 
 So man, rightly understood in the future, will be- 
 gin from infancy to produce his own democracy. He 
 will grow it as he goes along and know it as a 
 familiar song. And this will some day be considered 
 individual man's great achievement : To live normally 
 and progressively through all the racial epochs, to 
 find thus the soul of humanity through the expres- 
 sion of his own inherent divinity. And, finally, the 
 so-called serious affairs of ordinary human existence 
 will all shape themselves to fit into this eternal order of 
 events. 
 
THE REGENERATION OF BUSINESS 
 
 A new birth is certainly coming to the business of 
 the world. Commercial enterprise is awaking to an 
 ideal of service of humanity. Man is the new meas- 
 ure of all things of worth, including business. The 
 line of business which indulges, satisfies, promotes the 
 welfare of Common Man, that is the only kind of 
 enterprise which is going to stand the test of this new 
 age. Just as the Kaiser selfish, arrogant wielder of 
 power for his own interest was compelled to abdi- 
 cate and flee, so the big trust organisation, conducting 
 business for the mere selfish purpose of amassing 
 wealth, must abdicate its throne in favour of those 
 who would deal directly with the people in commerce 
 and trade. 
 
 A NEW STANDARD OF WEALTH 
 
 The real wealth of society is men and women and 
 children; the riches stored up in their characters. If 
 I were asked to rate a community commercially I 
 should determine at once as to the character, the con- 
 tentment, the well-being of the common residents 
 thereof. If these measured up to a high standard I 
 should report a wealthy community. If not even 
 
 53 
 
54 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 though the banks were running over with money, I 
 should report poverty. 
 
 During a recent visit of a week in "one of the coun- 
 try's greatest and wealthiest manufacturing centres," 
 I found the following: 
 
 1. Bank clearings the highest on record. 
 
 2. Groups of big, high-priced commercial establish- 
 ments. 
 
 3. Three hundred fifty-seven saloons. 
 
 4. A billionaire brewery in the centre of all. 
 
 5. A city government which helped the underworld 
 in its corrupt practices. 
 
 6. More than seventy-five per cent, of the people liv- 
 ing in a form of degradation and industrial slavery. 
 
 Now, this city should be characterised about as fol- 
 lows : "The most conspicuous place in the country for 
 robbing, depraving and subordinating Common Man 
 with the help of a corrupt form of local government 
 a place of extreme poverty." The long rows of shacks 
 and hovels massed close together, the cashing of the 
 pay check of the typical employe of the factories in 
 the saloons and by the saloon keeper in the bank, the 
 fining of scarlet women by the police without the 
 form of a trial, the slugging of the few courageous 
 reformers who strove for better things, the garbled 
 and doctored public reports to show the city's "great 
 commercial prosperity," the tentacles of the slimy 
 saloon reaching into every institution of the commun- 
 ity these were the real and undeniable evidences of 
 the pathetic poverty of this "big, rich city." The en- 
 tire polluted situation was found under cover to be 
 a scandal on human society. 
 
THE REGENERATION OF BUSINESS 55 
 
 CHARACTER CREATES WEALTH 
 
 The corruption of a community as outlined above 
 grows out of a perversion of the idea of wealth, which 
 is always a product of character, and never the re- 
 verse. True character, man, wholesomely and right- 
 eously matured, is the only creator of wealth. Money, 
 material riches, has never been known to create char- 
 acter. The time is slowly approaching when a test 
 of the value of material goods will result from an 
 examination of the character of their possessor. As 
 a so-called war measure the United States Gov- 
 ernment caught up the idea of the true function of 
 business as being human service, and gave it a com- 
 mendable start. Now it is to be hoped that the people 
 themselves will continue the practice through channels 
 of authority wholly their own. During the period of 
 the war the Government has practically addressed 
 business everywhere, thus 
 
 "Come in and be measured in terms of your service 
 to man. Are you in an essential business? Does 
 your manufacturing, trading, distributing of goods 
 contribute something to the common human need in 
 this time of strain and trial? If you cannot show 
 a service, then close down and get into something 
 that helps. Free your employes in order that they, 
 too, may go into a form of employment that will help 
 win the war for humanity." 
 
 Now, the fore-going re-direction and re-adjustment 
 of our commercial affairs was the most sensational, 
 the most revolutionary change that the business of 
 any country has ever known. And the question of 
 
56 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the permanence of this new ideal is to be one of 
 the mightiest problems of reconstruction for the sig- 
 nificant after-war period. 
 
 Business which is permitted to run for its own 
 sake and for mere amassing of wealth is always in- 
 clined to exploit and prey upon human well-being. It 
 is the most sinister and the most dangerous form of 
 Prussianism among us. It lines up stealthily with 
 the devilish purposes of supermanism. There is most 
 certainly coming to this fair country of ours a com- 
 plete overthrow of every form of business exploita- 
 tion of humanity, as the present generation will wit- 
 ness. 
 
 MANUFACTURING MEN 
 
 The first and finest product of the new, modern in- 
 dustrial plant will be men. Does it turn out and use 
 in its business a superb type of human personality? 
 Are its employes happy, eager to do their best, ac- 
 tively loyal to the plant, the community and the gov- 
 ernment? Are their families well housed, well fed 
 and well schooled? The fore-going are the questions 
 which the modern factory inspector should ask before 
 he goes further into the business methods of any 
 concern. Humanity first, must be the motto. And if 
 the establishment fails in that, it fails in all. 
 
 If the big business institution is to be considered 
 first of all as a place where men are created through 
 fine adjustment to work and a happy adjustment to 
 society, then, tke most successful manager of an in- 
 dustrial 'or commercial establishment must be not 
 merely a person who gets the biggest money return 
 
THE REGENERATION OF BUSINESS 57 
 
 out of the business. He must be one who can get 
 the maximum of growth, of adjustment, of content- 
 ment out of the employes engaged under him. 
 
 Henry Ford was right when he doubled the wages 
 of common labourers in order that they might have 
 enough to live on and then required that they live 
 as real men. Crude foreigners and all, speaking a 
 score or more of languages, were brought into the 
 plant and taught to speak their first English sentences 
 as they repeatedly affirmed substantially this 
 
 "I am a good American. I will live a clean, honest 
 life. I will always help the other fellow. I will 
 work hard, take care of my health, practise thrift, 
 abstain from dissipation, deal honestly with all and 
 live as best I can in complete harmony and good-will 
 with mankind." 
 
 It was an epoch-making affair this new treatment 
 of the employe, and it constitutes a full explanation 
 of why a great city literally travelled out over the 
 open prairie in order to cluster about the life of a 
 magnanimous personality. The world of affairs will 
 learn more and more about this masterpiece of busi- 
 ness methods as society continues with the post-war 
 transformation of herself. 
 
 LOYALTY OF BUSINESS 
 
 Here, then, is a new kind of patriotism, of which 
 big business is getting a fair glimpse. It is loyalty to 
 Man. It is a system of dealing fairly and construc- 
 tively first with the divine right of the employe to 
 a happy welfare. It is a disposition to recognise the 
 
58 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 supreme greatness and significance of the eternal com- 
 mon human inheritance and of its right to function 
 in normal ways during the life of the individual. 
 
 "To thine own self be true, and it shall follow as 
 the night the day thou canst not then be false to any 
 man." This Shakespearian maxim now appears in 
 a new aspect : Be true to the common God-given nature 
 of Man, in which every normal person participates. 
 And this finally appears as a form of loyalty to the 
 inherent soundness of the race as well as an implied 
 form of constructive loyalty to any righteous govern- 
 ment under which one may live. 
 
 As has been proved time and again, big business or 
 little business may prosper if established on the prin- 
 ciple of management outlined above. To be first true 
 and loyal to Man is the best way to insure a fair re- 
 turn on one's investment. The government has not 
 demanded all the profits of business but it has simply 
 insisted on a fair division of these returns as a neces- 
 sary means of serving humanity during the period of 
 the war. But, why is humanity to be of any less 
 consequence to business after the war, may we ask? 
 
 THE NEW CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 
 
 There is a new business man's organisation taking 
 definite form in some of our most progressive cities. 
 And, like the regenerated commercial enterprise de- 
 scribed above, it, too, is adopting "Humanity first" as 
 its watchword. The substance of its vision is this: 
 The right way to increase the volume of legitimate 
 trade of a city is to provide for the common welfare. 
 
THE REGENERATION OF BUSINESS 59 
 
 A clean, rightly safe-guarded common people in any 
 city is the only substantial assurance of that com- 
 munity's permanent prosperity. The complete physi- 
 cal care-taking, moral defence and educational direc- 
 tion of the young of a city is its greatest guarantor of 
 the business and thrift of society. 
 
 Spurred on and inspired by this new vision of a 
 city's true prosperity, the modern, awakened chamber 
 of commerce is now undertaking not a few things 
 strange and well-nigh startling for this age. Here 
 and there I find the old fashioned "commercial club" 
 now sitting weekly as a deliberative counsellor of 
 human welfare. I find it calling a long list of experts 
 to come before it with plans for human betterment, 
 better health, better housing, better wages, better 
 moral safe-guards. I find it listening eagerly to plans 
 for juvenile improvement for a defence against child- 
 labour exploitation; for a defence of the moral dis- 
 traction and dissipation of the young; for the estab- 
 lishment of play-grounds, social centres, beneficent 
 vocational employment agencies and various home- 
 helping devices, all for the children. I see the com- 
 mercial clubs of nearly one hundred municipalities 
 actively engaged for a year in promoting definite plans 
 for making their respective cities the best place in the 
 commonwealth in which to bring up a family of chil- 
 dren. 
 
 THE DAWN IS BREAKING 
 
 In short, we find that the greatest business enter- 
 prise in the world to-day is the reconstruction of busi- 
 ness itself, so as to make it conform to the eternal na- 
 
60 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 ture and the inherent requirements of a re-discovered 
 and redeemed humanity. As business men every- 
 where become more familiar with human nature they 
 will gladly change their methods to suit. Business 
 will then have a new motive. The energy hitherto 
 wasted in a mad scramble for material wealth will 
 be intelligently expended in a delightful purpose to 
 serve humanity in the same effort in which one serves 
 himself and the best interests of his family. 
 
 To combine business and service is radically new for 
 the commercial world. Heretofore, the aim has been 
 to lay aside philanthropy and the interests of the 
 common welfare during business hours and to drive 
 away hard until the Sabbath; then to give some ser- 
 vice as the occasion might allow. But now, with the 
 stirring motive of being helpful to mankind as well 
 as self-sustaining, the ordinary business man should 
 find new delight and unusual inspiration in the pur- 
 suit of his calling. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BUSINESS 
 
 Under this modern and stirring order of affairs 
 there will doubtless spring up a course of commercial 
 training to be known as the psychology of business. 
 If business is to serve human nature and at the same 
 time satisfy the individual requirements of a fair net 
 gain, then the first duty of the business man will be 
 to know human nature. The introduction to this 
 course of commercial preparation will urge substan- 
 tially this : 
 
 If you wish to be assured of success in your busi- 
 
THE REGENERATION OF BUSINESS 61 
 
 ness become acquainted with the nature of Man, 
 around which business is necessarily centred. Know 
 in outline the laws of human inheritance, know how 
 the infant develops his consciousness and his under- 
 standing of the things of life through the medium of 
 his personal experience. Know how the young ac- 
 quires his habits, is swayed by his passions and emo- 
 tions, assumes control of his will and finally becomes 
 a responsible director of his own affairs. 
 
 The new psychology of business also leads to a 
 most practical knowledge of how a person thinks 
 under given circumstances, and of how legitimately 
 to present one's commercial interests so as to make 
 them appeal to the busy public mind. The psychology 
 of advertising is, of course, included here a power- 
 ful instrument of good or of evil, depending upon 
 the character of the advertiser. Now, when the com- 
 mon wayfaring man once comes to a knowledge of 
 the ordinary workings of the mind of his common 
 fellow, the fraudulent and hypnotic methods of the 
 dishonest advertiser will practically be at an end. As 
 it is to-day the people are very much at his mercy. 
 
 So, in order to make business line up more rapidly 
 with the new human motive which is pervading it 
 I should have the typical chamber of commerce of 
 the city proceed about as follows: 
 
 1. All members lunch together at noon once per 
 week and at the close of the repast have one of the 
 group or his appointee discuss briefly some aspects of 
 the business of the community as it is related to 
 human welfare. 
 
 2. Once per month, perhaps at evening, let all who 
 
62 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 can be interested meet as a class in the study of busi- 
 ness psychology. This group should have an easy 
 outline text, a small reference library and an able in- 
 structor to guide and inspire them. They should 
 consider first a brief course in the psychology of 
 human development, and then go on to a review of 
 the practical psychology of business. The latter 
 would include a study of the personality as adapted to 
 the different lines of trade, the recreation time of 
 clerks, employes in special lines and industrial 
 workers, the several types and methods of treatment 
 of employes best suited to promote their own well- 
 being and to bring them a progressive development 
 of their character as faithful citizens of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 Finally, the legitimate business of the world will 
 become more and more centred around Man and 
 less around things. The successful business man will 
 be lured on by a cheering vision of what he can do 
 to make his calling contributory to the unfoldment of 
 his fellows with whom he deals. The business es- 
 tablishment will be called upon frequently for a re- 
 port of the progress it is making in its efforts to deal 
 helpfully with Man. The ordinary city will be ar- 
 ranged more to suit the requirements of bringing up 
 a family and of a happy community rather than for 
 the requirements of trading in merchandise. 
 
VI 
 
 WORK AS A MEANS OF SALVATION 
 
 "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread" is 
 a text which should be applied literally to every able- 
 bodied young person during the period of his general 
 development, without regard to his social or economic 
 standing. But before he is through with his care- 
 fully directed experience as an industrialist every 
 young man should learn to discuss the spiritual mean- 
 ing of this text as paraphrased, "By the sweat of thy 
 brow shalt thou learn to partake of the Bread of 
 Life." 
 
 As one who has worked for weeks and even months 
 at a stretch, from ten to twelve hours per day and 
 with the heaviest instruments of common labour, per- 
 haps I have some right to discuss the topic of this 
 chapter. But before doing so let me remind the 
 reader of the unusual attitude of this text toward 
 nearly all the traditional customs of mankind ; namely, 
 that a larger part of our best human endeavour is 
 gone at in a manner which reverses the true nature of 
 things. Following our assumption that the world war 
 has caused Man to re-examine himself and to find 
 within a new basis for his further attempt toward a 
 civilised society, we readily come upon the false ideal 
 
 63 
 
64 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 of the superman as the traditional stumbling block 
 to a right interpretation of labour. 
 
 SUPERMANISM A MENACE 
 
 The current attitude of the masses toward common 
 work has come to us from the dark ages, from the 
 era when master and slave were the only two con- 
 spicuous divisions of society. Out of this condition 
 of general ignorance and superstition of man about 
 himself came the idea that common labour is degrad- 
 ing and its performance a mark of the cheap hireling. 
 
 So long as the idea of a superman prevails in the 
 mind of the labourer an idea of an over-lord who 
 is exacting and mean and selfish in his requirements 
 the attitude of the common workman toward his task 
 will be one of hatred, drudgery and superficial per- 
 formance. But the age of the extinct superman, from 
 which we are now emerging, calls for a reversal of 
 the entire labour situation. Instead of being re- 
 garded as drudgery and degradation common work is 
 to be classed as a means of joy and self -exaltation. 
 
 THE CHILD AS GUIDE 
 
 The little child is our best and safest guide to the 
 way out of our traditional industrial gloom. Within 
 his unspoiled nature we find a delightful instinct for 
 manual industry. His little finger tips literally tingle 
 in accompaniment with his childish desire to engage 
 in creative work. Until we shock his mind with the 
 idea that common work is appropriate only to the 
 
WORK AS A MEANS OF SALVATION 65 
 
 cheap hireling or the person of weak intellect he 
 rushes forward and throws all the energies of his 
 young life into the accomplishment of the plain task 
 before him. Thus he shows us the only key to the 
 solution of our trying labour problem. 
 
 The idea in mind here is this. The instinct for 
 work is a basic part of the inherent nature of Man. 
 To learn to work is therefore one of the essential 
 processes whereby he must discover his own inher- 
 itance and that of the race, and it is a means of his 
 own personal salvation. The time is coming yea, 
 some have reached it now when all the schools will 
 require a certain amount of industrial training on the 
 part of each child, with the same scrupulous care as 
 was traditionally exercised in teaching him to read. 
 Indeed, our democracy itself is here deeply involved. 
 To know the character of one's fellows, to understand 
 the mind of the race, the individual must travel the 
 course of life over the great highways upon which 
 Man has necessarily trod on his way to self-suprem- 
 acy and productive industry is most certainly one of 
 these exalted ways. And just as any race or nation 
 of people quickly becomes decadent without the prac- 
 tice of industry, so the young individual remains in 
 part undeveloped and continues to be decadent with- 
 out his share of industrial training. 
 
 WORK AS GROWTH AND CULTURE 
 
 But the work of children of any age is never 
 properly regarded as an end in itself or as a means 
 of mere bread-winning. The industry of the young 
 
66 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 must be thought of as an agency of growth and char- 
 acter development. The wealth or social standing 
 of the parent does not properly enter into the matter. 
 There is a certain amount of work with the hands 
 which will precisely fit the age and the period of 
 development of each child; and to cheat him out of 
 the practice of such industrial experience is to take 
 away his divine right to grow up in a normal fashion 
 and to contribute his part in the continuous democracy 
 which, under right conditions, is being grown by every 
 generation of the young. 
 
 As seen from the racial point of view common work 
 appears, therefore, as a means of life and growth and 
 personal salvation. Under this ideal a new vision, 
 a new motive, appears in its behalf. Once having 
 discovered the inherent universal passion for indus- 
 try which the Lord of All the Earth seems to have 
 placed within him, the individual rises to a concep- 
 tion of the possible exaltation of a common work of 
 the world. It is a part of the thrilling drama of 
 human existence and self-development. It is one of 
 the essential avenues by which one comes into touch 
 with his fellow man. It is one of the epoch-making 
 phases of normal individual growth and leads one 
 directly toward the great heart of humanity. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INDUSTRY 
 
 How much manual industry per day should be 
 required of a nine-year-old, a twelve-year-old learner, 
 in order to preserve his industrial instinct and make 
 his common work an unspoiled part of a complete 
 
WORK AS A MEANS OF SALVATION 67 
 
 and balanced schedule for his training? This ques- 
 tion can be answered as definitely as the question of 
 how much language or how much arithmetic should 
 be required of each pupil. Also, how many hours per 
 day, per week, should a man labour at his machine or 
 his desk? And how may this industrial experience 
 become wholesomely related to all the other elements 
 of his complete, living experience? And, then, how 
 can the labourer become so adjusted to his work as to 
 give him a sense of dignity and rank and as one who 
 is assisting the world to grow its own democracy? 
 
 The foregoing questions bring us to the very core 
 of our tremendous problem of dealing with the 
 labouring masses as we proceed to the after-war re- 
 construction of society. And, happily, a partial an- 
 swer to these inquiries has been stumbled upon in 
 the course of our feverish war industry. In the first 
 place, the common workman was perhaps never be- 
 fore so happy during the history of our Government 
 as he was during the period of the war. And, why? 
 Motive is the answer. For once the workman enjoyed 
 a real, human appeal: Apply yourself earnestly, pa- 
 tiently, skilfully not for a hard selfish master, but 
 for the sake of a possible freedom for all mankind. 
 It was thought of as all for sweet humanity's sake; 
 and the effort of the common workman, the output of 
 his skill, became one of the most superb accomplish- 
 ments of the exciting period. 
 
 LABOUR AS SOUL NOURISHMENT 
 
 The joy of the workman is in the end and that 
 enlivens the act. Not work but drudgery kills. The 
 
68 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 capacity of the ordinary person to resist the strain of 
 heavy labour is little short of marvellous if it is all 
 done for the sake of the one he loves his wife, sweet- 
 heart, child for his very own. The physical endur- 
 ance of the typical mother as she toils devotedly for 
 her family is entirely out of proportion to her physical 
 strength. She is the last to quit, the last to go on a 
 strike. There is a kind of secret glory in her soul 
 as she slowly consumes her last ounce of strength in 
 the service of those she loves. 
 
 Now, while we must plan most earnestly for a 
 sure and adequate wage for all labour no amount of 
 money can ever satisfy the properly adjusted labourer. 
 It is only the love which he harbours in his heart for 
 mankind and which he exemplifies by his work; it is 
 only the love which men those close enough to ap- 
 preciate harbour for him. In short, the money 
 motive for industry gives place to the fellowship mo- 
 tive and the team motive, and drudgery correspond- 
 ingly gives place to charm. 
 
 The eager delight of the little child building his 
 block house, the touching devotion of the mother 
 exerting every spare ounce of her energy in behalf of 
 her flock, the serene solitude of the sturdy husband- 
 man toiling early and late to support his family, the 
 self -forget fulness of the artist, or the researchist 
 while he patiently applies his genius to some really 
 human purpose all these are a part of the same 
 beautiful centrepiece in God's fine table of values. 
 They are illustrations of the worker lost in service 
 of a law which is both human and divine. 
 
WORK AS A MEANS OF SALVATION 69 
 
 LABOUR DEFEATING ITSELF 
 
 So long as the labouring class continue to regard 
 their employment as a treadmill and their employer 
 as one who would exploit their energies; so long as 
 they must require each member of their class to hold 
 back and do only a stipulated day's work; so long 
 as labour is regarded as a sort of punishment which 
 a man must suffer because of being uneducated or 
 short in some quality the soul of industry can never 
 arise to its proper, heaven-ordained level. But once 
 adjust the labourer to his task, turn the workman 
 loose with the training and the machinery suited to his 
 self-appointed trade, and the amount of his product 
 will happily take care of itself. At the same time the 
 quality of his effort will increase many fold. 
 
 When Charles M. Schwab took hold of the vast 
 ship-building project of the Government during the 
 war, why did this industry leap into sensational pro- 
 portions? It was this : Mr. Schwab was a real human 
 being in the eyes of the workman. He had developed 
 his life and nourished his soul during early manhood 
 with a hammer in his hands. He walked and talked 
 with workmen in the familiar ways of one of their 
 own number. He knew the language of their hearts, 
 and was to them a kind of transfigured form of the 
 Great Common Humanity which America was then 
 struggling to save. So much of what the large army 
 of ship-builders did under Mr. Schwab's direction 
 and inspiration rose almost to the level of a great 
 spiritual revival, it was a worthy companion of the 
 
70 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 finest musical symphony and the most celebrated epic 
 poem. 
 
 "It is you men at the quarry, at the lathe and at 
 the furnace, who are doing this fine piece of work for 
 Uncle Sam, and not myself. I am a mere cog in the 
 wheel. It is your attitude, your splendid spirit of 
 service and sacrifice that counts for most. I am here 
 to praise you and to thank you in behalf of the nation 
 for the way in which you are responding to its call 
 for support of the mighty cause at stake." 
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOUR A UNIT 
 
 One special purpose in mind here is to urge that 
 the labour problem is not fundamentally an adjust- 
 ment of the alleged differences of capital and labour 
 but rather an adjustment of man to man. The 
 divided heart of humanity is at stake. It is in a sense 
 the case of an under-developed employer attempting 
 to shake the destinies of a group of under-developed 
 workmen. The two hafve never actually met and 
 mingled on the only common level which could pos- 
 sibly bring them together; namely, a common racial 
 experience during all the years of their early develop- 
 ment common play, common work, common conten- 
 tion, common sociability, common religious oppor- 
 tunity, common vocational direction, and so on. 
 
 During the recent war period, the national Govern- 
 ment dealt with capital and labour in the most ideal 
 manner ever known to the American people. It pro- 
 ceeded under the assumption that wealth belongs to 
 all those who have a part in creating it and not merely 
 
WORK AS A MEANS OF SALVATION 71 
 
 to those who manipulate it. "Here, Mr. Labourer, 
 your country needs you. Take this job and master 
 it quickly. A good wage goes with it, but that is a 
 mere incident. Forget the wage as you bend your 
 effort to the task. Be clean, sober, honest and faith- 
 ful, as you contribute your part in the struggle for 
 world democracy." Such was the admonition of 
 Uncle Sam as he called out his army of workmen, and 
 the world knows the superb result of the mammoth 
 industrial effort of the country. 
 
 Likewise, the Government admonished the captain 
 of wealth : "Your money and your established business 
 are but a sacred trust. Especially at this time you 
 owe it to the supreme issue upon which the nation is 
 bent to turn all but a fair margin of your profit back 
 to the support of the whole people. The cause of 
 humanity is paramount, the ideal of world freedom 
 overshadows all." The mass of our capitalists gladly 
 assented to this demand of the Government. 
 
 Here, then, is a hint at the only key to the solu- 
 tion of the trouble between capital and labour, and 
 that is for both to know the life of Common Man 
 from having experienced the essential elements of 
 that life, and for both to become actuated by the 
 same motive; namely, to serve the cause of human 
 welfare, each side in accordance with its peculiar 
 capacity. 
 
 THE PRESENT ISSUE 
 
 But, even though the war is won and the mighty 
 armies are being demobilised, the struggle for world 
 democracy is not half finished. The well-being of 
 
72 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 Great Common Man is still a tremendous issue and 
 the patriotic devotion of all classes is no less urgent 
 than before. Then why should there be a let up of 
 the appeal to capital to devote its major profits to 
 this world cause, and the appeal to labour to forget 
 itself in a permanent zeal for the full salvation of all 
 the race? 
 
 To the end that the ideal here outlined may become 
 more real as time goes on there is an apparent neces- 
 sity of doing two or three significant things for the 
 adjustment of the labourer. The first is the psycho- 
 logical measurement of the workman. His reaction 
 time needs to be known, too, in order that we may be 
 certain that he is not working at a machine which is 
 too fast for him. Second, every place of employment 
 should have its regular vocational adjuster, one who 
 would study the character and personality of every 
 employe and keep shifting him till he found a place 
 where his body and mind both adequately fit the task 
 at which he is employed. Third, every such estab- 
 lishment should be required to have its social adjuster, 
 to work constantly toward the aim of assisting the 
 employes in assuming a permanent happy relation 
 to their home life and to the life of the community 
 in which they reside. 
 
 Thus common industry will tend to a means of 
 salvation unto every normal individual and a saving 
 grace to all the people who participate as a whole in 
 its best inspired methods. 
 
VII 
 
 A NEW INTERPRETATION OF MOTHERHOOD 
 
 The war of nations has brought a new era and a 
 new meaning for motherhood, and a significance for 
 it which fits into the ideal of the re-discovered com- 
 mon humanity. This transformed conception per- 
 haps places less emphasis upon physical maternity than 
 was the case under the old definition, the idea now 
 being this : Physical motherhood is to be thought of 
 as a happy and natural incident of spiritual mother- 
 hood. 
 
 LOVE MUST LEAD THE WAY 
 
 At the beginning of the world war, when the boasted 
 civilisation of the ages and the proud achievements of 
 the masculine wing of the human family went down 
 with a crash, not a few men were ready to give up in 
 disgust. These said substantially this : We men have 
 failed ignominiously. If we had planned the wreck 
 and ruin of the world for an entire generation we 
 could not possibly have accomplished this thing more 
 completely. Let us turn the whole affair over to 
 the women. They could not do worse and they might 
 do better. 
 
 But it was not to be so. Men had led society into 
 the bloody orgy and it was the decree of fate that 
 
 73 
 
74 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 they should fight their way out. However, woman 
 did get into the war and that on a scale of unprece- 
 dented and tremendous value. But she got in through 
 practically the only significant avenue of activity 
 which history has ever opened up to her in any human 
 cause, great or small. She got into the world war as 
 Mother and fought it to a finish with the only power- 
 ful weapon which the Almighty ever gave to her; 
 namely, her mother love. The vast achievement of 
 ministering to the ill, the wounded, the homesick and 
 the discouraged boys in our army camps and canton- 
 ments this, rightly defined, is but a classic expression 
 of the great mother heart inherent in all womankind. 
 It was but the combined mother love of all the nations 
 involved on both sides, acting true to the mission 
 which Eternity has implanted within the feminine 
 nature. Over the wide and treacherous seas, out 
 through swamp and morass, and on through the battle- 
 torn area right up to the sickening place of slaughter 
 the great loving heart of womankind has gone on 
 its mission of healing and mercy. 
 
 In heaven's own good time, when the drama of all 
 the ages shall have been wrought into sweet symphony 
 or song, this present achievement of the Universal 
 Mother of Man will stand out as the grandest sonata 
 of all time up to date. 
 
 MOTHERHOOD AND RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 But what we particularly wish to emphasise here 
 is the idea of motherhood as a powerful factor in the 
 post-war re-direction of society. To reiterate some- 
 
A NEW INTERPRETATION 75 
 
 what, the point is this : Motherhood is the predominant 
 instinct of all normal and ordinarily good women. 
 It begins at adolescence in form of an earnest and 
 yet ill-defined desire for physical maternity, and 
 ripens slowly under right conditions into a sympa- 
 thetic desire for life-long spiritual maternity. 
 
 When once we understand the general nature of the 
 germ plasm and the law of physical procreation and 
 assume in reason that the Creator of Human Nature 
 has taken ample care of that, we readily observe that 
 spiritual motherhood or what I have called the 
 eternal motherliness that this is here our chief item 
 of concern as we proceed with our plan for the direc- 
 tion of human society. Wherefore, in order to make 
 the matter a bit more emphatic, I am about ready to 
 say 
 
 I care little what particular mothers among our 
 general enlightened stock happen to give birth to the 
 children, provided that practically all ordinary women 
 develop an intelligent and abiding mother love for 
 them. I do not particularly care what occupations 
 women may engage in for a livelihood, provided they 
 continue to make that work a mere pleasant incident 
 in their whole lives while they subordinate it to that 
 element of their inherent make-up which is far more 
 fundamental for themselves and for society; namely, 
 motherliness. And, as a voluntary organisation 
 suited to give such a vision to growing girls, there is 
 perhaps nothing else in the class of the "Camp Fire 
 Girls of America." 
 
76 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 THE TEST OF CHARACTER 
 
 Now while mankind in general, the Great Common 
 Man, is indeed the true measure of all things worth 
 while in this new awakening age, womankind as a 
 phase of man is the measure with which to gauge 
 properly at any moment the status of childhood. The 
 woman who understands children and so loves them 
 intelligently, thereby guarantees her fitness for society 
 and her preparedness to do her share of its work. 
 Such a woman may conceivably, on rare occasions, 
 commit some wrong act; but in the main her life will 
 be serviceable, she will do little or no violence to the 
 substantial race life, and she is therefore entitled to 
 an exalted place in any worthy democracy. 
 
 And so it comes about that some of the rarest and 
 best mothers in the world do not happen to give 
 birth to any children of their own flesh and blood. 
 They pass the test of a high social service as defined 
 above, and continue with their beautiful ministry. 
 One of the most delightful mothers in this great coun- 
 try of ours to-day happens to be a spinster who has 
 conspicuously headed a large social settlement in one 
 of our big, congested, shop districts. Denied provi- 
 dentially, it may be the common physical heritage of 
 offspring of her own, this fine type of embodied ma- 
 ternal love has effectively touched the lives of many 
 thousands of needy boys and girls. She has patiently 
 studied the juvenile nature from the time of its first 
 infantile expression till that of its mature activities. 
 Through public speech and written account she has 
 given to society the benefits of her far-seeing vision 
 
A NEW INTERPRETATION 77 
 
 for the best possible development of juvenile character. 
 And all this constructive service has continued till one 
 might reasonably say : I care not what particular blood 
 strain of normal parents in the Hull-House district 
 may give birth to the children, provided all these little 
 ones come properly under the magic influence of Jane 
 Addams as their spiritual mother. 
 
 WOMAN SELF-CORRECTIVE 
 
 Motherliness is not only the most charming vir- 
 tue in womankind because it is most potent as a 
 factor in the progress of the race but it is also a 
 self-corrective. Led on by the early instinct for sex- 
 ual maternity the normal woman continues during a 
 long period to ripen into a sympathetic soul, intelligent 
 as to the unfolding character of the young humanity 
 around her. In proportion as her consciousness of 
 the universal child nature expands, so the frivolities 
 and superficialities drop away from her personality. 
 A vain and frivolous character in woman is merely a 
 sign of undevelopment or retarded growth. Simply 
 that which was normal for the mere girl has lingered 
 too long in the daily practice of the mature woman. 
 
 Acting upon the theory that intelligent motherhood 
 as an acquired quality of feminine mind is self-cor- 
 rective, let us bring up the illustration of the "blind" 
 character of the early maternal instinct. That is, 
 while the normal mother inherits strongly the instinct 
 to nourish, safeguard and otherwise defend her child 
 she does not inherit a whit of information as how 
 best to do these things. This she must learn. Her 
 
78 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 uninstructed instinct may lead her to feed her baby 
 poison, to deprive it of sufficient air or to give it a 
 bath in the wrong manner. The when, the how and 
 the how much these particular matters relating to 
 her infant a mother must learn through schooling. 
 
 WOMAN AS LAW-GIVER 
 
 It has been my custom during recent years to urge 
 that women seek places on the ordinary board of 
 education and as members of the legislature and 
 why? Simply because these represent the type of a 
 considerable list of public offices which call for a dis- 
 tinctively motherly service. It need not be argued 
 that more than one-half the school problems which 
 come up for adjustment are problems of mothering. 
 When we understand the matter aright it appears as 
 awkward an affair for a group of mere men to legis- 
 late for a kindergarten school as it does for a com- 
 mon man to attempt to dress an infant. 
 
 Again the inside observer of human affairs can 
 readily see that an ordinary legislative assembly must 
 wrestle almost continually with matters which are 
 vitally related to the welfare of the children. And 
 without the advantage of a mother heart to weigh 
 these juvenile situations the young are almost certain 
 to be dealt with harshly or crudely. Of course, I am 
 aware that the large majority of school boards are 
 constituted exclusively of men, but that to me is a 
 certain indication that the local society which toler- 
 ates such a thing has not yet thought out its own best 
 possible existence. Also, I am inclined to believe 
 
A NEW INTERPRETATION 79 
 
 that the same sort of criticism may in time to come 
 be justly placed against the ordinary all-masculine 
 legislature. 
 
 MOTHERLY MUSIC 
 
 It is interesting to notice in passing that there are 
 really only two great classes of vocal music in use to- 
 day: the martial air, or the father song; and the 
 lullaby, or the mother song. The one stimulates the 
 fighter as he goes into battle and the Common Man 
 as he essays any form of courageous action. The 
 other cheers and sustains the mother as she toils over- 
 time in sacrifice for her children, and it cheers the 
 heart of the common woman who is unfolded to the 
 proper point of juvenile appreciation. Likewise, 
 these two types of song perform a distinctive office 
 in shaping the conduct of the young the one to 
 arouse to activity, the other to soothe into slumbers. 
 
 Wherefore, the proper orientation of all that is 
 "eternally feminine" in common womankind implies 
 the acquired ability to appreciate and enjoy the volu- 
 minous mother songs of the race. And the course of 
 lessons suited to bring this peculiar element to its 
 own in the development of any woman implies a con- 
 siderable amount of distinctive training. Badly as we 
 have reversed this matter in our traditional schools 
 it is far more important that the growing girl be 
 taught to know and appreciate the great standard 
 lullaby songs than that she learn her arithmetic above 
 the rule of three. Indeed, it is high time that we drop 
 out of the school course of instruction for the ordinary 
 girl a lot of the traditional nonsense with which we 
 
8o MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 have been wont to pester her sensitive nature during 
 the generations past. How little she cares for higher 
 mathematics and how insignificant its practical use to 
 her! 
 
 THE FEMININE ARTS 
 
 Instead of the higher abstract science and the other 
 masculine-logical forms of instruction hitherto offered 
 to women the new age now calls upon her more in- 
 sistently than ever for a course of training that will 
 give unction to the eternally feminine soul, and this 
 constitutes all the feminine and mothering arts. 
 While a broad and general foundation should be laid 
 for the special training of womankind, her inherent 
 nature points directly to a finishing course which tends 
 best to satisfy her predominant maternal instincts. 
 A girl needs to pass hurriedly over an outline of the 
 race life practically the same as the boy. In order 
 to democratise her she must be taught to play, to 
 work, to be sociable, to worship, and to be romantic, 
 in association with the common group. Then, finally, 
 she must conclude with a course which answers to 
 the deeper yearnings of her own peculiar nature. 
 
 A lengthy series of tests has shown that the typical 
 young woman acquires extreme pleasure from a prac- 
 tical study of infant and childhood psychology and 
 that this interesting discipline opens a new and charm- 
 ing outlook for her own life. Out of some four hun- 
 dred college girls who were required to study child- 
 hood under a course which included a baby labora- 
 tory, less than five per cent, showed a negative or at 
 all indifferent response. There should be a day nurs- 
 
A NEW INTERPRETATION 81 
 
 ery in connection with every girl's high school course 
 if not lower in the grades and here the pupil 
 should come daily for a period of interesting labora- 
 tory work. 
 
 So called woman's rights are never anything for 
 which she can appropriately contend by force. Her 
 chief right is the right to the normal exercise of 
 the mother love which Divinity has placed in the 
 depths of her nature; and this exercise may become 
 differentiated into a thousand minor forces. Fortu- 
 nately for society at large and for the race, the 
 great war has rapidly advanced womankind toward 
 the general emancipation of her sex and from the 
 slavery of ignorance and tradition. While man 
 fought she loved ; and by demonstrating her love on a 
 scale hitherto unknown to the world she opened the 
 eyes and touched the heart of her brother and he will- 
 ingly cleared the way for her freedom. 
 
 However, the new freedom into which womankind 
 is moving throughout the world proves to be merely 
 a freedom to assert her eternally feminine and 
 her eternally motherly self. The awful strain of the 
 war, the new risks and dangers to which it subjugated 
 her became to her an epoch-making opportunity for 
 self -disco very and for self -exploitation of the best 
 hidden resources of her nature. And so, out of the 
 turmoil and the agony of the battle-line there has 
 slowly emerged not only a new and higher type of 
 Common Man but likewise a finer and more re- 
 splendent type of common woman. 
 
82 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 THE PRACTICAL LESSON 
 
 At length we come to the practical aspects of the 
 problem. And as we attempt to scrutinise more 
 closely the nature of ordinary woman in order to dis- 
 cover additional guide lines for the reconstruction of 
 society, our first conclusion is this : Womankind will 
 be her best, grow into her finest type of beauty, and 
 obtain her greatest satisfaction of soul during her nor- 
 mal life, only as a rule in case she be led through 
 a course of inquiry into the nature and the practical 
 requirements of children. Second, we conclude that 
 one of the next valuable courses which could be re- 
 quired of the youth of high-school age should be an 
 outline study of the physical and psychical nature of 
 woman. Thus while man would acquire a reverent 
 and defensive attitude toward all womankind, woman 
 in time would acquire an intelligent and motherly atti- 
 tude toward all ordinary children. And through these 
 fundamental procedures, we should have a race of 
 beings perpetuating itself not only physically but also 
 perpetuating and transmitting from age to age its 
 highest types of social and spiritual behaviour. 
 
VIII 
 
 ADOLESCENT LOVE AS HUMAN WELFARE 
 
 At a certain tender age, the youth or the maiden is 
 as prone to be in love as the sparks to fly upward. 
 The first divine right of the young person at this par- 
 ticular crisis in his life is to be accorded a rational 
 programme of opportunities for intermingling with 
 the young of his age upon a romantic basis. Pick up 
 any course of study in any high school and you will 
 find a detailed outline of the required amount of sci- 
 ence, mathematics and literature. But these pro- 
 grammes are more or less artificial to youth and they 
 may be made entirely so. 
 
 LOVE-MAKING THE FIRST COURSE 
 
 The first great topic of instruction during the ordi- 
 nary high school age, the one prescribed by the 
 Originator of human nature, is a course in adolescent 
 love-making. And, while the name of the course may 
 have a less sensational sound, its purpose we cannot 
 afford to overlook. It is this : To lead the young 
 learner through his new, wide-open avenue of emo- 
 tional interest to a knowledge of his own life and to 
 an understanding of the normal conduct of his fellows 
 and of mankind in general. 
 
 83 
 
84 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 Adolescent love leads the way for the only possible 
 mental instruction and guidance of youth. In re- 
 sponse to certain radical organic changes within the 
 dawn of puberty the young person now enters an 
 entirely new individual epoch of life and action. To 
 him old things are passed away ; all things are become 
 new indeed. Heaven ordained it so, and we who are 
 older should be ashamed to try to do any violence to 
 the stirring emotion of adolescent love. Least of all, 
 should we suppress it. Most of all, we should and 
 must try to give it some guidance. 
 
 It need not worry us, therefore, if the young adoles- 
 cent dreamer places his love interest above all and 
 seems willing to mortgage his very soul for another 
 opportunity to mingle unhindered with the young 
 crowd. 
 
 YOUTH AND THE RACE 
 
 We shall get on with the sound re-direction of 
 society just as fast as we prepare to do so through a 
 knowledge of the race inheritance potential in every 
 normal individual. We shall be prepared to give ad- 
 vice to the leaders of the vast human procession at 
 large, therefore, in proportion as we read clearly the 
 mandates of the heart of the young adolescent dreamer. 
 It is here if ever that the young individual goes "over 
 the top." It is here that the vision of youth takes 
 its first and greatest broad sweep over the behaviour 
 of mankind in general and of womankind in particular. 
 
 The high-school teacher who is not familiar with 
 the adolescent young nature as the greatest fact in 
 relation to the curriculum, is simply working in a blind 
 
ADOLESCENT LOVE 85 
 
 alley. The statesman who would make laws to gov- 
 ern the land without a knowledge of the fundamental 
 heart hunger and social need of youth is likely to 
 dwindle to the dimensions of a mere politician. The 
 high councillor who may sit at a great world peace 
 conference cannot be said to possess plenary authority 
 in case he fails to recognise the fact that youth is 
 the time when the individual acquires and organises 
 his best conscious attitudes toward all the larger af- 
 fairs of human society. 
 
 ROMANCE AND RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 It is futile to assume that post-war reconstruction 
 is to be an accomplishment of a brief season or of a 
 year or two. While a big pretentious programme may 
 be launched rather quickly, to carry it out requires a 
 vast amount of propaganda, direction and education. 
 So reconstruction is, properly so called, a continuous 
 affair. 
 
 Now, a large and powerful aspect of the normal life 
 of society is romance, and this in turn has its begin- 
 ning and its best sanction from the inherent mating 
 tendency of adolescence. All the world not only loves 
 the lover, but all the world is certain to mix in with 
 his affairs. A practical programme for society at large 
 must therefore take strict cognizance of the necessary 
 and large amount of trial and error of youthful lovers, 
 of the more serious problem of the young person in 
 finding a suitable life mate, and of the strong romantic 
 thread which binds together many of the common in- 
 terests of the human family. 
 
86 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 And now, by returning to one of our basic ideals, 
 namely, that the only way to bring a real democracy 
 in the world is for the growing young to produce it 
 out of their living experiences if we a^ain start from 
 this point, we readily observe the necessity of guiding 
 every adolescent boy and girl carefully through the 
 mighty race epoch into which they have been plunged 
 by nature's plan. 
 
 THE BOOK OF WISDOM 
 
 The new Book of Wisdom for adolescence, there- 
 fore, is the book of love dreams. Its first pages are 
 inspired by a somewhat vague sexual desire, but its 
 chapters soon lead into a broadening social experience. 
 The first duty of the young here is to plunge into 
 social life as the avenues open up and flounder through 
 as best he can. The first duty of society of the 
 home, the school, the church and the other directive 
 institutions is to give the best guidance which so- 
 ciety at large has acquired from its own trial and error. 
 
 Our traditional error in dealing with youth is to 
 regard its desires as whimsical and the satisfaction of 
 them as so much pleasure necessary to be gratified in 
 order that we may preserve the peace of the home and 
 the school. We have failed largely to understand that 
 adolescent love-making is not merely for fun and 
 amusement, that the social experiences to which it 
 leads are not justified on the ground of a mere pleasant 
 diversion; but that the love passion of the young is 
 the master-key to the direction of society, both now 
 and in the future. Adolescent love-making which 
 
ADOLESCENT LOVE 87 
 
 acts chiefly through youthful sociability is at its 
 time of life the only significant agency we possess for 
 acquainting the young with his own inner life, for fa- 
 miliarising him with the normal behaviour of man 
 and for introducing him to the major interests of 
 human society. 
 
 STUDY OF THE SEXES 
 
 The leading study for boys of the adolescent age 
 is girls and the leading study for girls is boys. By 
 this it is not meant to insist that there should be any 
 such thing as a text-book course of the kind here 
 implied specifically labeled and outlined as such. 
 The meaning in general is this : The only way to be 
 certain that a young person of the class named will 
 show a genuine interest in a topic of study is to make 
 apparent its relations to the social and racial activities 
 just now most attractive to the learner. 
 
 The co-educational school is the only possible form 
 of democratic institution during adolescence because 
 it is the only kind of school which at this time of 
 life can be made a laboratory of racial experience. 
 You may segregate boys in a high school of their 
 own and perhaps so secure an easier discipline and 
 a few higher class grades in the routine lesson topics. 
 But we must remember that the lessons are not, prop- 
 erly considered, to be pursued for their own sake. 
 They are not merely a means of making grades, of 
 gaining promotions and of securing evidence of suc- 
 cessful study. All the real lessons in the school are 
 for the sake of life more abundant. Their purpose 
 
88 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 is fundamentally that of promoting a happy and help- 
 ful relation of the learner to others and to society both 
 present and future. 
 
 The segregated school may be a better book school 
 but it is a poorer life school. The youth who is taken 
 thus away from daily association with girls is cheated 
 out of his best time and opportunity for learning how 
 the other half of the race lives. And if he fails now 
 to learn from the great book of experience, from inti- 
 mate fellowship with them, just what the normal be- 
 haviour of girls is, he will most probably always 
 remain weak in his ability to understand the true na- 
 ture of mature woman of a mother, a sister, a wife 
 or a daughter. 
 
 If, in truth, "Man's inhumanity to man makes 
 countless thousands mourn," so may it be said that 
 man's inhumanity to woman makes countless thou- 
 sands wretched and miserable. In so far as a man 
 is unacquainted with the peculiar nature and disposi- 
 tion of womankind, to that extent he is unfitted for 
 the duties of a husband, a father and a citizen. 
 
 ALL MUST KNOW ALL 
 
 To know man through and through is the first great 
 duty of the individual to himself and to society. But 
 to know man at his best and to the best advantage to 
 the learner is to gain each necessary part of the knowl- 
 edge of man at the particular time when one's interest 
 in that part is at its height. Early childhood is the 
 age of things. The learner is best taught through his 
 dealing with the objects and instruments which relate 
 
ADOLESCENT LOVE 89 
 
 to ordinary work and welfare. Pre-adolescence is 
 the age of deeds, especially those of daring and hero- 
 ism, and the eager attention is now directed to the 
 scouting, the hunting and the belligerent aspects of 
 human conduct. Finally, adolescence is the age of 
 love and courting, a time when the alert young mind 
 is easiest moulded by a study of all the forms of 
 human behaviour tinctured with romance. 
 
 How each side of the human family should behave 
 in reference to the other side how a man in every 
 conceivable situation should behave toward woman; 
 and conversely, how a woman should behave toward 
 man this is the dominant issue during a brief period 
 of every young person's career. And the free, but 
 always safeguarded, mingling of the sexes during 
 adolescence, is the only way whereby society may be 
 assured of the benefits of this happy mutual acquain- 
 tance. 
 
 THE WHITE SLAVE AND SAVAGERY 
 
 Among the many momentous tasks of post-war re- 
 construction is to do away with the age-old practice 
 of white slavery. And the first important step in 
 solution of this world problem is to quit dealing with 
 symptoms and to take up real causes. To imprison 
 and fine and otherwise punish men for their attack on 
 the virtue of women and to continue through a wrong 
 policy of training to produce men who harbour a be- 
 lief in man's right to such an attack so long as it is 
 confined to a certain class that is the fundamental 
 error. The world is crowded full of men who com- 
 placently accept the theory of "sexual necessity" and 
 
90 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 who regard it as necessary for the detached man to 
 hide away from his own occasionally in tne practice 
 of some form of "white slavery." 
 
 Now all this vile mistreatment of woman by man 
 dates far back to the time when woman was regarded 
 as a part of the legitimate spoils of war. She was 
 then mere property. And, while one of the major 
 belligerent powers in the recent world war lapsed into 
 this old shocking form of brutalism, it is now most 
 cheering to observe the tendency of the conquering 
 nations to regard even the material spoils given up 
 by the enemy as a trust fund to be used in restoring 
 the world to its lost poise and supremacy. This higher 
 regard for material booty implies of course a most 
 tender and sympathetic treatment of such weak and 
 innocent victims of the war as women and children. 
 To treat the wives and sisters of a fallen foe as if they 
 were the members of one's home community is an 
 epoch-making event in the history of all warfare. 
 
 But the deep-seated cause of white slavery in all its 
 forms is the ordinary man's erroneous opinion of the 
 nature of woman and her true place in society. Re- 
 move this state of ignorance through careful and 
 timely processes of training and you will thus remove 
 man's chief crime against himself and against the 
 peace and well-being of mankind. 
 
 Every normal, well-trained man is naturally a lover 
 of all womankind. But the lover is never a despoiler ; 
 he is always a defender. If, by and through the 
 natural advantages of social intermingling as outlined 
 above, the youth becomes gradually cognizant of 
 woman as a full half of the human family, as constant 
 
ADOLESCENT LOVE 91 
 
 and equal companion of man, as the delicate vessel 
 into which the Almighty has stored up a vital part 
 of the rich treasury of human inheritance, as the 
 potential lover and patient care-taker of innocent child- 
 hood when a youth once acquires these significant 
 interpretations of girlhood and womanhood it will be 
 quite as unthinkable for him to do violence to some one 
 else's sister even though weak and wayward as to 
 his own. 
 
 A NEW TYPE OF MANHOOD 
 
 What the re-makers of society must therefore plan 
 for is a generation of men who have acquired an atti- 
 tude of gallantry toward womankind. What is the 
 real value of having peace in the world, with all its 
 alleged good-will and its mountains of business thrift 
 and enterprise, so long as woman is looked upon as 
 the proper prey of man's baser passions? 
 
 THE NEW MARRIAGE 
 
 Our ideal of Man as the centre of the universe and 
 of all things worth while within it, is both masculine 
 and feminine. It implies the full and equal right of 
 woman to develop her inherent powers along with 
 man's and each equally to supplement the other. It 
 implies the incomplete existence of the one without 
 the other, and the full knowledge of the one as to 
 what constitutes the peculiar inherent nature and right 
 of the other. It implies a careful plan of guidance of 
 each sex while passing through the period of emo- 
 
92 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 tional storm in relation to the other, until a set of 
 rational life habits can be set up. 
 
 Guided only by impulse and emotion early youth 
 possesses very little common sense on the question of 
 marriage. Through the effort of the various educa- 
 tional institutions, society must learn to teach its young 
 how to choose a life mate, and by all fair means must 
 hold off that final choice till emotional prompting is 
 properly balanced with adequate experience and ra- 
 tional judgment. So long as the family tie is weak 
 and the general status of the family insecure, society 
 at large can at best make progress only by skips and 
 stops. The prospect of a permanent peace for the 
 race is bound up with the prospect of a steady-going 
 and happy family as the type among the nations. 
 
 Finally, this new age of attempted re-examination 
 and re-direction of Common Man calls for a new field 
 of educational literature, and to cover it a set of texts 
 which would accomplish the following: 
 
 1. Explain to teachers of adolescents how they may 
 relate all the lessons of the schools to the dominant 
 romantic interest of youth. 
 
 2. Explain to parents how they may best treat the 
 love affairs of their young sons and daughters in a 
 sane and serious manner. 
 
 3. Explain to social workers how to proceed in their 
 effort to reunite the members of a broken family and 
 to avoid the scandal of a divorce. 
 
 4. Explain to statesmen and governing bodies how 
 to enact measures suited to promote a natural and 
 wholesome relation of the sexes in common society. 
 
 5. Explain to world builders how to consider all 
 
ADOLESCENT LOVE 93 
 
 mankind including the feminine elements of eternal 
 and inherent human nature in their programme of 
 race betterment. 
 
 To sum it all up, here is the order of events appli- 
 cable to the text of the present discussion : Adolescent 
 love is very animal-like, seeking directly its personal 
 satisfaction. Family love is less selfish and is very 
 human in its relation to those closest of kin. Racial 
 love is divine, for it recognises the laws of God as 
 inherent in the frame of Common Man. And each 
 of these is an epoch-making movement through that 
 chain of mighty processes which finally embodies in 
 man some of the attributes of Deity. The higher 
 perfection of Man on the earth implies a guarantee 
 that his forebears shall lead him patiently and faith- 
 fully through these three great cycles of normal human 
 experience. 
 
IX 
 RELIGION AS A PART OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 I, a member of a regular, orthodox, Protestant 
 church, am now ready to worship with any or all the 
 religious bodies of the so-called enlightened world 
 with Hebrew or Gentile, with Catholic or Protestant, 
 with Unitarian or Trinitarian, with Christian Scientist 
 or Theosophist. All these forms of religious belief 
 and doctrine are very dear to me, but the worshippers 
 themselves are more so. I can go into the church 
 or temple or other place of service with any of these 
 and worship reverently. I am ready, too, to join 
 them all in a sort of spiritual federation. 
 
 DEITY IN MAN 
 
 I worship God through Man. To know God is first 
 to know Man and to know Man is to worship the 
 Divinity in him. Some persons are inspired to wor> 
 ship through the majesty of the mountains, some 
 through the terror of the rolling billows, some through 
 the mystery of the starry heavens, and some through 
 the whisperings of the subjective spirit. But Man is 
 my best expression of Deity, and so I bow reverently 
 at this shrine. 
 
 There are those who firmly believe that Jesus Christ 
 
 94 
 
RELIGION AS PART OF DEMOCRACY 95 
 
 was divine. Be it so. I do not deny that, for he 
 is certainly my Master. I am every day busy going 
 to school to him. His figure has come through the 
 recent world catastrophe as a sort of Unshaken Rock 
 of the Ages. But I am here arguing for the divinity 
 of Man, urging that he embodies certain inherent quak 
 ities which are eternal and infinite and which lead the 
 mind out to an Unsearchable First Cause. 
 
 Among certain sects there has been much said and 
 written about "the inspiration of the Scriptures," "the 
 sacredness of Holy Writ," and the like. With those 
 who so express themselves I have no disagreement. 
 Indeed, I admire and commend them for the practice. 
 But without intending to detract any reverence from 
 the Bible I am ready to declare that the common child 
 appeals to me as being an even more sacred thing than 
 any Bible ever written. The child seems to come as 
 a more direct expression of the mind and handiwork 
 of Deity. 
 
 THE INFINITE CHILD 
 
 If God wrote the Holy Word and gave it to man, 
 He did so but once and that long ago. The religious 
 and factional quarrels which have swept over the pages 
 of the Scriptures during past centuries; the possible 
 ignorance, prejudice and superstition of the many in- 
 terpreters and translators of the Bible have made its 
 exact origin and authorship a matter of doubt to many. 
 And so we have higher criticism and predestination- 
 ism as two extremes of attitude toward the meaning of 
 this body of sacred literature. 
 
 But I am in hearty sympathy with both of these ex- 
 
96 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 tremes and with all who come between them. I ob- 
 serve them all as engaged in an earnest and honest 
 endeavour to give expression to one of the eternal 
 inherent elements of Great Common Man. And I see 
 in their final decision a colouring of acceptance a 
 difference of interpretation which points back to a 
 radical difference in early environment. 
 
 But the human infant was not merely sent into the 
 world once, ages ago, for the same general pattern 
 of him continues to be sent. If we misjudge him 
 once, there he is again, and we may have another true 
 trial. If we spoil him during one generation, Divinity 
 sends us another mighty troop of him in order that 
 we may further inquire into his unsullied eternal 
 nature. 
 
 AT THE SHRINE OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 And so I worship at the shrine of childhood. It 
 is not this assembly of flesh and blood and nerves 
 which especially inspires me, but rather this eternal 
 pattern which is forced into the world and which em- 
 bodies potentially the sum-total of all the highest 
 activities of which mortal man is capable. It is the 
 eternal and infinite possibilities within this innocent 
 little creature which fill me with awe and reverence. 
 
 To me, it seems impossible to know God until we 
 first know Man. And just here it would appear that 
 the fundamental religious blunder of the ages has been 
 the disposition to try to know God direct. Men dur- 
 ing past ages everywhere have set up their own ab- 
 stract conception of Deity and quarrelled and fought 
 over that. Deity as defined by many thinkers has thus 
 
RELIGION AS PART OF DEMOCRACY 97 
 
 been set apart from, or over against, the human; 
 and has left mystery and superstition to fill up the gap. 
 But if we should all come to the feet of the little 
 child as the beginning of our worship and as the most 
 refined, concrete expression of the Mind of God, I am 
 certain that our religious practice and worship would 
 not diverge widely during a lifetime. 
 
 THE CHILD AND RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 What we are seeking here is a religious basis for 
 the reconstruction of society. The general purpose is 
 to show how to know man by reproducing him 
 through the medium of our individual experience. 
 That is, the only apparent way to understand the na- 
 ture and disposition of Common Man and thus wend 
 our way toward democracy is for one to have passed 
 through all the epochs of growth and unfoldment 
 called for by our common inherent nature. To repeat 
 what has been more than once stated above, to know 
 humankind is to participate with others in all the 
 larger inherent lines of human conduct to play, to 
 work, to contend, to romance, to worship, and so on, 
 with the common crowd. 
 
 YOUR OWN SALVATION 
 
 "Work out your own salvation with fear and trem- 
 bling," through the great transitional eras of exist- 
 ence as given above ; and thus, in a reverent sense, be- 
 come your own saviour. When you arrive at the 
 middle-teen age, and the instinct for religion has its 
 
98 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 first awakening, then begins your own salvation your 
 new form of self-discovery through a more active 
 religious experience. 
 
 And so, one finds God by first becoming Man. He 
 struggles on through all the racial forms of endeavour 
 and finally discovers the essence of the entire human 
 family as embodied in himself; and he observes all 
 this as the highest expression of the Infinite Mind here 
 on the earth. The normal individual thus comes 
 into the world as a new-born infant and yet without 
 knowledge of his eternal divine nature. This knowl- 
 edge comes to him slowly as he passes through the 
 racial experiences and finally he discovers God in 
 Man and is ready to worship. 
 
 RELIGION AND EDUCATION 
 
 For ages there has been trouble between the church 
 and the school; and for a long time, previous to the 
 Renaissance, the church refused to permit the school 
 to exist independently. This prejudice against free 
 education marked the ages of the worship of creed 
 and dogma and of the early supermanism when or- 
 dinary man was not regarded as capable of thinking 
 for himself. The quarrel between the church and the 
 school is slowly waning but it will not disappear en- 
 tirely so long as religion is regarded as something 
 merely to be taught rather than something to be ac- 
 quired through experience. During recent years the 
 public school has lost a part of its fear and has made 
 some weak attempts to introduce religion into its 
 course. But this has brought the learner only a sort 
 
RELIGION AS PART OF DEMOCRACY 99 
 
 of pale abstract of all the more common religious 
 dogma. 
 
 There is one method whereby religion may be safely 
 taught in the schools, and that is through the psycho- 
 logic and sociologic approach outlined above. For the 
 child to study the great laws of nature as expressed 
 in the living things of the world, the biologic sciences 
 in outline; and then to inquire into the greater laws 
 of nature, as shown forth in his own individual-racial 
 unfoldment that is to prepare him for worship. 
 This experience of rinding the laws of God written 
 within one's own being comes to the individual nor- 
 mally during middle adolescence, when he is wont to 
 manifest his first emotional interest in religion. 
 
 After the ordinary young person has proceeded nor- 
 mally through the racial epochs inherent within him, 
 as suggested above, until he has passed into the storm 
 of religious emotionalism, I care not what church or 
 creed he may happen to select as his best instrument 
 of religious practice. He now belongs to the great 
 heart of humanity and humanity belongs to him. He 
 has found the Christ in himself, the God in his own 
 being, and he naturally looks upward and onward into 
 the Infinite for the ultimate object of his worship. 
 
 RELIGION NOT A SAVIOUR 
 
 Another historic error of the church, and a present 
 stumbling block to the re-direction of society, is the 
 assumption that religion alone is a means of human 
 salvation. During the recent war, did we not behold 
 intelligent men on both sides praying to what seemed 
 
ioo MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 to be the same God to give them the victory? But 
 this double-headed deity to which they prayed was 
 merely a part of the tragedy of a dual humanity which 
 split the believers asunder. That is, the basis of the 
 conflict was not a different opinion as to which side 
 God favoured but a fundamental difference of view 
 as to what Man is. 
 
 Now, as we trace this age-old quarrel over the place 
 of religion in human existence and the possible favour- 
 itism of God, we note the first false step as that of 
 making a sort of saviour or fetish out of religion 
 itself. Religion was taken out of its normal place 
 in human existence, and out of its regular order in 
 the course of natural development : and some one pro- 
 claimed, behold, this will save you. 
 
 Now religion will not save a man any more than 
 will work. Religion is no more a means of salvation 
 of the human soul than is vocational occupation or 
 the experience of rearing a family. In other words, 
 the idea here advanced is that the whole man must 
 be saved together, or none. No one part of him not 
 even religion taken alone, will save him. Religion is 
 one of the group of co-ordinate elements in the superb 
 treasury of human inheritance. It is neither greater 
 nor less than any of the other elements. To stand it 
 on a pinnacle by itself, as many religious zealots have 
 done; to regard religion as a thing apart from the 
 other human dispositions and a quality which Deity 
 specially favours this is not to save man but to lose 
 a greater part of him. 
 
RELIGION AS PART OF DEMOCRACY 101 
 
 MAN WILL DECIDE IT 
 
 Salvation is to live a relatively complete normal 
 life, through all the human epochs of earthly exist- 
 ence, and finally to discover the best exemplification of 
 God as hidden in the laws of Man. I see no hope of 
 the historic quarrel between churches and creeds other 
 than to take Man as potentially embodied in the un- 
 folding personality as the universal creed. If the 
 religious instinct is permitted to take its turn in 
 awakening just as we usually permit the sex instinct 
 to wait till adolescence for its orientation then the 
 differences in creed and religious doctrine will soften 
 into a pleasing variety of personal view point. 
 After that, the fear that some particular creed will 
 overrun the earth will no longer exist, as all creeds 
 will grow out of the same basic programme of ex- 
 periences. 
 
 No one is perfect, no life so complete but that it is 
 a fragment of the divine perfection of Man. So long 
 as the race lives we shall continue to make blunders 
 in our industry, in our social welfare, in our family 
 life, and the like. Similarly, we shall go on com- 
 mitting errors in our religious life. But, under the 
 theory of human progress here outlined, the most sig- 
 nificant fact remains that we shall have the unspoiled 
 pattern of the Child Eternal to go back to for cor- 
 rection. To lose sight of this point is to lose the 
 substance of our entire argument. 
 
MA2x T ^HD THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 SEPARATE "iSMS" 
 
 The chief objection to socialism, industrialism, the 
 separate church movement, and the other "isms" is 
 that they lack many of the elements of complete hu- 
 manism. They are attempts to make one part of 
 Man save all the parts of him. Any one of these 
 "isms" may seem for the time of its ascendency to be 
 leading mankind out of the wilderness of confusion 
 about himself, but in the end they fail and something 
 else has to be started. As surely as we advance some 
 part of human nature the industrial, the social, the 
 religious beyond the other parts, the elements neg- 
 lected begin to starve and cry out for nurture. Re- 
 call the history of civilisation for evidence of the fact 
 that mankind has surged impetuously through all 
 these forms of searching for his own soul, only to 
 drop each after it failed to satisfy. 
 
 Comte was right in his ideal of a religion of Man 
 if he had not lost sight of God and failed to explain 
 the aspect of Man which alone is worthy of worship ; 
 that is, the eternal nature which comes to earth through 
 the infant life and expands into the ordinary human 
 personality. 
 
 AN OPEN CHALLENGE 
 
 This discussion is not to be construed as an attack 
 on any existent form of religion. It is not a denial of 
 the truth as alleged of any religious creed. It is not 
 a denial of the inspiration of the Scriptures or of the 
 divinity of Christ. It is not a denial of the right 
 
RELIGION AS PART OF DEMOCRACY 103 
 
 of every one to worship God in accordance with the 
 dictates of his own conscience. It is not a denial of 
 the fact that common worshippers as they assemble in 
 their respective churches obtain untold good and de- 
 lightful inspiration out of their acts of divine service. 
 
 This discussion, on the other hand, is meant as a 
 challenge for the adherents of all creeds to come to- 
 gether for a while and examine the inherent nature of 
 Man as it unfolds during a complete normal life, for 
 new light and possibly a new point of departure for all 
 religions. It is a challenge to those who pretend to 
 be the appointed leaders in the reconstruction of civili- 
 sation to accept this common human nature easily 
 accessible by study of it as a possible basis upon 
 which to unify and solidify all the important elements 
 of human progress. And in this particular chapter, 
 it is a challenge to all the would-be guardians of 
 human destiny to see to it that the entire inherent 
 nature of Man including the religious element and 
 not certain parts of it, shall have full consideration in 
 the proposed outline of world progress. 
 
 If you respond here with the statement that many 
 individuals and some entire peoples seem to manifest 
 little or no religious desire I will reply that such per- 
 sons very probably never got that far with their un- 
 foldment. As matters are now we do not pretend to 
 develop all personalities through all the racial instincts. 
 We halt the great masses early, put them to work "to 
 make a living'* and thus force upon them permanent 
 under-development. 
 
 Finally speaking in the first person only to illus- 
 trate more easily the point of view desired for all 
 
104 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 mankind finally, when I come to a knowledge of my 
 full self through racial experience and recognise God 
 as expressing Himself in the eternal nature of the 
 common individual, I wish to be able to look farther 
 on and behold as it were the face of the Eternal Father 
 Himself. I wish to feel His presence within my being 
 as a personal relationship while I commune with his 
 Infinite Spirit with all the emotional warmth and 
 sympathy known to the most intimate human friend- 
 ship. 
 
HEALTH AS AN ELEMENT OF CIVILISATION 
 
 This dawn of a new civilisation has brought a 
 charming vision of the possibilities of a resurrected 
 physical life for all the people. The idea is this : Dur- 
 ing his growing years the child possesses the same 
 divine right to good health as to his full share of 
 food, shelter and schooling. And, like the general 
 education of the young, the item of health is to be 
 both guaranteed and required by public authority. 
 
 NEW DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 
 
 Like the Golden Rule the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence never remains a fixed and permanently defin- 
 able fact. Each of these grows in its significance and 
 changes in its application to every new age. "The 
 right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," is 
 now about to include the right of the individual to 
 be well and strong physically in so far as public care 
 and service can bring this important matter about. 
 
 It required many generations here in America for 
 the people to reach the conclusion that the child in- 
 herits a right to an education and that the matter must 
 not be determined by the opinion or convenience of the 
 parent or guardian. During all this long period of 
 
 105 
 
io6 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 struggle for human right and higher light on the true 
 way of life, the parent was permitted to say, "This 
 is my child. I shall do as I please about sending him 
 to school." But now the people say, "This is also 
 our child and he must be educated, both for his own 
 sake and for ours." 
 
 For a while the individual parent resisted the idea 
 of compulsory education of his child as an interference 
 with his "personal liberty." But now the rule is ac- 
 cepted everywhere as a foregone conclusion and a 
 righteous measure. So with the problem of health, 
 which is indeed an aspect of public education. Under 
 the new order, just now arising, the health of the 
 child is not to remain uncertain or jeopardised by the 
 mere opinion or whim of the individual parent. The 
 inherent right of the common child to rugged health 
 and the proprietary right of the people to enjoy the 
 benefits therefrom these are to prevail, and public 
 health measures are to be ranked co-ordinately with 
 public school measures. 
 
 HEALTH AS INHERITANCE 
 
 But the radical and far-reaching change in public 
 opinion, and the one which over-shadows all other 
 arguments in behalf . of the new public health pro- 
 gramme, is herein outlined. Health is potential rather 
 than real. The ordinary child is neither sound nor 
 diseased inherently, just as he is neither good nor bad 
 morally till conditions make him one or the other. In 
 the vast majority of normal children there is at birth 
 
HEALTH AND CIVILISATION 107 
 
 a latent possibility of physical well-being and likewise 
 a potentiality of weakness and disease. 
 
 The idea here in mind must be made clear even at 
 the expense of tedious repetition, for upon its meaning 
 seem to hinge the vast possibilities of a future pro- 
 gramme for the health of society. Under the former 
 rule the tendency has been to regard the health of the 
 individual too much as a matter of family breeding. 
 Those whose children were strong and well were listed 
 as "sound parental stock," and those whose children 
 were sickly, as inherently diseased. But a radical 
 change has come. It has been found that a child 
 sound at birth may become permanently diseased 
 through neglect of a certain set of controllable en- 
 vironmental factors; and that a child seemingly weak 
 at birth may be made strong and rugged through the 
 strict enforcement of certain well known measures. 
 
 Wherefore, it is now being accepted as a new rule 
 for civilisation that the health of the ordinary child 
 is not necessarily real but merely potential, that health 
 is a thing to be obtained through right care and prac- 
 tice just as is the case with morals and civic righteous- 
 ness. In short, the situation as now understood 
 seems to present itself to the public mind as follows : 
 The health of the individual is merely a latent inher- 
 itance from the common race stock. If you would 
 have it as a fact, then, work for it accordingly. You 
 may make physical health a beautiful and radiant 
 affair if you are willing to pay the price of its accom- 
 plishment. Good health for practically all the people, 
 and that as a grand public and private achievement 
 
io8 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 such is the stirring vision of which the public mind is 
 now getting its first alluring glimpse. 
 
 HAS THE EUGENIST FAILED? 
 
 The modern eugenist has led us far into the wilder- 
 ness, but he is now coming back. He has pursued a 
 too negative programme of research and has found 
 too much supposedly inherent disease, deformity and 
 degeneracy. As a result of this and other one-sided 
 quests a social, and even a racial pessimism has be- 
 clouded our vision and misguided much of our effort 
 at self -improvement. But under the extreme neces- 
 sity of recruiting a large sound army and in the midst 
 of the terrible death-dealing experiences of the war 
 the inherent health and physical superbness of the 
 common race stock has been re-discovered. We have 
 found that this inherent health and potential strength 
 is a common racial treasury to be brought out only 
 through wise effort and that this positive side of hu- 
 man inheritance far outweighs the negative side. 
 
 The eugenist has been working on the negative side. 
 He has played up his conclusions before the public 
 mind and made the morbid appear as the rule instead 
 of the important exception, which it is. He needs to 
 trace out more of the overwhelming number of posi- 
 tive and wholesome race factors and give these a wide 
 publicity. It is true, to a certain extent, that "blood 
 tells.'* Some diseases and some malformations seem 
 to be transmissible, but these exceptional matters of 
 weakness will tend to disappear as we proceed with a 
 sane, constructive programme of public health meas- 
 
HEALTH AND CIVILISATION 109 
 
 ures. As soon as the people at large become ac- 
 quainted with the general plan and the purpose of the 
 health movement they will gradually work out their 
 own physical salvation. 
 
 Wherefore, like the ore which conies out of the 
 mine and must pass through many processes before it 
 is ready for the open market, so is the crude treasury 
 of physical and spiritual wealth which comes into the 
 world through the instrumentality of common child- 
 hood. All these elements must be brought out through 
 wise effort and passed through the crucible of extreme 
 care and safe-guarding before they are ready for pub- 
 lic service. Thus we have a sort of continued self- 
 realisation of health inheritance as a part of the com- 
 plete race experience. 
 
 THE EVERLASTING TIE 
 
 Many writers seem not to have discovered the real 
 tie that binds a people in a close bond of fellowship and 
 mutual good-will. It is not so called common blood 
 and racial kinship but common experience of trial and 
 tribulation, of suffering and sorrow, of treasure and 
 triumph. We should become cold and inhuman indeed 
 did we not have to assist one another through the com- 
 mon racial experiences. We should soon lose sight of 
 the needs of the young and ignore their resultant suf- 
 fering, were we not compelled by force of circum- 
 stances to assist them constantly with the problems of 
 their existence. So, a Wise Providence has placed be- 
 fore us the never-ending task of assisting the young to 
 be born and to struggle through the manifoldness of 
 
no MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 experience out of which the full-blown human person- 
 ality can be evolved. 
 
 And, within this task of helping all the children to 
 grow up, there lies the plain public duty herein advo- 
 cated, the duty of assisting the young to a full realisa- 
 tion of his potential health. We may at first shrink 
 from this call to service, but once it is faithfully an- 
 swered, we shall find the sympathetic cord which 
 binds one generation to the next. 
 
 COMPULSORY HEALTH 
 
 Thirty-seven and a half per cent, of all the children 
 born in Great Britain are dead from various causes 
 mostly preventable before they reach the age of fif- 
 teen. Thirty-five per cent, of the first three million 
 men which America examined for service in the great 
 war were found to be physically unfit. The chief 
 items of rejection referred to eyes, teeth, heart, feet, 
 hernia, underweight nearly all matters of easy pre- 
 vention if treated in time. Repeated surveys among 
 school children have revealed the fact that only a 
 small percentage happen to combine in their make-up 
 all the factors of natural unaided good health, that 
 the great majority suffer from a list of minor ailments, 
 any one of which through neglect may become a 
 chronic interference with ultimate good citizenship. 
 Eye-strain, adenoids, bad diet, under-nourishment, 
 nerve disorders, and the like perhaps ninety-five per 
 cent, remediable these are the first great stumbling 
 blocks to a high and happy state of civilisation. These 
 also indicate the first and fundamental duty of any 
 
HEALTH AND CIVILISATION in 
 
 municipality or commonwealth to its members as being 
 the promotion of a strong and aggressive programme 
 of sound good health for all. 
 
 We are most certainly approaching a policy of com- 
 pulsory health education. In the old school the delin- 
 quent was the child who quit. Now the delinquent 
 is the parent who fails to send him. Formerly sick- 
 ness among children was a sort of will-of-God charge- 
 able to no one. Now the illness of the child is about 
 to be checked up to the authorities who are responsible 
 for the common weal. The commonwealth is the com- 
 mon health, and for the sake of this treasury of com- 
 mon goods the common individual must be required 
 to obtain the best possible health for himself and the 
 members of his family, and preserve it so. 
 
 PUBLIC SCHOOL ENLISTMENT 
 
 Granting first of all the right of the individual par- 
 ent to determine the school of healing and the prac- 
 titioner whereto his child is to be taken for treatment, 
 the public is getting ready to demand a physical ex- 
 amination of all pupils at the time of their annual 
 enrolment in the school, and as much oftener as public 
 safety seems to demand. The physical condition of 
 every child will be listed on a record card, with full 
 recommendation and request for treatment. The re- 
 quest will perhaps avoid prescriptions and will assume 
 merely a demand that the parent attend at once to 
 the needs of the case in question and be able to show 
 reasonable results. In order to avoid the possibility 
 of favouritism of any particular school of medicine or 
 
ii2 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 healing there should be in many cases of disease 
 and doubtless there will be permitted an option be- 
 tween a free public clinic and private treatment by 
 the family physician. 
 
 For the sake of the individual and for its own wel- 
 fare public authority must go further. It must attack 
 the ailments of children before the little ones are old 
 enough to enter school and clear out disease and in- 
 sanitation in every place wherein these may be found. 
 Whenever the people themselves once inaugurate this 
 aggressive measure of early prevention of disease they 
 will quickly learn how to accede to its demands and 
 even to give it hearty support. 
 
 ROOM FOR ALL SCHOOLS 
 
 Since medicine and healing are not as yet standard- 
 ised as exact sciences, I hold to the view that every 
 form of treatment, new and old, should with some 
 cautions and provisions be given its chance. During 
 the world war all the great religious bodies many of 
 them hitherto bitterly in conflict one with another 
 were invited to come in and offer their several forms 
 of ministry. The trial worked charmingly; and as 
 a result these spiritual foes have come closer together 
 than ever before. So, I should say to all the "pathies" 
 in medicine and healing, "Come on in and do your 
 part. Only you must work together in a team and 
 supplement one another. Where one fails the other 
 may succeed. None of you has the whole truth about 
 healing, yet each of you may have at least one valuable 
 
HEALTH AND CIVILISATION 113 
 
 truth. Come on in and join hands and hearts in the 
 service of the common good." 
 
 And in this connection, it must be urged that the 
 time has now come for us to take the administration 
 of the public health out of the hands of partisan spe- 
 cialists and place it in charge of wise and broad- 
 minded laymen those who will give every school of 
 health treatment a fair test as to merit and results, 
 and who will render on the basis of this a programme 
 of guidance to the public. 
 
 LEAVES OF HEALING 
 
 As exemplified by the grand health programme con- 
 ducted by the Red Cross during the war one may catch 
 a vision of a possible world-wide crusade for the com- 
 bined physical and spiritual healing of the nations of 
 the earth. When the American Red Cross hurried 
 into the hungry and disease-ridden back areas of 
 France with its food and health for the starving 
 women and children the heart of that suffering nation 
 was deeply touched. Not only were the emaciated 
 mothers loud and continuous in their thanksgiving 
 and praise for the generous relief which America had 
 brought, but stout-hearted and war-worn Frenchmen 
 far out in the trenches burst into convulsions of weep- 
 ing upon hearing this strange piece of epoch-making 
 news. 
 
 And so, while rivers of blood of the heroes slain 
 were flowing down to the sea and men along the battle- 
 lines were skulking under cover to strike one another 
 down like midnight assassins, God was forcing a new 
 
114 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 way of ministry among the innocent, suffering human- 
 ity back in the homes of the warriors. With tears and 
 tenderness the Red Cross continued on its heavenly 
 mission bringing health and healing and spiritual com- 
 fort for the innocent and helpless victims of the war. 
 Without including the immeasurable blessings of relief 
 and succour which it carried to the wounded soldiers, 
 the account of its ministry to the women and children 
 back home will go down in history as one of the 
 brightest pages in the history of human welfare. 
 
 A VAST HEALTH CRUSADE 
 
 And now we come upon a most promising and far- 
 reaching vision with which the re-makers of civilisa- 
 tion might well be inspired. It is this : To unite their 
 efforts and organise their forces on a gigantic scale 
 for the purpose of conducting a health crusade to all 
 the war-torn peoples of Europe and, incidentally, to 
 all the world. The best work undertaken by the 
 church missionary societies in foreign lands during the 
 past generation a vast work which has never received 
 half its deserved praise and credit the best work done 
 by these bodies has been that of a combined pro- 
 gramme of health, sanitation, general education and 
 spiritual nurture. 
 
 But this wise and generous conception of missionary 
 health service is too big an undertaking to be turned 
 over to a few struggling church societies. It should 
 be immediately taken up by the great and enlightened 
 nations as part of a mighty scheme of regenerating and 
 redeeming mankind. Every item of equipment and 
 
HEALTH AND CIVILISATION 115 
 
 every dollar of the cost should be charged to the na- 
 tions in the compact and their efforts should proceed 
 along the lines followed by the American Red Cross 
 service in France, as sketched above. 
 
 If there could be conducted among the war-depleted 
 nations of Europe a vast missionary health crusade as 
 here suggested the hearts of the people everywhere 
 would be melted with sympathy and tender regard. 
 The mission should proceed itself with careful propa- 
 ganda and its offerings should be absolutely free for 
 the taking to all of the former friend and foe alike. 
 Its motto of service should be, in the phrase of the 
 Great Master Teacher, "Whosoever will may come," 
 and yet no one should be compelled to partake of the 
 proffered benefit. 
 
 By thus first saving the bodies of the wretched and 
 disease-ridden people wherever found, the soul's sal- 
 vation would become a natural sequence. Touched 
 by the generosity and the magnanimity of their bene- 
 factors, and reassured of the absence of any selfish or 
 ulterior purpose, the hearts of those ministered unto 
 would be softened and they would naturally desire a 
 spiritual fellowship with the missionaries. What a 
 healing for the war-sick millions, what a balm for the 
 gaping wounds of the former belligerents, what a 
 blessing to the unnumbered generations yet to be born 
 on the earth, if only the powerful governments re- 
 cently associated as the Allied powers should see fit 
 to turn over a part of the mighty accumulations of 
 war machinery for a world-wide mission to carry 
 health and spiritual healing to the bleeding heart of the 
 millions of the needy wherever found ! 
 
n6 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 Finally, the great health crusade must have its more 
 intensive counterpart here at home. If we may judge 
 by the humble confessions of the entire medical fra- 
 ternity as voiced at a recent national meeting at Chi- 
 cago, medicine was never less sanguine of its ability to 
 cope with disease by means of merely curative mea- 
 sures. The influenza epidemic seemed to baffle the 
 best skill of all the schools of medicine and to confuse 
 all their once cherished methods. However, there was 
 perhaps never as to-day so hearty agreement among 
 all schools of healing as to the value of clinical ex- 
 aminations and records of the physical conditions 
 of all children; and as to the value of general team 
 work in regard to preventive and prophylactic health 
 measures. 
 
 So, the motto of the new democratic health crusade 
 here in America should be : A complete, systematic 
 and continuous system of helping all the young to 
 realise their entire potential inheritance of health and 
 physical well-being. 
 
XI 
 
 A CHANGED CONCEPTION OF LOYALTY 
 
 The thought atmosphere is now vibrant with a new 
 ideal of patriotism a form which implies a readjust- 
 ment and a strengthening of the loyalty of lesser 
 degree and its significant watchword is loyalty to 
 Man. The rights of the whole of humanity are para- 
 mount to those of any nation of human beings. A 
 deeper understanding of the universal heritage within 
 Common Man is now the order of the day and it 
 promises mighty things for the future of the race. 
 
 The world war has thrown us all back upon our- 
 selves for a new conception of loyalty. That magic 
 word, patriotism, as formerly understood, is now 
 under sharp scrutiny. Or, at least, its real signifi- 
 cance is being consciously reorganised in the minds 
 of the masses. As lured on by the ideals of the Ameri- 
 can Nation in its management of our part in the great 
 war the attentive supporters back home found them- 
 selves undergoing a strange transformation as to what 
 is worth fighting for and what is not. 
 
 LOYALTY A RACIAL INSTINCT 
 
 On consideration we find that loyalty is a distinctly 
 human trait, that it is an aspect of the racial instinct 
 
 117 
 
n8 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 for warfare and general combat and that its exact 
 definition is always modified by the circumstances in 
 the case. There is truly such a thing as loyalty among 
 thieves. The idea of loyalty first comes sharply to the 
 individual during what we call the gang age in boys. 
 And there, for the time being at least, its considera- 
 tions outweigh those of the home, the school, the 
 church or the state. Upon receiving the evidence we 
 cannot question the fact that ordinary boys may be led 
 into committing forms of crime and misdemeanour 
 if urged on by the spirit of their gang; and that they 
 may regard it as their first sacred duty to defend 
 themselves to the extreme limit of excluding the rights 
 of the adult governing institutions listed above. 
 
 Those who best understand the nature of boys never 
 venture to break down by any violent force the strong 
 tie of loyalty which binds together in a secret and 
 sworn compact the members of the gang. The only 
 safe policy in dealing with such a positive force is to 
 reorganise and re-direct it. The final procedure is 
 to show the members of the boy gang how they may 
 divide their loyalty without giving it up on weakening 
 it ; to show how to be loyal to the group when it is act- 
 ing within its rights and to the institution with which 
 it clashes when it is not. After a careful presentation 
 of the claims of all sides and the full merits of any 
 given case, the boy gang which set out to commit 
 some kind of deviltry may be led to perform some 
 kind of valued public service. 
 
CHANGED CONCEPTION OF LOYALTY 119 
 
 MEN AS OVERGROWN BOYS 
 
 A prime difficulty in respect to the continual growth 
 of a new race is the individual problem of a complete 
 unfoldment of one's own life. Character grows by 
 epochs or stages. For example, the instinct for vo- 
 cational adjustment does not awaken till the man is 
 practically grown physically. For that reason, lacking 
 adequate experience and the advantage of an inner de- 
 sire, the boy who quits school early and goes out to 
 earn a living nearly always gets into a "blind alley" and 
 remains there. He is thus destined never to know the 
 real personal significance of a self-chosen life work 
 and his effort will be correspondingly dull. 
 
 So with loyalty. Thousands of otherwise good men 
 never pass the gang stage in their conception of 
 loyalty. It is a form of retarded development. They 
 do not grow to the later point of normal development, 
 that of regarding themselves as keepers of the majesty 
 of the law and defenders of the integrity of the nation. 
 So the criminal or the convict is often a very good 
 man with a very boyish point of view the idea that 
 the law is something which the people obey only be- 
 cause they must, and which they disobey whenever 
 punishment therefor seems to be avoidable. 
 
 A COURSE OF TRAINING 
 
 Our chief fault has been that of trusting the in- 
 dividual to mature his mind and judgment unguided. 
 Loyalty and patriotism are terms which necessarily 
 imply a course of training of some kind. But it must 
 
120 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 become a part of the accepted duty of the various 
 schools to see that every individual passes through all 
 the stages of the course in patriotism until he is able 
 to think of his own career in relation both to the 
 life of the local group and the life of the race at large. 
 The crowning effort of the unfolding individual, 
 as regards loyalty, must be the discovery of his unity 
 with the life of common mankind and the resultant 
 inner conviction of his duty to support any course 
 of endeavour which tallies most closely with the in- 
 herent demands of the race. This is race loyalty and 
 may become race patriotism, than which there is none 
 higher. The duty of the school to see that the young 
 pupil slowly travels in outline over the general path 
 of race experience implies a very exacting method of 
 treatment of the learner's growing conception of loy- 
 alty, so that finally he may remain true and faithful, 
 to the gang, the school, the home, the church, the 
 community, the nation and the race. After the various 
 steps have been carefully taken in such a course, it is 
 entirely reasonable that a very ordinary type of in- 
 dividual may become enthusiastically loyal to the 
 rights of all of these. 
 
 AMERICA HAS LED 
 
 Perhaps America will receive the credit for having 
 first pointed the way to a higher loyalty than the 
 national. Her early struggle for independence estab- 
 lished for the time being a fine type of loyalty to per- 
 sonal liberty and individual rights. But that form 
 of patriotism has now come to be regarded as rather 
 
CHANGED CONCEPTION OF LOYALTY 121 
 
 boyish and selfish. The civil war raised us a step 
 higher and taught us as a nation the meaning of 
 loyalty to an undivided self. Throughout all her 
 periods of struggle for independence, freedom and 
 a united nation, however, America never arose to 
 the conception of a free humanity. That she slowly 
 stumbled upon during the world war. For the first 
 two years of the European struggle America did not 
 see this crisis as in any vital sense her own. And 
 only after her ancient "rights" began to be ignored 
 by the Prussian war lords did she come to her full 
 senses as to the meaning of the situation. 
 
 It was a charming transformation which came to 
 the hearts of the American people in the spring of 
 1917 and continued from that time on to grow in 
 magnitude. To shift from a selfish patriotism of 
 mere defence of one's rights and liberties to a patriot- 
 ism in behalf of the rights and liberties of all humanity 
 is a startling change for a hundred million people to 
 accomplish in six months' time. But we did it. 
 
 A NEW NATIONAL BUSINESS 
 
 So the American nation changed its business in a 
 very brief period of time; and along with that came 
 a change in its loyalty. Without detracting from 
 the old national loyalty the issue now became world 
 loyalty. It is interesting to consider briefly here how 
 the new purpose made nearly all the old lines of trade 
 and activity look little and mean. Men in control of 
 those types of occupation which could not put them- 
 selves on a win-the-war basis were glad to suspend 
 
122 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 so that all concerned might change their work or offer 
 their services to the nation. 
 
 There quickly developed a new and eager interest 
 in the history and the geography of the nations in- 
 volved in the conflict. Old maps were brought out 
 and new ones were constructed while all the masses of 
 our people watched the re-making of civilisation. 
 Common people were now thinking in terms of human 
 interest and race desire. It was found to be quite 
 as easy and far more interesting for the ordinary per- 
 son than to think in relation to the affairs of local 
 gossip. And it is perhaps true to say that the com- 
 mon mind of the American people was never before so 
 pure, so unselfish and so exalted as during the war 
 period. 
 
 SOME PECULIAR BY-PRODUCTS 
 
 Some curious incidents of the later months of the 
 war period are worthy of note here. There was a 
 marked decrease in crime. With high wages for 
 labour and the whole country backing a great human 
 cause only the semi-insane could think of doing any 
 criminal violence to society. Prisons were depopu- 
 lated. Men regarded as dangerous felons were now 
 fired with a true patriotic zeal to go into the ranks 
 and die, if need be, for the cause of human liberty. 
 Only the children increased their wrong-doing, but 
 that was attributed to the absence of the usual re- 
 straints and their natural tendency to view the war as 
 merely a bloody struggle for physical supremacy. And 
 they, too, near the close of the conflict began to sense 
 
CHANGED CONCEPTION OF LOYALTY 123 
 
 the higher purposes thereof and to mend their ways 
 accordingly. 
 
 Another conspicuous incident of the same period 
 was the rise in the general public health. It is true 
 that the influenza epidemic swept over the country 
 and carried away some hundreds of thousands of vic- 
 tims, but the cases of sickness and the deaths from gen- 
 eral causes were greatly reduced. Diseases connected 
 with the digestive tract were especially less frequent 
 during the year or more of national food conserva- 
 tion. The American habit of over-eating was forced 
 to suspend ; and this was perhaps the cause of the cut- 
 ting down of the sick list. 
 
 WE CAN NEVER RETURN 
 
 America can never come back to her old type of 
 mere national loyalty. She has awakened to her con- 
 sciousness of fellowship with all the peoples of the 
 world. The fright fulness of the Prussian enemy, the 
 wrongs they perpetrated against the aged and in- 
 firm who fell in their path and the innocent child- 
 hood which they so ruthlessly sacrificed to the god of 
 war and greed all this pricked the conscience of our 
 people to the core and brought them rapidly to their 
 new conception of the war as a servant of human 
 freedom. 
 
 So America will never be satisfied with merely a 
 local and a national patriotism. She will never be 
 satisfied with merely defending her rights and with- 
 holding her own possessions against the encroachments 
 of a possible enemy. She must now have an inter- 
 
124 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 national mission and that in the form of some great 
 human service. The next great struggle in which the 
 American people will possibly engage may be either 
 death-dealing or bloodless, but it is practically certain 
 to be a struggle to give something to humanity and 
 not to take something from another nation. 
 
 But this loyalty of Greater America to the new- 
 found heart of common humanity is a much sweeter 
 and dearer thing than the old form of loyalty 
 of self-defence, and yet it includes that. Its prac- 
 tice amounts to a guarantee that the rights and liber- 
 ties of her own people will be taken care of even 
 better than before with this cheering knowledge of 
 the racial need as a basis of procedure. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 The chief task of reconstruction in relation to the 
 age-old human instinct of belligerency and its im- 
 portant aspect, loyalty, now begins to appear, and that 
 as a phase of the central idea of this entire discussion, 
 namely, to make humanity acquainted with itself. Just 
 as fast as the chosen leaders of the nations proceed 
 with a simple programme of teaching all the people 
 what the great human dispositions are, the fact that 
 they are a common racial heritage and how these inner 
 cravings may be satisfied through the experience of 
 the common affairs of society just as fast as they 
 thus acquaint the common people with the nature of 
 Common Man, so quickly shall they be able to guide 
 human society onward and upward toward a goal of 
 universal peace and contentment. 
 
CHANGED CONCEPTION OF LOYALTY 125 
 
 It is unnecessary to argue that no advanced course 
 of public school training is called for here. For, under 
 right methods, it is possible to lead even those possess- 
 ing the mere rudiments of a general education to an 
 understanding of how the common individual may 
 slowly discover himself and the best elements of the 
 race life as being identical in their general make-up. 
 But, to reiterate, the natural method of self-discovery 
 and of discovery of the heart of humanity is not 
 through the medium of any text-book course. It is 
 rather a participation, as one grows to maturity, in 
 those great activities which wrought the civilised world 
 out of confusion and made man the superb creature 
 which he is to-day. 
 
 A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY 
 
 Human life is a great voyage of discovery through- 
 out, but there are certain epochs therein which mark 
 conspicuously the individual's discovery of some new 
 relation of himself to the group life, and all this tends 
 to explain the increasing spheres of his loyalty. At 
 about ten or twelve years of age there is the "dis- 
 covery" of the gang with its consequent call for loy- 
 alty. Because of a possible conflict of authority there 
 is now likely to be a discovery of the school as possess- 
 ing rights which deserve respect and obedience. Then, 
 during adolescence, there is the discovery of the tribal 
 consciousness with its new sphere of compulsion. 
 Later comes the discovery of the home as an institu- 
 tion deserving of fidelity and sacrifice. Again there 
 is a discovery of the community as representing some 
 
126 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 one's sacrifice and as calling for every one's share of 
 service. Still again, there is the discovery of the 
 nation as an institution deserving of one's support 
 and defence. And at last, there is the charming dis- 
 covery of Man as deserving the highest form of loy- 
 alty of all the things under heaven. 
 
 As a tremendous force for arousing the people to a 
 sense of their national loyalty and of driving home 
 to all a deep conviction of one's duty to his country, 
 the late President Theodore Roosevelt has perhaps 
 taken the most conspicuous place in the entire history 
 of our republic. And as a prophet and spokesman 
 in one of the charming new conceptions of a world 
 patriotism, the name of President Woodrow Wilson 
 to-day heads all the list. 
 
 So the common individual, slowly ripened into a 
 rich human soul, comes to the full race consciousness 
 and to the point where he is willing to subordinate all 
 other earthly considerations to the well-being of his 
 fellow man. Thus finally may all the peoples of the 
 earth become bound together in a permanent bond of 
 friendship and good-will, for God has never permitted 
 man to know a higher type of loyalty. 
 
XII 
 WAR AS DRAMATISED ALTRUISM 
 
 "All the world's a stage and all the men and women 
 merely players." Indeed. As seen from afar the 
 world war was one of the mightiest dramas of which 
 the human mind can conceive. And the fact that the 
 chief actors in the terrible affair were consciously play- 
 ing before a vast audience doubtless influenced the 
 final outcome far more than has yet been explained. 
 For the first time in the history of mankind literally 
 millions of people have been privileged to sit at the 
 breakfast table and review in brief the tragic scenes 
 of a world on fire. This making of history while you 
 wait was at once so dramatic in its form, so vast in 
 its dimensions, and so thrilling in its potential mean- 
 ings for the future of man on the earth as almost to 
 daze the mortal understanding. 
 
 PERMANENT PEACE NOT ASSURED 
 
 The mere fact that the whole civilised world is 
 now sick and tired of war, and the further fact that 
 all the great nations are willing to enter a league to 
 enforce peace is no guarantee that warfare among 
 mankind is permanently ended. Man is a born fighter. 
 His belligerent instinct will not disappear unless this 
 
 127 
 
128 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 inheritance gets in the way of his physical existence 
 and causes complete self-destruction. You may pet 
 and tame the puppies of the bulldog for a dozen 
 generations, by careful management making each indi- 
 vidual lead a quiet, pampered and peaceful life. Even 
 so, but the last litter will inherit the same old fighting 
 bulldogism all ready savagely to tear and mangle the 
 enemy who may arouse him. 
 
 So with man. No amount of taming will ever 
 cause his fighting instinct to disappear. The only 
 hope is to teach him to fight constructively rather than 
 destructively, to fight for his highest interests as man 
 and never against them, to fight to save and to heal 
 rather than to kill and maim his fellows. As urged 
 above, we have failed utterly in bringing about any 
 essential change in the age-old inherent nature of 
 man, but we have scarcely begun to realise upon our 
 possibilities of directing this persistent heritage to- 
 ward higher aspirations during the formative period 
 of individual life. 
 
 Man has slowly learned how to harness the de- 
 structive energy of fire, of the lightning, of the winds, 
 of the waves. These things which he once trembled 
 before are now to some extent his servants. Now 
 the greatest task of all time confronts the human 
 ingenuity: To find a way to control and direct the 
 terrible energies which the Infinite has planted for- 
 ever within human nature. Can he do it? Can man 
 master his own spirit through practical guidance of his 
 offspring during their formative period? To do so 
 is to solve the problem of the ages and to render war- 
 fare on the earth no more forever. 
 
WAR AS DRAMATISED ALTRUISM 
 
 NONE CAN STAND ALONE 
 
 129 
 
 War as a profession is an obsession and soon be- 
 comes a menace to the individual so engaged as well 
 as to the world at large. So is the business or com- 
 merce an obsession if carried on as an exclusive end of 
 existence. So is professional religion in its tendency a 
 dangerous occupation in so far as it exalts itself above 
 the other great affairs of human existence. To win 
 the race for Man all these must take their place in a 
 federation or a democracy of active aims and purposes. 
 
 Although the fighting instinct can not be starved 
 out of the race it can and must be directed. The 
 fighting impulse in boys is just as divine an attribute 
 as the play impulse in little children. Both can go 
 to "the bad" if misdirected, and both may be turned 
 slowly into good. The belligerent tendency is nature's 
 first crude way of calling the boyish individual out 
 upon the stage of life where he is conscious of an 
 audience. He fights for some imagined right, but 
 always before an audience either present or absent. 
 In his mind he has his backers, his "rooters' club," his 
 promoters and propagandists. The real or imagined 
 reinforcements of these constitute his "morale." 
 
 CONTROL OF FIGHTING INSTINCT 
 
 So, the problem of permanent peace appears as one 
 of careful self -study on the part of man, with the 
 particular purpose of learning to direct his instinct 
 for belligerency. The world leaders who are now 
 warm with a desire to establish a league of nations 
 
130 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 will do well to look into this inherent source of human 
 conduct rather than to try to deal directly with a gen- 
 eration of adults perhaps already theoretically trained 
 in the lust of war. The best agency for universal 
 peace is therefore not a treaty or a solemn compact 
 between nations, but rather a mode of education and 
 training for all the human young. 
 
 The only natural fighter among mankind is the 
 twelve-year-old boy. He is instinctively eager for 
 combat and blood-letting, either as principal in the 
 game or as a close second. We call out an army of 
 youths and re-arouse the fighting instinct after it has 
 subsided and given place to the love-making instinct. 
 No eighteen-year-old desires to fight. He longs to 
 go-a-courting. What a tragedy to call him to war! 
 His only recourse now is to go into the bloody affair 
 with a secret pretence that his martial conduct is 
 applauded by the one he loves. He is now a willing 
 warrior only to win more of her approval. 
 
 THE DRAMATIC ELEMENT OF WAR 
 
 There is much justification for the idea that the 
 martial spirit in normal man can best be directed to 
 higher activities if we take careful account of its 
 dramatic nature. Perhaps never before in the history 
 of human struggle was the individual warrior so con- 
 scious of an audience as in the recent conflict. He 
 felt that his every move was being watched by a vast 
 company of backers and that he was therefore all 
 the time a subject of either applause or dismay. 
 
 America alone spent hundreds of millions of dollars 
 
WAR AS DRAMATISED ALTRUISM 131 
 
 on morale, to prove to our troops that we were a 
 constant witness of their deeds and a hearty applauder 
 of their every semblance of heroism. Never were 
 common men apparently so willing to plunge into a 
 place of certain destruction, as they went forward 
 almost intoxicated with the tremendous applause of 
 their officers, their comrades, the officials of the nation 
 and the many dear ones back home. They proved 
 that it is easy and even glorious to die if the manner 
 of death can but be that of a dramatic heroism. 
 
 The moral for the reformers of society is here most 
 apparent. They must satisfy the belligerent nature of 
 the young with something that is at least dramatic, 
 something that will call for struggle and hard per- 
 sonal sacrifice and the possibility of an applauding 
 audience. There must be set a great national stage, 
 and perhaps not infrequently a mighty, constructive 
 world drama sufficient to bring a thrill and loud ex- 
 pressions of approbation to the multitude of wit- 
 nesses. 
 
 RE-SET THE WORLD STAGE 
 
 The chief element of glory in the conduct of the 
 main actors in the recent conflict was the fact that 
 they were in the role of players upon a mighty stage. 
 The slaughter of human beings involved was a ter- 
 rible but not a necessary part of the momentous drama. 
 Substitute, if you will, a mighty conflict with one of 
 the terrible forces of nature without. Make the task 
 one of vast trial for the endurance of the chief actors 
 and one involving not a little risk of life itself, and the 
 glory of the drama will continue. If a common man 
 
132 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 will die willingly for a certain portion of mankind 
 his own country much more gloriously will he risk 
 his life for the sake of all mankind. The Nazarene did 
 it and startled the world with his dramatic sacrifice. 
 Other men will gladly do it, if the conditions can be 
 made right for such a tragic ending of life. 
 
 Now we come to the idea of a possible substitute for 
 war. Not merely the valuable meek heroism of the 
 athletic field and the theatre but a form of real heroic 
 action with a part of the world as the stage and a great 
 army of players that is what we seem to need most 
 as a form of satisfying the combative-heroic instinct 
 so deeply imbedded in the human nature. The great 
 nations, one at a time or all together, can set a stage 
 of vast dimensions for a constructive struggle with 
 some mighty obstacle in the path of human progress, 
 for example : 
 
 Removing Mountains. There are vast mountain 
 areas on all the continents as yet scarcely touched by 
 the ingenuity of man. It is conceivable that these or 
 certain of them might be declared a common pos- 
 session of all the contiguous nations and that a million 
 men with machines to support them might be set to 
 work leveling a mountain into a fertile and habitable 
 plain. Imagine the gigantic machinery to be in- 
 vented, the superb test of inventive genius, the happy 
 horde of workmen with their splendid motive of 
 service for Man, the long lines of comers and goers 
 in the many radiating directions, and the millions of 
 eager on-lookers and applauders among the expectant 
 peoples in the distance. 
 
 Transforming the Desert. Almost immeasurable 
 
WAR AS DRAMATISED ALTRUISM 133 
 
 tracts of open land on some of the continents are still 
 in the form of a barren desert. To water these and 
 turn them into beautiful garden plateaus might again 
 engage for years the heroic effort of whole armies of 
 men. The overcoming of nature's time-worn arrange- 
 ments such, for example, as the lifting and diverting 
 the waters of a river like the Columbia would con- 
 stitute a project upon which the eyes of at least a 
 whole nation might be centred. When the Dutch 
 finally complete the epoch-making task of draining the 
 Zuyder Zee, all the nations of the globe should gather 
 at a suitable place, through their delegates, and put on 
 a celebration that would rank conspicuously in modern 
 history. 
 
 Conquering the Sea. The mighty monster of the 
 deep is in many respects still the master of man. So 
 far he has only been able to toy with it. Still the ter- 
 rible waves roll on, wasting more energy than is con- 
 trolled by all the machinery known to human intel- 
 ligence. To harness these surging billows may alone 
 conceivably become a human project of a magnitude 
 hitherto unknown. 
 
 Mastering the Air. Likewise, the infinite energies 
 of the atmosphere, the winds and the mysterious power 
 of the air currents to conduct a world movement into 
 the vast depths of this Unknown and bring back its 
 fuller subordination to the convenience of man might 
 call for the sacrifices of a million heroic souls. 
 
 WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT? 
 
 So the Hand of Infinite Wisdom has already set the 
 titanic stage, in the mountain height, upon the desert 
 
134 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 plain, in the rolling sea, in the swirling air, and many 
 places elsewhere and He has said unto Man, his high- 
 est creature here on the earth : Behold the place where- 
 upon to play the great dramas of human existence. 
 Enter in and play thy part heroically and conquer the 
 mystery of these things. If thou failest, then die 
 gloriously in the effort and the world will applaud 
 thee while thou failest and another takest thy place 
 among the players). 
 
 So the peculiar form of warfare and the killing of 
 man by his fellows as involved therein, is seen to be but 
 an incident of that greater thing, namely, the Divine 
 Urge which slowly evolves out of the depths of the 
 eternal human inheritance and lures Man on to some 
 mighty project of a heroic character. When there is 
 in the world no longer anything worth dying for, then 
 there will certainly be far less left to live for. Man 
 must be and will be heroic. 
 
 PUBLICITY THE NEW SECRET 
 
 Publicity of what he is doing and that to all who 
 can be made to attend this is one of Man's finest 
 new secrets of self -direct ion and peaceful occupation. 
 To know the inherent nature and to know how best to 
 govern its unfoldment in a well rounded personality 
 this is the twofold aspect of the thesis of this entire 
 series of discussions. To know how to present his 
 deeds to the public mind for daily criticism and cor- 
 rection is now to be one of the first instrumentalities 
 of re-directing civilisation. 
 
 Secret treaties and secret diplomacy are now out of 
 
WAR AS DRAMATISED ALTRUISM 135 
 
 date. One of the outstanding features of the great 
 war was the almost brutal frankness of the British 
 Government as it announced its heavy losses at sea and 
 its several appalling losses of men in battle. But this 
 same open dealing bound the people of that nation in 
 a closer bond of unity and a deeper determination to 
 win. Until it all came to pass no living man was 
 capable of imagining the achievements of the superb 
 British people during the four years of agony. 
 
 In ten thousand hidden places to-day individual men 
 and women and small isolated groups are doing things 
 important enough to be heralded everywhere. We 
 have as yet lamentably inadequate facilities for a gen- 
 eral interchange of ideas and ideals in regard to the 
 common work of life. How can all have the benefits 
 of what each one has learned how to do that is still 
 a baffling question for publicity to answer. 
 
 AN OPEN FORUM 
 
 During the world war all the American people par- 
 ticipated in an open forum. In a figurative sense the 
 great war zone and the hundreds of industrial plants 
 were but a vast laboratory where the people's ideas 
 were being tested and proved. At each dramatic turn 
 in affairs the decision as to the next step and the final 
 judgment as to its worth were to some degree left 
 to the people themselves. The people back home 
 changed their entire mode of life to suit the demands 
 of the fighters and the war workers. These in turn 
 modified their effort again and again to make it con- 
 form to the derived opinions of the masses in the rear. 
 
136 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 During the period of the four year struggle, and that 
 for the first time in history, the world at large enjoyed 
 daily publicity in regard to the progress of the only 
 big task before the human mind. For once and in a 
 thousand situations the human family exhibited itself, 
 each part to the others. And almost daily each part 
 corrected its effort in the light of the trial and error of 
 all the others. It was marvellously stimulating, this 
 watching of a world in the making. And while it 
 rightly made the petty affairs near about look mean 
 and insignificant, there was a compensation of intense 
 happiness in living and witnessing the world drama. 
 We were most certainly approaching the cosmic con- 
 sciousness as a type of mind for all ordinary people 
 when the white flag finally went up. 
 
 WHAT ABOUT THE HEADLINES? 
 
 On the day of the announcement of the peace armis- 
 tice, when bells were ringing, whistles blowing and the 
 masses running hilariously upon the streets, a small 
 boy hurried to his mother breathlessly to ask, "What 
 will they do for headlines in the papers now ?" That 
 childish exclamation is symbolic of a startling chal- 
 lenge which now might be appropriately made to the 
 elected leaders of the new order of civilisation What 
 shall be in the headlines now? What event can you 
 stage with such dramatic effect as to engross the at- 
 tention of the whole people and give them the im- 
 measurable benefits of thinking together and acting as 
 one mighty human family? 
 
 The psychology of human behaviour implies a study 
 
WAR AS DRAMATISED ALTRUISM 137 
 
 of the psychology of publicity. The newspaper and 
 the magazine are our greatest text-books and these are 
 being written by the people themselves. How properly 
 to give publicity to current events, how to deal fairly 
 and honestly with the public mind through the medium 
 of news reports and advertisements, is becoming more 
 and more a problem for the entire people to solve 
 through their appointed agents. For, with the great 
 mass of mankind sitting daily in judgment over those 
 in the positions of responsibility as determined by 
 the public reports of the conduct of these the progc- 
 ress of civilisation will go on a pace more rapid than 
 ever knowm before. 
 
 Finally, let us hope that there may be established 
 a great international congress of nations, incidentally 
 to keep the peace, but practically to legislate in the 
 interest of all mankind. To stage some big world proj- 
 ect for every season of the year, to keep the people 
 everywhere in an open forum of discussion of these 
 cosmic affairs, to establish a permanent and generous 
 means of universal publicity of the major events as 
 they pass and to unify the minds of all the inhabitants 
 of the globe this hints at the enticing and gigantic 
 task of the permanent reconstruction of society as it 
 appears above the horizon of human endeavour. If 
 we can thus continue to stage a series of mighty 
 dramas, giving occupations and opportunities for 
 heroic sacrifice to a million at a time, the instinctive 
 desire for the war drama will be satisfied and we shall 
 continue to dwell in peace together indefinitely. 
 
PART TWO THE QUEST OF THE 
 INDIVIDUAL. 
 
XIII 
 
 ARE WE READY FOR DEMOCRACY? 
 
 Now, it may be said that we have found a sub- 
 stitute for the superman as a standard of guidance for 
 society and that we are highly satisfied with him. Al- 
 ready his sturdy form entices us. Indeed, he is a most 
 noble and inspiring creature. But he is none other 
 than the every day human being, inherently possessing 
 the so called normal faculties and following daily that 
 plain and worthy course of life for which his heart in- 
 stinctively yearns. Kings must bow to him, all the 
 elect of the earth must do him reverence, and all who 
 would be completely saved must touch the hem of his 
 garment. He is the superb better self within us all. 
 He is not confined to place or rank or sex. Sometimes 
 in the field or the factory or the senate or the presi- 
 dency, we may find him; sometimes in the kitchen, or 
 sweatshop, or nursery, or drawing-room, we may find 
 her. As we travel abroad throughout the country we 
 may meet this person in various places and disguises, 
 but always and ever the same cheerful, hard-working, 
 exuberant soul one in whom life and love and labour 
 are daily combined in one superb effort. 
 
 ARE WE WORTHY? 
 
 But as a population of adults are we ready for the 
 change? Are we prepared for the society of the 
 
 141 
 
142 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 Common Man; not as a whole people but as individ- 
 uals? If the victory over the superman of Europe 
 is to become really significant as a usable achievement 
 here in America we must not only apply its best 
 conclusions to the bringing up of a changed type 
 of personality from the juvenile ranks below but we 
 adults must experience a change of heart of our own. 
 We must purge ourselves of our selfishness, grossness 
 and meanness and mount to a higher plane of daily 
 experience. 
 
 And just as it was urged in the earlier part of this 
 volume that a true democracy can only be grown, and 
 that is to be accomplished through the righteous de- 
 velopment of the young, so with the spiritual democ- 
 racy from this time forward to be proposed ; it must be 
 grown in the hearts of our adult generation, and that 
 as a part or an aspect of our ordinary daily routine of 
 duties. We must be born again. The times de- 
 mand it. Our desire to harmonise with the new world 
 democracy makes it imperative that we reorganise 
 both our conscious and subconscious types of thought. 
 
 THINKING WILL DO IT 
 
 In order to put down the supermanism in our daily 
 consciousness and then to redirect our reactions to- 
 ward the world of outer progress and improvement, it 
 will become necessary for us to see ourselves as acting 
 in a new relation to people and things. Much of what 
 we prized for its own sake must now be measured 
 in terms of its worth in the regeneration of our 
 hearts and the renewal of our shriveling spirits. No 
 
ARE WE READY FOR DEMOCRACY? 143 
 
 man can serve two conflicting masters both of which 
 seek a supremacy over his heart, just as society at large 
 has failed in its attempt to recognise at one time the 
 oppressing ideals of the superman and the common 
 man. The Dr. Jekyl-Mr. Hyde type of character is a 
 monstrosity if not a practical impossibility. 
 
 But deep down within our natures there is a self far 
 better than that of which the world gets a hint from 
 our every day conduct. The majority of us are in 
 such a hurry to get some unimportant thing done that 
 we lack time in which to search our own souls for the 
 element of sublimity and light which lies hidden with- 
 in. There is something so genuine, so wholesome and 
 so inspiring in the ordinary person, once we know 
 him through and through. I am satisfied that this 
 better quiescent self may be made to dominate the 
 every day conduct. The problem involved is largely 
 a matter of rightly organising the thoughts and prac- 
 tices which constitute the routine of personal experi- 
 ence. The mass of the people, we shall find, really 
 intend to have their lives ring true. But somehow 
 certain hard adverse conditions have fixed them in a 
 path much lower than that marked by their ardent 
 dreams. 
 
 A PHYSICIAN OF THE SOUL 
 
 There is a practical call everywhere for a physician 
 of the soul, a healer of the deep wounds of the spirit. 
 Here indeed will be found the most intense suffering 
 to which common mankind is subjected the anguish 
 of regret, the bitterness of disappointment. We have 
 farm crop advisers, vocational advisers, and the like* 
 
144 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 And now every community needs its spiritual advisers. 
 While we wait for the slow action of the communities 
 in the matter of an earnest spiritual readjustment, it 
 would be a source of great delight to all those who 
 foave the time, the means and the disposition to go 
 about the earth in an effort to assist the doubting and 
 despairing to make out a new and constructive plan for 
 their lives and to start forward in the realisation of 
 their dreams. 
 
 Many years of secret dealing with those who have 
 temporarily lost the way of happiness, have brought 
 some of us a large fund of experience as to the per- 
 plexities which disturb the inner consciousness. And 
 we feel certain that the effort of the expert student of 
 humanity to heal these hidden wounds may be quite 
 as successful as that of the specialist in any other field 
 of endeavour. Indeed, it may be doubted if one can 
 ever fully comprehend the essential soundness and 
 worth of our common humanity until he has been made 
 acquainted with those deep-lying difficulties which en- 
 shroud the despairing soul. 
 
 FOUR GREAT EPOCHS 
 
 Rightly understood, the life of the common individ- 
 ual is constituted of four great epochs: to laugh, to 
 labour, to love and to look up. The laughter of life 
 is the sum-total of the happy experience of childhood 
 and youth. The three other serious concerns of human 
 existence cannot be made to impress seriously the 
 mind of the young. For him very much forward 
 looking is practically impossible. Our planning for 
 
ARE WE READY FOR DEMOCRACY? 145 
 
 him and our preaching to him is chiefly our own affair, 
 at best possessing for him only a borrowed interest. 
 If we have finished his present course, we may look 
 back to him but he cannot will not look forward 
 to us. 
 
 So with labour or common industry. One's pas- 
 sionate fondness for it is a growth. The best motive 
 for work on the part of the child is the immediate ob- 
 ject being dealt with, the obstacle being overcome or 
 the structure being set up. But labour to the well 
 balanced adult personality is a satisfaction of the soul, 
 entering into the realm of his finest dreams. Industry 
 to the child is a mere act of achieving; to the adult it 
 is a fine state of being. 
 
 To love, to think well and favourably of one's fellows 
 of every cast and rank that also is a thing to be ac- 
 complished through practice rather than a thing which 
 merely happens to mark one's character. It is a dif- 
 ficult task to teach the lessons of love-one-another to 
 mere children or even to adolescents. It will be found 
 that they instinctively look upon one another with not 
 a little mistrust and suspicion, while they are yet crude 
 in their judgments as to what is stored within the com- 
 mon nature of man. It is a slow and tedious process 
 of self -revelation and of insight into the depths of 
 human personality which finally enables one to look 
 upon all mankind with general favour and optimism. 
 We all have to learn to love or we shall never know 
 how to love. And while the young cannot possibly 
 anticipate a deep fondness for mankind, those adults 
 who have passed through the epoch of sympathetic hu- 
 
146 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 man relationships cannot possibly forget its fine 
 lessons. 
 
 LIFE AT ITS FULNESS 
 
 But the fulness of human existence is a treasury 
 possessed only by the soul who has ripened his career 
 through much trial and error, and has at last found the 
 durable satisfactions of life to consist not of the things 
 which are seen but the things which are unseen. He 
 has learned to let go his more youthful ambitions to 
 get and to shine while he seeks the radiance of a serene 
 soul within. The radiant personality, however, is not 
 to be thought of as one who wears some fine type of 
 garb, as one who stands aside from the common crowd. 
 No, he trudges along with the others and to the out- 
 ward eye he is like them. But to the discerning one he 
 is marked by a peculiar supremacy over the fear, the 
 turmoil, the anguish of soul which shrivels so many 
 otherwise worthy personalities. 
 
 So, now let us go on with our quest of the Great 
 Common Man as he is to be found in the society of 
 the individual soul. Let us attempt in a practical way 
 to find a type of individual life and consciousness best 
 suited to make us harmonious with the new and prac- 
 tical type of common welfare which is an offspring of 
 the great world struggle, and which will prepare us 
 for a possible leadership in its continued realisation 
 /from this time forward. 
 
 I am anxious to have people regard their better 
 selves more seriously and always as a possibility of 
 .achievement ; I want them to regard even more optimis- 
 
ARE WE READY FOR DEMOCRACY? 147 
 
 tically the potential worth of the children ; I want every 
 downcast one to learn to look forward again for the 
 light which must surely come back into his life, in case 
 he knows how to strive for this end; I want all the 
 thinking, mature persons who are willing to give the 
 matter a trial, to join me in a quest of the individual as 
 best inherent in his own personality. And all this, 
 let it be understood, is to be undertaken as a means of 
 higher entrance into this grand new age of Man, and 
 for the glory of Him whose divine purposes we should 
 all desire to realise during our earthly existence. 
 
 Finally, there is one matter of which we who have 
 tried out life in its various capacities have become 
 more and more certain, namely, that our material ex- 
 istence fails to give us adequate satisfaction. Where- 
 fore, we are the more determined to launch ourselves 
 for an inquiry into the life of the spirit to assume 
 that Man is spirit rather than matter and see what 
 that will do for our individual peace and happiness. 
 
XIV 
 REORGANISATION FROM WITHIN 
 
 High on a cliff we stood my companions and I 
 and before us we beheld outstretched an arm of the 
 mighty sea. Dim in the distance and near the further 
 shore we saw a tiny object, seemingly the sport of 
 the dashing waves. The others gathered at our side 
 and the vision cleared under our steady gaze, until the 
 form appeared to be that of a boat with a lone occu- 
 pant tugging at the oars. Now the object was seen 
 standing high on the crest of the foamy sea and now 
 it disappeared in the hollow of the wave. Could it 
 be possible, we asked, that an ordinary rowboat might 
 weather the raging storm? To us it was a time of 
 intense strain and anxiety. At frequent intervals we 
 felt certain the oarsman must be lost; then again and 
 again he would appear upon the crest of the wave 
 seemingly in masterful control of the stern situation. 
 
 Now the daring boatman was coming nearer. We 
 could begin to make out more definitely his form as he 
 leaned forward and back in- the struggle with the ele- 
 ments. And now we took notice of his manly form 
 as he approached the uncertain shore. As we stood 
 high on the bank above we found the occupant of the 
 tiny craft to be a bronzed and muscular young man. 
 The boat touched the landing, the youth threw the 
 
 148 
 
REORGANISATION FROM WITHIN 149 
 
 chain over a projecting rock, clambered out and began 
 to scale the precipitous cliff. Up he moved steady and 
 sure-footed to the top. And to our great surprise the 
 sturdy young hero, whom we had thought to be bat- 
 tling with the elements in a life-and-death struggle, 
 came up serene and smiling. What had seemed to us 
 such a dangerous and horrifying experience was to 
 him an ordinary daily occurrence, a task which merely 
 drew upon his well stored resources of strength and 
 adroitness in managing a rowboat. He soon made us 
 understand that he had been master of the situa- 
 tion every foot of the way over and that not for a 
 moment had he expected to be overcome by the waves. 
 
 TRAINED INNER RESOURCES 
 
 The appearance, the manner and the frank expres- 
 sion of the young boatman described above were well 
 suited to stimulate some valuable reflections upon the 
 philosophy of life. Here was a youth who seemed to 
 have been schooled and developed for a mastery of 
 the sea. He was rugged and well rounded in physical 
 appearance, quick to respond to every necessary move- 
 ment in the boat, possessed clearness of eye, frankness 
 of manner and earnestness of speech. His character 
 seemed to bear every test for genuineness. Over and 
 above all the real significance of his personality was 
 apparent; it was this: although engaged in an effort 
 at which tens of thousands of men of so called rank 
 and high degree would have failed because of their 
 lack of expertness, he was complete master of the 
 task and he more than measured up to its requirements. 
 
150 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 He seemed to possess within his being many unused 
 resources which might be called out in time of real 
 crisis in his work. Moreover, he appeared to be cool- 
 headed, warm-hearted and at all times to act under 
 the direction of his best powers. He was simply a 
 young man who had had little practice in the vanities 
 and superficialities of life and yet his better self had 
 apparently been long trained to come boldly forward 
 and apply its strength in the performance of the plain 
 duties of his rigorous existence. In short, there was 
 both an inspiring sermon and a profound system of 
 philosophy suggested by the conduct of this plain 
 young man. 
 
 How can we make use of this suggestion to the end 
 that we may make out a way whereby to bring our 
 own better selves daily into supremacy ? The new civ- 
 ilisation just dawning demands such a personal ref- 
 ormation. 
 
 If the ordinary person would not have so much con- 
 cern for making a mere outward show of superiority 
 and worth, and would learn to relax betimes and to 
 offer less stubborn resistance to some supposed evil 
 person or thing in his environment, and would have 
 less fear of violating some fixed rule or standard in 
 the home or in society, and would be willing to make 
 errors in the name of the Most High, he would thus 
 show signs of being in communication with his true 
 source of power. If, moreover, this same person would 
 always endeavour to see the best side of the arduous 
 task or the trying situation, and would act as if that 
 best side were coming into realisation; if he would 
 develop in himself the superb habit of seeing that 
 
REORGANISATION FROM WITHIN 151 
 
 the divine nature come into supremacy if the one who 
 earnestly desires to find a higher way of life would 
 persist in doing these things on every suitable occa- 
 sion ; then, I say again that he would discover his inner 
 source of power, and nothing in relation to his daily 
 life could, or would try to, or desire to, resist the truth 
 that is being made manifest in and through him. His 
 better self would thus be made supreme. 
 
 SPIRITUAL POISE IN WORK 
 
 Why do so many persons mentally pursue their work 
 or struggle with their perplexities during the long 
 hours of the night while they ought to be relaxed all 
 over and wrapped in the peaceful folds of slumber? 
 Why do so many awaken at dawn with a burden of 
 nervous fears and a dread of the duties of the day to 
 follow? Is not all this a result of habitually denying 
 the better self the right of leadership in the perform- 
 ance of the appointed work of the day? To shudder 
 at some preconceived error or defeat or failure in rela- 
 tion to the coming work of the day all this is an 
 indication of an unorganised inner life, or of a sub- 
 merged spiritual self, and an evidence of much un- 
 necessary stress and strain. The one who is thus 
 restrained has not yet learned to realise that unfailing 
 sense of power which is the peculiar possession of the 
 one who achieves his work under the guidance of the 
 Immanent Spirit. 
 
 So the person who feels best and who enjoys his 
 work most throughout the entire day is the one who 
 is superior, and who knows that he is superior, to any 
 
152 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 situation that may arise and try him during the course 
 of that day. But this superiority or bigness of dimen- 
 sion which we are here trying to understand is not one 
 of avoirdupois or physical prowess or mere intellectual 
 attainment. It consists rather of a high capacity for 
 discerning in spite of any manifestations of a lower 
 degree the divine natures of the people about one, 
 and the divine aspect of things as well. This is what 
 might be called the spiritual attitude toward people 
 and things, and the one who has acquired it becomes 
 a centre of attraction and of uplift to all who may 
 come into the circle of his influence. 
 
 So the person of spiritual poise becomes my truest 
 friend and helper by virtue of the fact that through 
 his divine insight he regards me with tender affection 
 and sympathetic interest, so that his mere presence, 
 as well as his manner, stimulates the best there is in 
 me. On account of his intrinsic worth rather than 
 what he knows or appears to be, this true friend in- 
 vites me both to become my highest and to keep in 
 subjection my lowest self. I am then in an attitude 
 for making real progress upon the higher way of life, 
 for I make myself open and receptive to the forces 
 that emanate from the Divine Spirit of All Things. 
 
 WHY THIS GHOST OF DESPAIR? 
 
 But the question arises : Can we make this lesson 
 practical to the extent that it may have application to 
 the lives of high and low alike? Especially will it 
 lend itself freely to the assistance of the great class of 
 earnest souls who are performing the common work 
 
REORGANISATION FROM WITHIN 153 
 
 of life? The greatest factor in the transformation of 
 this world we live in is work. Everywhere we turn 
 we find men and women, young and old, with faces set 
 like flint against the difficult and trying tasks of life, 
 bringing about the realisation of the world's material 
 purposes. But all too often, as we pass to and fro 
 among the ranks of toilers, there meets our view the 
 tired, listless gaze, or the pinched dejected countenance 
 of some despairing worker at life's loom. Now we 
 find it in the person of a great captain of industry, 
 now in the form of one delving in the bosom of the 
 earth, and yet again it is the distressing form of some 
 good woman who is a slave to the work of the home. 
 Indeed, this ghost of despair seems really to be almost 
 no respecter of persons. High and low, artist and 
 artisan, believer and infidel, orthodox and heterodox 
 all or nearly all classes seem to have within their 
 ranks many who are infected with this insidious dis- 
 ease. 
 
 But how can one subordinate his work, no matter 
 what or how difficult it may be, to the extent that the 
 best there is in him may find full and satisfactory 
 expression? A successful answer to this question 
 would go far toward spiritualising the drudgery of 
 common labour. 
 
 STRIVE ONLY FOR THE HIGHEST 
 
 Man at his best is a powerful instrument of achieve- 
 ment. The very laws of nature, old and eternal as 
 Time himself, often well-nigh seem to stand in abey- 
 ance before the human soul that is kindled with the 
 
154 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 fire of the Living Spirit. No ordinary obstacle can 
 successfully confront him. He grows big and strong 
 and powerful partly through and by means of the 
 nourishment his divine nature receives from opposi- 
 tion. Does your allotted place in life seem little and 
 mean and narrow? Then render it grand and sub- 
 lime by means of your own inner transformation. Do 
 you whine and complain and yearn for a position and 
 material goods which, as you know, under present con- 
 ditions lie hopelessly beyond your reach ? Then strive 
 for the high things of the Spirit, and these material 
 objects will dwindle into insignificance before your 
 view. But do you desire these worldly possessions and 
 preferments for their own sake? Are you certain that 
 your highest goal lies along that way of travel ? Are 
 the rich and great necessarily any closer to heaven 
 than yourself? Can they reach any nearer to the 
 stars ? Have they any more room to expand their souls 
 than you have? 
 
 And so we should like to urge a higher principle of 
 life upon the world's workers, high and low, especially 
 upon all those who feel themselves ground down by 
 hard, relentless conditions. It is this: Cease longing 
 for the unattainable in the material sense and culti- 
 vate assiduously your inner sense of superiority and 
 worth. The Immanent Spirit, which dwells within 
 you, may be made supreme over every ill or adverse 
 condition. There is no real light ahead for the com- 
 mon toiler except through self-mastery. 
 
REORGANISATION FROM WITHIN 155 
 
 WOMEN MUST BE FREE 
 
 It seems opportune here to make a special plea to 
 the great multitude of aspiring, unselfish women who 
 are enslaved to the work and drudgery of the home, 
 and to the mandates of a heartless, cramping code of 
 society. Need these things be? Are the like of you 
 not held in bondage to two or three ideas that seriously 
 menace the expression of your soul? Does not your 
 constant fear of deviating from the exacting rules of 
 the home and your little social group render it prac- 
 tically impossible for you to please either yourself 
 or those whom you would serve in this way ? Can you 
 not vary occasionally from your fixed standard of or- 
 der in the household and from your set rule of having 
 the meals just so, and sit down in the midst of some 
 disorder and confusion and relax all over and expand 
 your being and imbibe from the Great Source of All 
 Strength a full, free measure of psychic power? Only 
 once become satisfied from this fountain of inner 
 strength and the little, mean and insignificant things 
 that rule the life to which you have been enslaved, will 
 appear unimportant. 
 
 But the foregoing admonition does not mean that 
 one should in any true sense neglect his allotted work. 
 It means rather that this work must be subordinated 
 to the higher spiritual nature. In the old way the 
 work starves and crushes the spirit. In the new way 
 the spirit dominates and puts new life and meaning 
 into the work. 
 
156 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 THE METHOD SUMMARISED 
 
 But how can the ordinary busy person acquire this 
 psychic power, you ask. The rules therefore are so 
 simple that you may be inclined to believe them of 
 little worth, and less inclined to practise them. They 
 have already been implied strongly in what has been 
 urged above. In order to summarise and at the same 
 time to add a few statements, we might enumerate : 
 
 1. The beginning of psychic wisdom lies in the 
 proper caretaking of the body. One must be clean 
 in person, modest in regard to his wearing apparel, 
 regular and moderate in habits of diet and sleep, tak- 
 ing plenty of outdoor exercise. That is, one must 
 have what might be called pure, healthy bodily tone, 
 if he is to acquire a full measure of spiritual energy. 
 
 2. Be faithful in the performance of your work, 
 but be willing to take the consequences of leaving a 
 part of it undone rather than to overstrain to the point 
 of great fatigue. Do not try to cover up your mistakes 
 and shortcomings in the presence of others, so long as 
 you are living your highest, for other souls, seeing 
 your frankness and your frailties, will be inspired to 
 renew their hold upon life. 
 
 3. Keep in touch with the great living world with- 
 out, especially with some of its most progressive and 
 democratic individuals. No matter what your station, 
 there will always be some one to whom you can appro- 
 priately and effectively administer help and encourage- 
 ment. The great current of Psychic Life cannot flow 
 freely into your being until you have made room for 
 it by pouring out from your present inner source the 
 
REORGANISATION FROM WITHIN 157 
 
 best that you may have to spare in form of love and 
 kindly consideration. 
 
 4. Again, no matter how high your station in life, 
 there will always be some one about you who will be 
 your superior in respect to wealth, or freedom, or 
 personal attractiveness. Learn not to envy any such, 
 always remembering that there is more than enough of 
 the high things of the Spirit for all who are prepared 
 to partake of them. By learning to take real secret 
 delight in the merited promotion or advancement of 
 your associates, you will acquire a new mode of ex- 
 panding and enriching your own being. 
 
 5. There must come into your life daily something 
 that will draw you away from yourself and your work. 
 As to how this result is to be brought about, that will 
 be determined by your temperament and environment. 
 It might be accomplished through the reading of a 
 poem or some other inspiring literary selection; 
 through the observation of the things of nature at early 
 morning or the starry heavens after nightfall ; through 
 conversation with some one who is maturer in his 
 psychic development than yourself, and who therefore 
 sees more clearly than you do the spiritual nature of 
 people and things; through ministering to the needs 
 of the sick or the hungry or the despairing or the aged, 
 as was suggested above. 
 
 6. Then learn at times the meaning of non-resist- 
 ance as well as of that of aggressiveness. Be true and 
 faithful and honest in your efforts, and trust the out- 
 come to the disposition of the Immanent Spirit. Do 
 not expect to win battles so much by fighting your 
 hardest, but more by at all times loving your utmost. 
 
158 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 Nourish your mind more habitually on that which is 
 spiritual. Forgive and forget, as far as possible, the 
 erroneous past in yourself and others, and thus have 
 more time to gather living strength for the future. 
 Merely for the sake of practice, go to sleep every night 
 for a week with your mind repeating and your soul 
 reverberating some such literary gem as the Ninety- 
 first Psalm, and so learn the gospel of relaxation 
 the secret of letting go all over and thus resting and 
 recuperating a hundred little muscles you otherwise 
 hold tense during the night. 
 
 7. Get up at morning with a prayer upon your lips, 
 and take as a text for the day something like Isaiah 
 Ix. i : "Arise, shine ! for thy light is come, and the 
 glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!" Say this over 
 in your mind until it sings itself into your whole being, 
 and you will in time feel welling up from within a 
 strange, unspeakable power which will tide you buoy- 
 antly over every difficulty that may threaten to beset 
 your pathway during the day that is dawning. 
 
 8. Some have called the practices outlined above 
 self-hypnotism, others have called them auto-sugges- 
 tion. It matters little as to the name. Do not merely 
 give mental assent and try them once or twice, but 
 carry them out determinately. Although perhaps me- 
 chanical at first, they will in time become easy and 
 natural and life-giving. If there be such a thing pos- 
 sible as the acquisition of psychic power on the part of 
 the reader, it will come to him gradually as the result 
 of mental attitudes carefully selected, and persistently 
 held to and acted out as nearly as possible, on every 
 suitable occasion. 
 
XV 
 
 MAKING LIFE WORTH WHILE 
 
 What is your attitude toward life as a whole ? Does 
 it seem full of goodness and promise, or does it con- 
 sist of some good and some evil ? It must be insisted 
 that your attitude toward the whole of life is going 
 to have much to do with your value as a member of 
 society. Is life really worth while? Some will say, 
 'That depends on circumstances," and by this they 
 mean that it depends on whether or not they get cer- 
 tain preferments and secure the satisfaction of certain 
 desires. But is the worth of life resting upon such 
 an unstable foundation ? Is there not a more substan- 
 tial groundwork of living something that is certain 
 and secure, and something that will hold out an en- 
 ticing reward for all worthy striving and sacrifice? 
 If this matter be regarded from the right angle, it 
 would appear that the question must be answered af- 
 firmatively. With the firm conviction that the one 
 who can so answer this question will have a peculiar 
 power and advantage in the race of life over the one 
 who is inclined to answer it negatively, let us now try 
 to set forth, in some detail, certain of the attitudes 
 of the one of optimistic faith. 
 
 159 
 
160 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 HUMAN POTENTIALITIES INFINITE 
 
 At birth the ordinary human life is practically infi- 
 nite in potentialities. The life that we now live is 
 but a mere fragment of what it might be, and of what 
 life in the future certainly will become after we have 
 once acquired the higher art of living. The average 
 human infant has within him at birth a nervous mech- 
 anism possessing possibilities of development, both in 
 amount and complexity, far beyond that of any mem- 
 ber of the race now living. Millions of nerve-cells are 
 there all ready to be developed into specialised groups 
 through experience. But our span of existence is as 
 yet too brief and fragmentary to admit of our devel- 
 oping any considerable portion of them. During a 
 vast period of time man has apparently been at work 
 lengthening out the term of his youth, until now it is 
 a matter of twenty or more years. This period of in- 
 fancy, and of concomitant nerve plasticity and educa- 
 bility, is briefest in the case of the races and of the 
 individuals of least intellectual advancement. A sur- 
 vey of human history will show, so it seems, not only 
 that this important period of nerve growth has been 
 very slowly lengthened with the rising scale of intel- 
 ligence, but also that there is all the time being dis- 
 covered a better method of developing character during 
 this period of plasticity. 
 
 After the first score of years or a few more have 
 been spent, the individual is compelled by force of 
 circumstances to discontinue his general development 
 and to specialise in some particular field. But it is 
 nevertheless true that if there had been sufficient time, 
 
MAKING LIFE WORTH WHILE 161 
 
 or if the plasticity of the nerves had continued long 
 enough, he might have reached a score of different 
 kinds of high attainments for each of which he pos- 
 sessed from infancy more than enough of brain and 
 nerve structures. The ordinary person must abandon 
 the building up of these many embryonic cell struc- 
 tures. But after he has singled out only one of his 
 aptitudes and developed it as a specialty throughout a 
 long life, he feels that the possibilities latent within 
 this single centre are still infinite. 
 
 THE JOY OF LIVING 
 
 Now, all this ought to cheer and encourage the ordi- 
 nary traveller upon life's journey. If one can only 
 be made to realise early enough the possibility of tak- 
 ing his life and destiny into his own hands and of 
 bringing to a high state of perfection one or more of 
 these infinite potentialities all this to be accomplished 
 merely by and through his own striving surely he will 
 the more appreciate the joy of living. Who is it that 
 despairs and contemplates giving up other than the 
 one who imagines the path of life to be insurmountably 
 closed by some particular obstruction? But he who 
 has once learned to go on fearlessly is in possession of 
 a great secret ; namely, that there are many interesting 
 ways around the greatest obstacle that may be thrown 
 into one's path. 
 
 An authority who has long dealt with the despairing 
 and the downcast reports in many instances as the 
 chief cause of the trouble some unrealised selfish ambi- 
 tion to shine or to possess a thing not deserved. So 
 
162 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the person who would find the greatest amount of joy 
 and inspiration in common existence must refuse to 
 believe his chief purpose in life to be merely that of 
 exacting from the outer world all the good it will 
 yield him; and he must learn to appreciate the great, 
 vitalising practice of striving to give back to the world 
 more good than he receives from it. Indeed, herein 
 we may find the chief point of distinction between the 
 despondent soul and the one enjoying the abiding con- 
 viction that human life is a thing of tremendous con- 
 sequence. 
 
 THE ENDLESS QUEST OF GOD 
 
 It is difficult for the despairing soul or even the 
 atheist to get around the thought that there is a subtle, 
 but mighty, immaterial power ever at work in the 
 universe about us. The scientist is desirous of dis- 
 covering the real facts, so he pushes the quest to the 
 furthest possible limit in an effort to get at some- 
 thing solid and substantial. He has broken up the old 
 molecule, on which we rested our physical hypothesis. 
 He has separated this into two thousand fragments 
 and has called these smaller particles ions or electrons, 
 but he no longer lays claim to having anything ulti- 
 mate. What he has discovered, however, is that this 
 and all other quests are the unmistakable evidences of 
 some mysterious, non-substantial power at work hold- 
 ing things together, or getting things done. 
 
 For example, notwithstanding all our modern 
 knowledge of applying electrical energy, we know 
 nothing whatever of the ultimate nature of this force. 
 As a matter of fact, we are very little concerned about 
 
MAKING LIFE WORTH WHILE 163 
 
 its absolute character. What we most desire to learn 
 is the law whereby it works so that we may use it 
 effectively in our affairs. Now, this kind of knowl- 
 edge is highly satisfying, for it helps us to define more 
 fully our every-day experiences. And so believing 
 as most of us do that there is a God of the universe, 
 we should perhaps agree that it is more or less futile 
 for any man to try to find out His infinite nature. 
 However, an effort to understand the laws whereby 
 He works proves to be both profitable and interesting 
 a quest which tends to make life altogether worth 
 while. 
 
 THE NATURE OF MODERN SCIENCE 
 
 A plant comes forth out of the cold, apparently life- 
 less earth, and blossoms and bears fruit ; a mighty vol- 
 cano breaks out on the mountainside and carries before 
 it with terrific force a tremendous weight of matter; 
 a man who has been pursuing a certain reprehensible 
 course of conduct for half a lifetime suddenly reverses 
 himself and places high value upon the types of 
 thought and action once considered by him to be of no 
 worth. Now, it might be insisted by some that these 
 are merely three different manifestations of the same 
 mysterious power, namely God. But this does not 
 help us to understand what God really is. However, 
 we need not despair on account of this negative result; 
 for a careful, scientific consideration of the three phe- 
 nomena just mentioned will reveal much that is both 
 interesting and profitable for our lives. Especially is 
 this true if we study each from the point of view of 
 the particular science within which it falls. We do 
 
164 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 not merely stand in awe before the processes of na- 
 ture, as was once commonly done, but we set about 
 to find an explanation of them in terms of their imme- 
 diate antecedents and consequents. This is distinctly 
 the method of modern science, and, if conducted prop- 
 erly, it is in a high degree satisfying, for it broadens 
 our conception of the matters of our common expe- 
 rience. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF A GOOD LIFE 
 
 In our search for solid, unquestionable facts in hu- 
 man experience, we cannot afford to overlook the posi- 
 tive influence that emanates from a good life. Here 
 is something that seems to be operative at all times. 
 Take, for example, the venerable Dr. Eliot, ex-presi- 
 dent of Harvard. Go into almost any part of New 
 England and you will hear him spoken of by the com- 
 mon people as "our first citizen." "A name to conjure 
 by," they often say. The veneration in which he is 
 held by the public was illustrated on an occasion when 
 this eminent American addressed a mixed audience in 
 Memorial Hall. The moment he entered the chapel 
 the entire congregation arose spontaneously, and the 
 heartiest applause attended him until he had bowed 
 acknowledgments several times, and was seated. Dur- 
 ing the course of the address the attention was rapt 
 and unbroken, and the applause was surprisingly long 
 continued. Now, as we may understand the matter, 
 there is somehow connected with this man a power 
 that makes for righteousness, a force that has a subtle 
 influence in shaping the lives of others. And yet this 
 peculiar energy is not constituted of any material part 
 
MAKING LIFE WORTH WHILE 165 
 
 of the man, for it works without regard to distance, 
 and it will doubtless continue long after he has passed 
 away. 
 
 But it is not really necessary to regard a peculiar 
 personal influence as being resident in only a few 
 great characters. For example, it emanates from the 
 typical devoted mother in the home and actually 
 changes the course of many a life. In fact, human 
 kindness and sympathy are much more common vir- 
 tues than some of us seem to suspect, but we are 
 touched by these virtues only when we make ourselves 
 open to them, or when we are looking for them. So, 
 here is another actual, positive power that makes for 
 righteousness, one that helps to make life eminently 
 worth while. Human kindness is everywhere a fact. 
 It is often present even in the case of the depraved 
 and the low born, if we only know how to look for 
 it and draw it out and use it. 
 
 PRACTICAL ADVANTAGES OF OPTIMISM 
 
 Wherefore, considering all the foregoing facts, we 
 feel warranted in making the statement that the one 
 who believes human life to be unquestionably a thing 
 of much worth has a tremendous advantage over the 
 one who does not. But it is selfish to sit back and 
 expect the good and the joy-in-life to come to one. 
 There must be a quest of happiness and that through 
 a striving to find out the many interesting secrets 
 which life holds in store for us all and not merely for 
 some of us. To know that whatever our suffering or 
 loss, millions of others have endured like privations; 
 
166 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 to know that whatever our joy or triumph, countless 
 numbers of the great human procession have experi- 
 enced these pleasures; to know that the unmeasured 
 potentialities within us suggest eloquently an infinite 
 period of development, and to strike out boldly for 
 that infinitude this is to make life seem altogether 
 worth while. 
 
XVI 
 THE SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE 
 
 When the world war struck us we Americans were 
 living spoiled and pampered lives. The vast majority 
 of the people were chasing the rainbow of sensual 
 enjoyment and were inclined to a sort of flippant atti- 
 tude toward the great spiritual verities. The war has 
 humbled us temporarily, but can we preserve the les- 
 son? What can the individual do, or have done for 
 him, that will save him from the sin of selfishness? 
 How can he acquire the humble spirit of unselfishness 
 and sacrifice and yet do a positive and effective work 
 in the world? 
 
 THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 One starts out in this life claiming everything in 
 sight as his own, but usually discovers in the end that 
 he does not own anything. As we grow older we learn 
 that one of the most expensive characteristics a per- 
 son can have is selfishness, while unselfishness, or 
 what might be called rational self-sacrifice, are almost 
 sure to carry their own reward with them. Much of 
 the real joy of living seems to depend on our having 
 done some sacrificial act in behalf of the sick, the 
 needy, or the downcast. When we minister unto 
 
 167 
 
i68 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 others out of the depths of the divinity in our natures 
 there springs up within us a strange, new sense of 
 the .closeness of our relation to them. 
 
 This inner sense of worth is not fully acquired, 
 however, without a variety of experiences of trial 
 and error. From the time of his childhood on up to 
 maturity one needs to have much actual practice in 
 trying to get things for his own selfish sake as well 
 as for the sake of those he can help, so that out of 
 it all he may learn the lesson of his truest and best 
 relation to others. Unfortunately many growing 
 young lives, as a result of pampering and over-care, 
 never learn the beautiful meaning of self-sacrifice. 
 This form of ignorance is still too common among 
 the so called educated. 
 
 One of the most remarkable forms of self-sacrifice 
 is that of vicarious suffering. The world is full of 
 it. You may or may not regard as true the story 
 of the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ upon the 
 cross of Calvary: the agony of that last dark hour; 
 the matchless resignation to what seemed an ignomini- 
 ous fate; the final cry of despair as the victim was 
 about to yield up the last breath of a sad, serene life; 
 his belief that in some way the wrongs done by his 
 fellow men were being expiated by that final act of 
 sublime sacrifice. But all these things are distinct- 
 ively human, and they appeal to the deepest and tru- 
 est that is in us all. Suppose, for argument's sake, 
 that this story is mere fiction. It is still beautiful 
 and wonderful and inspiring. Why? Because it typi- 
 fies in intense form a tragic aspect of our common 
 existence. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE 169 
 
 HOW MAY WE SUFFER ? 
 
 But we may see this undeserved suffering all around 
 us. The mother must go by the brink of the grave 
 in order that her child may be born. She has ideals 
 of conduct and attainment for him and must be heart- 
 broken at every point of his failure to attain these 
 high standards. In the case of the wayward, dissi- 
 pated son she must suffer the ruthless crucifixion of 
 her every fond aspiration in his behalf. Another per- 
 son has inherited through the debaucheries of a 
 drunken father a weak, deformed body, or a predis- 
 position towards crime and sensuality. Quite as fre- 
 quently we may find a group of beautiful-spirited 
 children and their refined mother suffering the dis- 
 grace and humiliation brought upon them by a crim- 
 inal or inebriated father. 
 
 The entire world has been recently engaged in a 
 struggle for democracy. But why should innocent 
 millions die in this conflict while other millions, no 
 less deserving, live on to enjoy the benefits? "He 
 paid the supreme sacrifice" this has been the record 
 of the close of many a young soldier's life. But it 
 seems that the honour of a "glorious death" is ex- 
 tremely inadequate as a reward for such a tragic 
 affair, unless we all as individuals in some way par- 
 ticipate in the suffering. Must we not strive to make 
 vicarious suffering in some measure a rule of our 
 lives and thus lift a part of the overburden off the 
 shoulders of others? Unless these hero dead are all 
 our own, they have died in vain. 
 
 Now, while we may not naturally desire this condi- 
 
170 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 tion of life for ourselves, we are nevertheless often 
 charmed and made better by the conduct of those par- 
 ticipating in it. Moreover, it seems necessary that 
 the world furnish us our quota of vicarious suffering 
 in order to soften and subdue our coarser natures. 
 Although the attending agony and the disappointment 
 are often very intense, they are almost certain to 
 carry with them an ample reward in the form of a 
 beautiful humility of spirit, of a recurrent ecstasy of 
 longing, or a heroic resignation to the might of one's 
 destiny. Some of the mothers who lost their sons in 
 the war have given us a beautiful and inspiring ex- 
 ample of spiritual fortitude. 
 
 VOLUNTARY SACRIFICE ENNOBLING 
 
 But, after all, the most beautiful and ennobling kind 
 of sacrifice is that which is made voluntarily out of 
 the fulness of a good heart. However, this can come 
 to pass only after we ourselves have had many trying 
 experiences. If we have longed and suffered and 
 failed, if we have been bruised and beaten and other- 
 wise sorely afflicted, and if, after all this, we have suc- 
 ceeded and triumphed and finally gained our physical 
 and mental poise, we are then in some measure pre- 
 pared to make rational sacrifices for the great throng 
 of needy fellow creatures around us. It is not a little 
 helpful, also, for one to try to see the world from the 
 point of view of the criminal, the depraved and the 
 downtrodden to visit the saloons, the slums and all 
 the other places where the weaklings and the under- 
 lings are groping so hopelessly about for the light, or 
 
THE SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE 171 
 
 drifting with so little thought of their own regenera- 
 tion; in short, to go in upon every variety of dark- 
 ness and despair, an uninvited guest, in order to ac- 
 quire a fuller measure of sympathy for those who are 
 down in the world. 
 
 A very peculiar sense of the presence of God fills 
 the heart of the one who visits the sick and the sor- 
 rowing and the other classes of more deserving per- 
 sons who are temporarily cast down and afflicted. To 
 speak a word of comfort and good cheer to some aged 
 one who has been bereft of a lifelong companion, to 
 become a ministering angel in some humble home 
 where a devoted mother has almost prostrated herself 
 through sleepless watching at the bedside of a little 
 sick child, to mingle tears of sympathy and compas- 
 sion with the mourners at the bier of a dear, departed 
 member of their own household these are the rare 
 opportunities for giving good and getting good that 
 may be found by all who seek to beautify their own 
 lives through the spirit of sacrifice. And these expe- 
 riences constitute a legitimate, if not a necessary, part 
 of the preparation of the one who is called to the 
 high office of fellowship in a genuine democracy. 
 
 KNOW THE SPIRIT OF THE TOILER 
 
 Again, the spirit of sacrifice is not well proportioned 
 in one until he has rightly understood the mind and 
 spirit of those who work in fields, factories, mines, 
 and the like. And one is fortunate indeed if, some 
 time during his life, he has been a full-fledged member 
 of the ranks of those who labour faithfully and earn- 
 
172 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 estly in one of the world's great productive industries. 
 It is only by means of this actual experience that one 
 can appreciate the strong, sturdy character of the till- 
 ers of the soil, the carvers of wood and the hewers of 
 stone; or the admirable womanliness of the great 
 throng of quiet, unassuming home-makers who per- 
 form in person the manifold duties of the common 
 household. 
 
 Thus to know through a variety of seasoning expe- 
 riences the conscious processes of all classes of toilers 
 up life's steep and rugged way, is to appreciate the 
 fact that they, like all of us, have their hopeful, joy- 
 ous anticipations and their times of triumph, as well 
 as their share of trial and disappointment. And in 
 proportion as we learn to live amicably and on terms 
 of a spiritual good fellowship with these noble sons 
 and daughters of men, and to find pleasure in minis- 
 tering unto them as the Spirit of All Things may give 
 us direction, so we feel prepared to live in a world 
 democracy. 
 
 POWER FROM REPOSE 
 
 The civilised portion of the world is now occupied 
 chiefly by strenuous people who are constantly over- 
 taxing their nervous energy. Just now the rush to 
 reorganise the world's work as taught by the lessons 
 of the war makes the nerve strain unusually tense. 
 Many are dying prematurely as a result of this strain, 
 while others are being rendered more or less ineffi- 
 cient by it. There are many worthy persons, inclined 
 to be altruistic, whose intended good deeds are all 
 sapped away by the stress of attempting to carry on 
 
THE SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE 173 
 
 their daily affairs too hurriedly. So there was per- 
 haps never a greater need of some specific method of 
 daily regaining bodily poise than now. Two classes 
 of persons who are suffering most from this over- 
 strain are the mothers and the school teachers of the 
 land. Modern conditions tend to exact more from 
 them than they are normally able to bear. What is a 
 possible remedy? 
 
 The habit of poise is the only hope of relief. By 
 means of this acquired art we may be enabled to work 
 hard and fast without becoming overexcited or hurry- 
 ing too much. The question is simply whether one is 
 to drive his work, or let it drive him. In the latter 
 case there is always an accompaniment of despair, a 
 strain which wears out and finally kills the body. 
 The necessity of making the next move always finds 
 the despairing mind not quite prepared for it. A 
 tremendous waste of nervous energy results. On the 
 other hand, the mentally poised worker is prepared 
 through repose of spirit and intelligent forethought 
 to meet every ordinary emergency. He conserves and 
 replenishes his nerve force even while he is hardest 
 at work. 
 
 Finally, while we as individuals might indeed refine 
 our spiritual natures by seeking to bear sacrificially 
 our full share of all the burdens and sufferings which 
 fall to the lot of common mortals, we must be on 
 guard lest we turn our altruism into a suicidal tragedy. 
 To make our existence full and complete we must pass 
 through all the larger epochs of human failure and 
 loss; and then we must find a higher law of life by 
 which to assuage our own sorrow. This greatest re- 
 
174 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 naissance of all the ages is certain to demand that we 
 develop a certain and reliable rule for the practice of 
 self-poise and composure after we have passed through 
 the agony of suffering and sacrifice. Who will give 
 us such a rule? 
 
XVII 
 
 OPTIMISM AS COMMON SENSE 
 
 We have urged that the world was tripped and 
 finally thrown down by wrong thinking. National 
 pessimism, as we may characterise it, was the moun- 
 tain which rolled down upon humanity with crushing 
 effect. A hateful, despicable opinion of ordinary 
 mankind was the satanic cause. So, too, countless 
 individuals have literally borne themselves down with 
 the weight of their habitual pessimism as to their 
 own abilities. The new age demands a specific antidote 
 for the pessimism of the masses and of the individual. 
 Every man needs a rule whereby he may in a rational 
 manner think of himself more highly than he seems 
 to deserve in order that he may actually raise himself 
 by the force of his optimism. 
 
 THREE INTERESTING GROUPS 
 
 In regard to the world and its possible betterment, 
 the people fall into at least three groups. First, there 
 is the extreme optimist usually a cheerful, attractive 
 personality, who serenely folds his arms and waits for 
 some power, real or imaginary, to reduce the more 
 or less chaotic condition of affairs to one of harmony. 
 j He is sometimes so extreme in his views as to close 
 
 .75 
 
176 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 his eyes to what we ordinarily regard as a distressing 
 situation and affirm positively some such statement as 
 "There is no evil," or 'There is no sickness." Second, 
 there is that opposite extremist, the pessimist, who as 
 stoutly affirms that the whole world is out of joint, 
 and that disappointment, or distress, or death, or some 
 other dire evil lurks at every turn in the pathway of 
 life. He is the modern counterpart of the old-fash- 
 ioned, sour-dispositioned, vale-of-tears churchman 
 who regarded this world as but a place of pain and 
 penance. Third, there is the active mediator between 
 the two, one who beholds both good and evil in our 
 common affairs of life, and who regards the world as 
 growing gradually better the latter fact being the 
 result of analysable, contributing causes. 
 
 As was suggested above, we have no quarrel with 
 the extreme laissez-faire optimist. His chronic cheer- 
 fulness contributes not a little good to society, infect- 
 ing as it does the over-despairing moods of many oth- 
 ers; while his habitual healthy-mindedness adds meas- 
 urably to his bodily health and his lease of life. Not 
 more willingly would we dispute with the extreme 
 pessimist, for he is probably but speaking the words 
 revealed by his own discorded nerves. If we were to 
 attempt to improve the condition of either of these 
 radicalists, it would not be by means of contention or 
 disputation but rather by means of studying the whole 
 environment, past and present, of each. But we are 
 now approaching the central idea of this chapter. 
 
OPTIMISM AS COMMON SENSE 177 
 
 THE CENTRAL PROBLEM 
 
 After having found within ourselves some measure 
 of psychic power, having learned how to acquire and 
 conserve it, the question now arises : How can we put 
 this splendid, life-giving force to a practical use in re- 
 lation to surroundings that are admittedly trying, if 
 not well-nigh baffling? Let us call this method com- 
 mon sense optimism, and define it briefly as meaning, 
 to face an actual situation cheerfully and courageously 
 and to attempt in a thoughtful manner to make it bet- 
 ter. It has its most fitting illustration in the very 
 modern method of dealing scientifically with the child 
 or the youth that is any wise delinquent in his acts. 
 For ages society moved on, regarding all evil-doers 
 as predestined by an unyielding inheritance to a life 
 of wrong and depredation, while it put them out of 
 the way by the quickest and easiest means, simply in 
 the interest of its own protection. This was the ex- 
 treme, pessimistic view, based chiefly on ignorance 
 and prejudice. Then came a period of tolerance 
 in the minds of many and a disposition to call the 
 evil-acting especially children by certain euphoni- 
 ous names and to affirm that "all is good." 
 
 Now, it is admittedly a commendable beginning, in 
 case a boy lies, or steals, or plays truant, to call him 
 "good" and "noble," with the mental reservation that 
 this goodness and nobleness is latent within him and 
 that these excellent qualities are to be brought out 
 by means of judicious and persistent training. But 
 to stop with the pleasing "affirmation" and to fold 
 one's hands complacently, merely waiting for results, 
 
178 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 is of very uncertain value as a means of discipline. 
 For a bad boy to hear himself called "good" may be 
 so new to him as to arouse in his mind for the first 
 time a sense of his inner worth and a resulting effect- 
 ive effort to realise this newly-discovered self. So, 
 the rationally optimistic method may, and often does, 
 make this same kind of beginning; but it does much 
 more. It seeks to understand specifically the ante- 
 cedents and the environment of all causes of the child's 
 delinquent acts, and it proceeds straightway to apply 
 a remedy that will tend to effect a transformation. 
 
 ANALOGY FROM THE PIONEER 
 
 Two generations ago, many stalwart young men of 
 the East turned their faces westward and sought out 
 new places of permanent abode on the unbroken west- 
 ern prairie. Some remained only long enough to in- 
 dulge more freely their already overworked pes- 
 simism and to acquire a vocabulary of epithets with 
 which to characterise the new country. Others, too 
 easily satisfied, settled down to a quiet, matter-of- 
 fact existence, writing back home exaggerated esti- 
 mates of the beauty and worth of the land that they 
 were doing all too little to make more productive. 
 They were examples of the extreme optimists. Still 
 others made from the beginning, as best they could, 
 a careful study of the conditions of soil and moisture, 
 and of the best methods of producing crops or carry- 
 ing on the work of animal husbandry. These were 
 the rational optimists, who saw in the raw, new coun- 
 try latent values which were to be brought into real- 
 
OPTIMISM AS COMMON SENSE 179 
 
 isation only through careful and thoughtful effort. 
 They or their descendants are the lords of the land 
 to-day. 
 
 Now, apply the story of the class of pioneers last 
 named to the work of intelligently rearing and train- 
 ing the young and the analogy is somewhat close. As 
 the wise tiller of the soil proceeds by means of en- 
 couraging the outgrowth into the desired crop from 
 all the best latent substances thereof, while he com- 
 bats every crop enemy inherent in this same soil, 
 so does the thoughtful trainer and instructor of the 
 child strive to bring out the latter's latent abilities, 
 while attempting to suppress all the inherent and ac- 
 quired evil tendencies. The whole story of the trans- 
 formation of growing character through wise, optimis- 
 tic treatment rests in this method. 
 
 PESSIMISM AS PUBLICITY 
 
 It is interesting to notice how we mature and sup- 
 posedly stable-minded adults are swayed from one ex- 
 treme to another by the way the public press sets out 
 the larger news events. For a time during the power- 
 ful German offensive early in 1918 the faces of all 
 were drawn with a vision of defeat and humiliation. 
 The atmosphere was tense with nervous interest in 
 every item of fresh news from the front. Pessimism 
 seemed to be on nearly every tongue. Then came the 
 sudden turning of the tide. Explosive emotionalism 
 was the noticeable effect with its typical accompani- 
 ment of optimistic prediction. 
 
 But in normal times, human conduct which reflects 
 
180 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the wicked and morbid is classed as news and accord- 
 ingly receives the chief headlines. So with the mo- 
 tion picture film. It must depict evil in order to be 
 considered as interesting. What we need in all such 
 cases of morbid publicity is to guard against pes- 
 simism. We must remember that these published ac- 
 counts are given the prominent places simply because 
 of the fact of their being unusual and minority types 
 of conduct. The good done by humanity is so fre- 
 quent as to become a commonplace. Our duty to the 
 young is here a most important one, for it is a ten- 
 dency of their uninformed minds to regard the evil 
 as the standard type of normal human behaviour. A 
 crass pessimism is the natural consequence for them 
 unless we explain away the error. 
 
 To summarise: It is our clear duty to look for 
 the best side of a people and events as a possibility 
 to be realised partly by our own rational and cour- 
 ageous efforts. It is our duty to look forward and 
 upward when people and events seem to threaten to 
 "go to the bad" and hold firm and unshaken to an 
 ideal of betterment. It is our duty to teach the young 
 this valuable rule both by precept and example all 
 this to establish our lives upon a basis of common 
 sense optimism. 
 
XVIII 
 THE DANGERS OF OBSESSION 
 
 A thirteen-year-old boy desiring to drop all the 
 ordinary school work and become a professional trap- 
 per and hunter ; a university senior attempting to rush 
 into the career of a statesman without waiting for 
 solid, inner growth; a much heralded statesman and 
 reformer questioned suddenly as to his sanity; a 
 woman temperance worker suddenly venting her right- 
 eous wrath by chopping the saloons with a hatchet; 
 a celebrated anti-slavery promoter seizing the reins of 
 governmental authority and leading a mob to execute 
 reforms not yet authorised by law; a brilliant mind 
 crazed with the idea of the divine right of kings 
 and of the state leading the whole world to an orgy 
 of butchery all these are conspicuous examples of 
 the slowly accumulating force of what we might call 
 an obsession. 
 
 NEITHER GOOD NOR BAD 
 
 The obsession is neither good nor bad till its out- 
 come makes it so. Many of the world's greatest re- 
 forms have been led by persons whose enemies have 
 pronounced them insane but whose backers have re- 
 garded them as being inspired from on high. Per- 
 
 181 
 
182 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 haps in the very nature of the case the reform always 
 demands as its leader some personality who approxi- 
 mates the borderland of insanity. It must have a 
 leader who is "carried away" by his idea, or who is 
 the victim of a sort of obsession. History may never 
 completely settle the issue as to whether Napoleon, 
 or Luther, or Joan of Arc, or John Brown was a com- 
 pletely sane person. It may in time decide that every 
 age must have its mad iconoclasts in order to be en- 
 abled to struggle away from its own corrupt obses- 
 sions. 
 
 Many a reformer of high or low degree has run 
 amuck, as we say, and has ended his career in the 
 death cell or the madhouse. Others, who seemed to 
 make a very similar beginning, have found a high 
 place in the pages of history. The difference whether 
 ignominy or glory is to reward the effort is largely 
 a matter of the times. One age may be wholly unpre- 
 pared for a reform and may mob its leaders. The 
 next age may support a similar movement with loud 
 acclaim and finally elect the leading iconoclast to high 
 office. 
 
 NO SOLUTION OFFERED 
 
 When in 1914 all Europe was set on fire with the 
 excitement of war the culmination of an ob- 
 session on the theory of the superman the world at 
 large was suffering from another obsession which was 
 straining to the breaking point. The world's obses- 
 sion was the insane idea that mere business and mate- 
 rial goods are real ends to be sought and are of them- 
 selves the durable satisfactions of life. It was an age 
 
THE DANGERS OF OBSESSION 183 
 
 of pampering, of ease, of fattening and of lust with 
 nothing in sight but more of the same thing. In a 
 sense the entire social order was approaching the 
 status of a cabaret on a gigantic scale. When the 
 Prussians launched their devilish purpose to rule the 
 world with the sword they threw their first bomb into 
 a civilisation that was lazy and corrupt to the core. 
 
 The price which the world has paid for being 
 brought to its senses for allowing a bloody obses- 
 sion to blast away a lustful obsession is beyond hu- 
 man computation. Can we now profit by the sadden- 
 ing consequences? 
 
 WHERE IS WISDOM? 
 
 A startling old scripture text comes to mind here: 
 "Where shall wisdom be found and where is the place 
 of understanding?" We might well apply that age- 
 old, keen point of inquiry to our present quest of a 
 method for dealing with that dangerous thing called 
 the obsession both as it affects the individual and 
 the masses. 
 
 Now, the idea here in mind is that the group obses- 
 sion can never be obviated till we learn how to master 
 the individual obsession. And the situation seems 
 to demand that the ordinary person acquire the prac- 
 tice of watching sharply the direction of his dominant 
 thought and action in order to become certain that 
 these will not get into a rut or go off on a tangent. 
 Perhaps the least interesting of all personalities is 
 the one who responds in strict accordance with all the 
 rules and conventions the one who follows at all 
 
184 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 times the beaten path of tradition and custom and 
 proper decorum. On the other hand, the eccentric, 
 semi-insane personality is nearly always interesting. 
 He springs many surprises by his thought and con- 
 duct. He launches fresh and new movements; and, 
 for these reasons, he possesses many of the essential 
 elements of leadership. 
 
 SHOULD WE DE-VOCATIONALISE? 
 
 For a long time we have harped upon the idea of 
 directing the young to the choice of a vocation. But 
 our plan has been very one-sided. The world to-day 
 is swarming with men who are in a sense victims of 
 their vocation, who are entirely shut up within the 
 narrow sphere of their work, and who are therefore 
 suffering from an obsession dangerous to themselves 
 and to society. How can we get the youth into his 
 vocation and at the same time plan a way whereby 
 later he may get out of it? How may the ordinary 
 busy person apply a system of checks and inquiries 
 upon his conduct and keep it from falling into stale 
 ruts or turning slowly off into an obsession? We 
 need a course in vocational! sing the young which will 
 include a method of de-vocationalising the middle 
 aged and the older members of society. 
 
 Obviously, there is a need for something more than 
 merely urging the young to "stay out of a rut," and 
 to "keep abreast of the times." We should have 
 clearly outlined a course of training intended specific- 
 ally to bring about such a status for the individual. 
 If the world at large was obsessed in 1914 with lust 
 
THE DANGERS OF OBSESSION 185 
 
 and lazy drifting it was because of the fact that 
 those who are supposed to shape the course of society 
 were likewise indifferent or asleep to the staleness of 
 the age. How may we take society apart occasionally, 
 examine some of its fixed policies and foregone con- 
 clusions and thus possibly head off its obsessions be- 
 fore they become dangerous? How may we do sim- 
 ilarly for ourselves as individuals? The answer to 
 each of these might prove to be almost identical in 
 method. 
 
 WATCH SOCIETY CRITICALLY 
 
 It is fair to assume that both society and the indi- 
 vidual embody at all times the potentialities of an 
 obsession, of either the positive or the negative sort 
 that there is always the danger of either of these 
 breaking out in the direction of a very eccentric type 
 of conduct, or of going to sleep upon some stale and 
 monotonous procedure. The tendency of society is 
 perhaps more in the positive direction ; and that of the 
 individual, more in the negative. If we should at- 
 tempt to make a standard whereby to test social prog- 
 ress frequently for the possible detection of an in- 
 cipient "wrong" tendency, we should necessarily be 
 thrown back upon racial behaviour. Certain well-tried 
 rules of collective human behaviour would have to 
 serve as the guide, and the fundamental race traits 
 and instincts would be expected to furnish the nec- 
 essary sanction for reliable and trustworthy social 
 conduct. 
 
 And now that the war is over we should be bold 
 enough to say what we profoundly believe; namely, 
 
i86 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the year 1914 found us the victim of the intolerable 
 obsession of lust and greed a condition which could 
 not possibly remain very long without a break. If 
 the Prussians had not come forward with their own 
 brutish purpose and "started something" on a gigantic 
 scale, then some other mighty explosion was soon 
 due to take place. But we are all a part of human 
 society and we must all continue to act as the critics 
 of society in order to keep her sane in her conduct. 
 We must all become familiar with the substantial and 
 persistent nature of Comman Man and easily use this 
 as our measuring rod for testing the behaviour of 
 the masses acting as a whole. 
 
 For example, once we have discovered the law of 
 rhythm as a gauge of a progressive individual and 
 collective human conduct a swinging back and forth 
 between a state of poise and a state of restlessness 
 we shall quickly decide that either of these two soon 
 grows "rotten to the core'* if continued long in a 
 state of greed and material satiety. 
 
 The experimentation and the pioneering of society 
 the trial and error of new ventures should be ap- 
 proved to the degree that no violence is thereby being 
 done to the well-known qualities of inherent nature. 
 Doubtless we still have ages and ages to travel through 
 before we shall have discovered the limitations of even 
 our most common capacities of self -management and 
 self-direction. But these ventures into the unknown 
 can easily provide for the taking all normal types of 
 the human family along with them and not merely 
 some of the types, e. g., the superman or the genius. 
 A movement to establish a society intended to give 
 
THE DANGERS OF OBSESSION 187 
 
 an advantage to the "smart set," the millionaire or 
 the genius is a dangerous obsession. 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL STANDARD 
 
 "Every one has a fool streak in him which may be- 
 come dangerous if turned loose unrestrained." So 
 every one has within him the possibilities of stagna- 
 tion. If pampered and undisturbed and carried along 
 on "flowery beds of ease" a considerable length of 
 time he likewise tends toward the negative obsession 
 of a lazy, indifferent attitude toward himself and so- 
 ciety. When all the records are in it will probably 
 appear that the stupid and lazy-minded portions of 
 the human family have done us more damage than 
 the "eccentric fools" have done directly. 
 
 So, there is certainly an apparent need of a well 
 made standard of checks and balances whereby indi- 
 vidual man may test himself frequently for the pres- 
 ence of an incipient obsession. And when this mat- 
 ter is reduced to its lowest terms the inherent human 
 nature will doubtless again become the foundation 
 of the procedure while the behaviour of a well-bal- 
 anced social order will furnish a major part of the 
 superstructure. As I pursue my chosen vocation do 
 I continue to indulge to some degree the four great 
 aspects of the common inheritance as outlined and 
 somewhat explained in a previous chapter to laugh, 
 to labour, to love and to look up? If I continue to 
 swing rhythmically between poise or quiescence and 
 strenuous aggression; and if I continue to swerve 
 my course so as to keep my conduct balanced with 
 
i88 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 these four significant life issues; then, I am on a solid 
 foundation and am in least danger of an obsession. 
 If, furthermore, I watch the movements of society 
 with a judgment based on a knowledge of human 
 nature and swing my course midway between acquies- 
 cence in social custom and a consistent type of per- 
 sonal initiative then, I am at once a participant in 
 social progress and a critic thereof. 
 
 THE MASSES RELIABLE 
 
 It is the masses rather than the classes whom we 
 should trust. It is the frank and open conduct of the 
 throngs, reaching out honestly for a better definition 
 of their lives, whom we should depend upon to point 
 the way to a safe and sane type of behaviour for the 
 world. Always crude, always blundering, always 
 right in their general aims this is the true charac- 
 terisation of the great common crowd. Always 
 scheming, always selfish, always wrong this is the 
 proper designation of any small class of humanity to 
 whom may be left the exclusive management of so- 
 ciety. The unhindered, unwatched minority is always 
 dangerous. It will invariably lead to an obsession. 
 
 The second reliable test of one's sanity and safety 
 in a social order, therefore, is for him to continue 
 measuring himself in terms of the behaviour of the 
 great moving masses. The larger elements of his 
 character should simply be at best a refinement of the 
 mighty forces in human nature as seem constantly 
 reaching for expression through the conduct of the 
 crowd. 
 
THE DANGERS OF OBSESSION 189 
 
 We need a course of training for the young or 
 rather a conscious purpose of the schooling as now 
 imparted which would tend to prepare the individ- 
 ual, first, against getting out of harmony with human 
 nature; and, second, against getting out of harmony 
 with a sane human society. Conscious attention to 
 these two matters, if early acquired, would not make 
 us victims of a narrow and stale course of life; it would 
 rather give us a permanent ability to correct our car 
 reers and to keep them balanced and harmonious. 
 Such a procedure would not make us slaves to fashion 
 and custom, but sympathetic critics of social behaviour 
 and constructive guides of social progress. It would 
 reduce the dangers of individual and of social obses- 
 sion to a minimum. 
 
 THE DANGER OF POISE 
 
 Some will regard the two or three chapters imme- 
 diately preceding this one as a plea for soft and flimsy 
 conduct. And so they are, in a sense. No one can 
 live on such stuff. Poise alone if over-indulged spells 
 poison. The one who tries to make this world all a 
 happy dreamland is a menace. He, too, is obsessed. 
 But the red-blooded, strenuous person who can first 
 fight his battle through and then swing himself to 
 the other extreme of a calm serenity he has discov- 
 ered one of the secrets of a powerful human existence. 
 
 So, the purpose of all this discussion is not to please, 
 but rather if possible to make men think. To please 
 is to put to sleep; to make one think may also result 
 in his deep provocation, but it will also lead him to 
 
190 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 struggle for a more secure position for his own life 
 and thought. Verily, it may develop that a part of 
 our duty in life is that of knocking the props from 
 under one another's obsessions. 
 
XIX 
 
 SENSE AND SENTIMENT 
 
 One-half of the active, well balanced life is common 
 sense. That part of the conscious daily effort of a 
 person so organised is an attempt to deal in a mat- 
 ter-of-fact way with the duties as they arise. An- 
 other important half of the good life is sentiment, 
 made up about equally of memories of the past and 
 visions of the future. If we admit that there is a 
 general need of a physician of the soul as well as 
 a physician for the body, then we shall doubtless 
 agree that the former must deal constructively with 
 the sentimentalism of his patient. And such a prac- 
 titioner would naturally proceed to diagnose his case 
 by inquiry into the memories and the visions of the 
 individual, 
 
 RECOGNITION OF SENTIMENT 
 
 Too many potentially good and efficient men and 
 women belong to the class sometimes called the down- 
 and-outs. Vast numbers of others, born to shine in 
 the world, are all the while hovering along the bor- 
 der line of dejection. Society has floundered so fear- 
 fully of late because of the failure of business and 
 legislation to recognise the fundamental and legiti- 
 
 191 
 
192 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 mate place of sentimentality in every important affair 
 of the individual and of the masses. So called solid 
 fact is not enough. The sentimental or poetic side of 
 work and effort is everywhere apparent to the one 
 who knows how to analyse character. 
 
 I spend an hour with a plain business man, one who 
 perhaps appears to be very blunt and matter-of-fact 
 in all his dealings. I try to discern the real motive 
 power which drives him forward so energetically ; and 
 lo, there is a region of tears and tenderness deep 
 within. Here, I find is the well-spring of much of 
 his best effort. He treasures the memory of a long 
 departed mother. He still hears mentally her voice 
 and repeats over and over her encouraging and cheer- 
 ing maxims for his life. Indeed, her words have 
 grown far more forceful to him as the years have 
 sped away. 
 
 One of the richest treasures ever laid away in the 
 storehouse of the past is the memory of the broken 
 strains of some old lullaby sung by a mother whose 
 body is now dust, and whose voice was perhaps never 
 trained for singing. After the exercises of a long, 
 strenuous day were over and the receding light of the 
 sun in the heavens had brought out the stars, and 
 while a tired little body was nestling in the folds of 
 a pair of affectionate arms, there could then be heard 
 the delectable cadences of that mother's voice in song. 
 How it soothed and charmed into oblivion the weari- 
 ness of the little one, while it bore him away into the 
 land of delightful dreams. And after the peaceful 
 slumberer had been laid away to rest upon his baby 
 couch, the listener might have heard the impressive 
 
SENSE AND SENTIMENT 193 
 
 stillness of the night broken by the half-whispered 
 tones of that same mother's voice in prayer. It was 
 only a simple, improvised plea in behalf of herself 
 and the sleeping child, the like of which has been ut- 
 tered the whole world round ever since the awaken- 
 ing of the emotion of mother love, but it was a 
 prayer of wonderful potency. It is still at work in 
 the memory of that child, directing his life as a 
 man. 
 
 Again, I explore an inner department of the mind 
 of my business friend and there is at once revealed 
 another strong sentimental force at work literally 
 driving him onward to a more determined effort. It 
 is a vision of the possible future of his children. The 
 thought of what they can possibly be fashioned into 
 through his support thrills his being and constitutes 
 a very large part of his subconsciousness also. 
 Wherefore, it is plain that this typical business man 
 of apparently blunt manners is not merely an individ- 
 ual of common sense practices but he is at least fifty 
 per cent, an individual of dreamy sentiment. 
 
 THE ADVERSE SIDE 
 
 Now, it is very easy indeed to make out a case for 
 the positive aspects of emotional sentiment as being a 
 very strong factor in the conduct of the ordinary suc- 
 cessful and contented individual. He enjoys what we 
 might call healthy-mindedness. His memories of the 
 past are pleasing, his present effort is progressing and 
 his vision of the future is luring. If it were true that 
 
194 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 all ordinary persons, of whatever station in life, have 
 at their command this helpful backward-and- forward 
 look on life, the matter might be dropped. 
 
 But the world is weighted down with an adverse 
 type of sentiment. Millions among the mighty throng 
 are poisoned with bitter regrets of what seems a cruel 
 past and with a black vision of what seems a hopeless 
 future. The libraries are filled with volumes and 
 speech everywhere is pregnant with theories purport- 
 ing to solve the problem of labour and wages and 
 general vocational adjustment. We imagine that 
 when we have once placed a man at employment with 
 good wages as his reward his case is satisfactorily 
 settled. But if he still lacks the proper sentiment to 
 spur him on his undertaking is a failure. Life to him 
 will continue to be a dull grind and the work of his 
 hand a stale mechanicalism. 
 
 Hence, we are directly reminded here of our theory 
 that there should be a social adjuster for every con- 
 cern which employs a considerable number of per- 
 sons. One special line of duty of such a physician of 
 the soul would be that of improving the subject's mem- 
 ory of the past and of assisting him to make out a 
 better ideal for his future. To train the hand of the 
 employe to perform its, part skilfully is a small mat- 
 ter in comparison with the training of his heart or his 
 sentiment. Now, it happens that many of the bitter 
 regrets which crush and hinder the typical despondent 
 person can be successfully explained away. They are 
 imagined wrongs and failures of the past rather than 
 real ones. 
 
SENSE AND SENTIMENT 195 
 
 A SENTIMENTAL ADJUSTER 
 
 A certain shopworker who was paid good wages 
 had long been depressed by the regret that his fa- 
 ther had failed to keep him in school till he had ac- 
 quired an advanced education. "Then I might have 
 amounted to something," said he. "As it is now I 
 am a mere mechanic with no better outlook for the 
 future." "But/ 5 it was replied, "you must remember 
 that your father did very well for his day when he 
 sent you through even the elementary schools. You 
 obtained what was then considered a standard educa- 
 tion." 
 
 And then it was explained to the regretful work- 
 man that his disappointed dream about himself might 
 be realised in the lives of his growing children. Plan 
 from this time forward to make them greater than 
 you ever hoped to become. Bend all your effort 
 toward giving them an advanced course of training. 
 To watch them grow slowly into rich and forceful 
 personalities, and finally to have them occupying 
 worthy places as masters of a good career of their 
 own and as servants of society that is the vision 
 which the despairing shopman was helped to make out 
 for himself. Carried to its practical applications, it 
 means not only an allaying of the bitter regret for 
 an imagined failure in the past. It means also that 
 the adjuster would take up the case of his young fam- 
 ily one at a time and assist in the planning of the best 
 possible future for them. 
 
 I will leave it to others to train a workman to work. 
 That is an easy matter. Give me the opportunity to 
 
196 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 train him to think sentimentally, for by only such 
 means may his work be made really worthy of the 
 effort it entails. The material product of the effort 
 of the workman or the material gain of the business 
 man this is a very cheap thing indeed if regarded 
 as possessing any intrinsic worth. Granted that the 
 individual's memory of the past is not tangled with 
 snarls and regrets; granted that his vision for the 
 future is a happy dream of unselfish and altruistic 
 achievement then I will quickly and incidentally 
 teach him to perform well the mechanical side of his 
 work. 
 
 THE POWER OF SENTIMENT 
 
 We have all along held to the theory that a prac- 
 tical idealism is necessary for the teacher and the min- 
 ister of the gospel. We have even admitted the neces- 
 sity of a sort of sickly sentimentalism as an element 
 of pleasing literature. But the music of shop-em- 
 ployment and the poetry of farming, there has scarcely 
 been one to advocate or defend as a practical idea 
 
 The clank and rumbling of the ponderous machinery, 
 The consuming white glow of the blazing furnace, 
 The beads of cooling sweat on the pulsating forehead, 
 The clear, commanding voice of the foreman busy with his group, 
 The scurrying clouds of smoke seeking exit through the tran- 
 soms, 
 
 The merry jests of the others as they pass in and out for the 
 changes 
 
 These constitute a part of the poetry which might 
 conceivably animate a common shopman whose mem- 
 ory of the past recalls not a pang of regret and whose 
 
SENSE AND SENTIMENT 197 
 
 vision of the future is a thing of unobstructed beauty. 
 This sentiment is one of the very positive and sub- 
 stantial forces in his every-day life. And, strange to 
 say, it is a thing which inspectors of shops and testers 
 of men almost uniformly ignore. 
 
 Furthermore, what shall we say of a farmer whom 
 the cold of winter has shut in for a long season and 
 who goes forth on May day with this happy scriptural 
 spring song vibrating through his being 
 
 The voice of my beloved! Behold he cometh 
 
 Leaping upon the Mountains, 
 
 Skipping upon the hills. 
 
 My beloved spake and said unto me: 
 
 Rise up, my Love, my Fair One, and come away! 
 
 For, lo! 
 
 The winter is passed, 
 
 The rain is over and gone, 
 
 The flowers appear on the earth; 
 
 The time of the singing of birds is come, 
 
 And the voice of the turtle dove is heard in the land. 
 
 The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, 
 
 And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. 
 
 Arise, my Love, my Fair One, and come away! 
 
 LIFE NOT ALL DREAMS 
 
 And so it is not merely shopwork, but the poetry of 
 common industry which should concern us. It is not 
 merely farming, but the music of soil-culture which 
 we may well consider in relation to our reconstruction 
 of society. Here, then, is a mighty and practical task 
 for the leaders of society ; to provide that the common 
 individual may have the opportunity and the disposi- 
 tion to transform a part of his mechanical drudgery 
 into the song and the poetry of the dreamer. 
 
198 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 But the good life is not all dream stuff. Perhaps 
 the vagarist is as far out of touch with substantial 
 progress as the mere materialist. We become dis- 
 gusted with his impractical fancies. In his readiness 
 to offer a solution for every problem he is steadfast 
 in only one thing, and that is the habit of ignoring 
 the facts. A survey of every community will bring 
 out at least a small group of these ineffective senti- 
 mentalists, whose chief virtue is that of never becom- 
 ing discouraged. 
 
 To phrase this matter in the language of the present 
 text, we might say that the mere dreamer is the one 
 who pretends to know the music and the poetry of 
 everything in general, but who, as a matter of fact, 
 can apply these fine arts to nothing in particular. Our 
 duty to him and his class is to assist such a person 
 early in life to fasten his imagining to something tan- 
 gible and make the two pull together for some prac- 
 tical purpose. In short, instead of our long-standing 
 disposition to condemn him, we should determine to 
 cure him. Thus we should not confine the classes of 
 poets and singers to the few who are able merely to 
 compose verses and write music. The fuller and more 
 significant expression of the so called fine arts be- 
 longs rather to those who can make practical use of 
 them in their every-day lives. 
 
 THE CHARM IN A NAME 
 
 There is a strange significance resident in a good, 
 suggestive name. "Thy name shall be called no more 
 Jacob but Israel, for as a prince hast thou power with 
 
SENSE AND SENTIMENT 199 
 
 God and with men," said the angel of the Lord after 
 wrestling with the great leader. From that time on 
 Jacob appears to have enjoyed a fuller sense of his 
 worth and ability. "I call you no longer servants but 
 friends/' said the Master of Men to his disciples. 
 This superior title of respect and honour doubtless 
 implanted new courage in the hearts of those humble 
 followers. When the great Bishop declared to Jean 
 Valjean that he had bought the latter 's soul and given 
 it unto the good, the poor, broken-spirited galley slave 
 renewed his efforts to lead a righteous life with such 
 success as amounted almost to his complete trans- 
 formation. So, the records might be brought forward 
 to illustrate the magic effects of the pronouncement, 
 by some worthy authority, of a new, significant name 
 for some one called to enter upon an arduous under- 
 taking. 
 
 But why confine the very positive force of such 
 fine sentiment to the rare occasion of the heroic or- 
 deal ? Can it also not be made to haul stone and bake 
 bread? Is it not a practical and even a commercial 
 aspect of the life of a plain artisan for him to regard 
 himself as one called by heaven to perform a spiritual 
 mission? Could he not be tested for the presence of 
 a possible aptitude for performing some small mission 
 in connection with his ordinary work or business? 
 Does it necessarily strain the situation at all for us 
 to think of a common workman as one who is in the 
 habit of performing a small ministering service to 
 the needy or the downcast around him, and who takes 
 for his motto a scriptural phrase? 
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because 
 
200 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings 
 unto the meek. He hath sent me to bind up the 
 broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
 and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." 
 
 But the peculiar results of this form of suggestion 
 for such it is are best shown in case of children. 
 Far out on the mountain side, bleak and rugged, there 
 could have been seen on a certain cold winter day, 
 a sturdy little ten-year-old boy following the trail that 
 leads westward from the isolated village of R. A 
 less courageous lad of his years would have quailed 
 before the cutting sleet and the piercing wind. But 
 his errand was one of mercy, namely, to carry some 
 medicine and deliver a message to a sick woman liv- 
 ing out in a lonely cabin. On being asked at the end 
 of the journey what he had been given in payment for 
 undertaking such a perilous task, the boy replied : 
 "Mother said I was a brave little man, and so I just 
 came running." 
 
 Again, it may be asked, why should the stimulating 
 force of such splendid sentiment be regarded as apply- 
 ing only to children and a few formally ordained mis- 
 sionaries? It is the contention here that ordinary 
 human existence slowly grew coarse and mean during 
 the recent generations past because of the fact that the 
 force of a well balanced idealism was slowly with- 
 drawn from both the planners and the plodders along 
 life's common way. The pursuit of business, of in- 
 dustry, of science, for its own sake, finally robbed 
 all these occupations of their spiritual significance, 
 without which they became as trash in a heap. Not 
 only once but many times in history have great masses 
 
SENSE AND SENTIMENT 201 
 
 of men fallen upon one another in murderous warfare 
 as a result of having lost the common tie of a strong 
 altruistic sentiment. And, judging the future by the 
 past, and both in terms of the eternal inheritance in 
 man, we may be certain of other bloody struggles in 
 the future at such time as the material things of life 
 are permitted to obscure the eternal spiritual verities 
 in the heart of the common masses. 
 
 As a matter of plain business, therefore of com- 
 merce, of science, of education, of planning for per- 
 manent peace on the earth the substance of the sen- 
 timent which led the little boy on through the raging 
 blizzard might well be made a practical motto for 
 the plainest adult plodder up life's rugged steeps 
 
 "How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of 
 him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, 
 that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth 
 salvation. " 
 
 THE SENTIMENT OF THE LEISURE CLASS 
 
 Finally, the individual and society together are suf- 
 fering from the sentiment of those vain and pampered 
 creatures who find little to do other than to squander 
 their time in the sensuous occupations of the smart 
 set. How deeply the suffering world at large needs 
 the ministrations which could be theirs for the mere 
 price of a heart to give! How sorely their possible 
 services are needed by the sick and the careworn close 
 at hand! If such things were practicable we should 
 like to deliver to every selfish soul of the class this 
 admonition : 
 
202 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 O vain, well dressed, easy-living woman, weeping 
 over the suffering of the fictitious character in that 
 novel you are reading, life is more real than this! 
 Do you really desire to do some good in the world? 
 Even now there is perhaps lying over the way within 
 five blocks of you a poor, sick mother, destitute of 
 friends and almost of the bare necessities of life. She 
 has been making boys' suits in a down-town sweat 
 shop at 96^ per dozen as a means of supporting her- 
 self and her four fatherless little children. Go over 
 there and kneel down beside the bed of the poor, 
 unfortunate creature and bathe her hot face with your 
 tears of compassion and tell her you will love her. 
 Tell her you have a heart message from some source 
 divine which impels you to come with relief. Then, 
 wash her with your own dainty hands, and put a new, 
 clean garment upon her furnished from your own 
 over-supply at home. 
 
 Take the hungry little ones up in your arms, and 
 wash them and warm their little pinched faces with 
 kisses of true affection. And then set about prepar- 
 ing them something nourishing to eat, thus learning 
 through experience the real joy of loving and serving 
 some one who is in need. As soon as possible, see 
 that these children are supplied with better clothing 
 and that their hair is combed and their house is set 
 in order. Do this in all gentleness and affection and 
 observe how fondly the little ones will cling to you, 
 for they will bless you to the end of your life. Not 
 only so, but under your care and compassion the ailing 
 mother will probably recover very rapidly. She may 
 
SENSE AND SENTIMENT 203 
 
 be suffering not so much from disease, but simply dy- 
 ing by inches from lack of sympathy and love. Your 
 kindly ministrations will tend to put a fresh bloom on 
 her cheek and a new song in her soul. 
 
 
XX 
 
 THE WAR ON WHITE SLAVERY 
 
 One of the most brutal and sickening forms of at- 
 tack made by the European superman while in the ze- 
 nith of his power was that directed against the helpless 
 womanhood of the provinces which he overcame with 
 his bloody sword. The evidence is beyond disputa- 
 tion in effect, that he not only ravished women and 
 girls indiscriminately, but that his blood-stained hordes 
 carried these innocent victims away as captives for 
 his continued lust, staked them to the ground for the 
 convenience of his troops, and chopped their bodies to 
 pieces after they had suffered a horrible death. 
 
 A WORLD-WIDE AFFAIR 
 
 While the white slave practice of the late superman 
 culminated in the most fiendish practice of the kind 
 during modern times, we have no right to charge this 
 entire affair up to him. His act may be more prop- 
 erly defined as the final bursting and running over of 
 a most nauseating festering sore on the body of our 
 so called modern civilisation. Or, to express the mat- 
 ter less figuratively, it was the high tension point of 
 our racial obsessions. White slavery had been under 
 the whip during the past decade, to be sure. It had 
 
 204 
 
THE WAR ON WHITE SLAVERY 205 
 
 been studied, investigated, segregated, driven about 
 not a little, and legislated against in many parts of 
 the world all this, and still it was very persistent 
 and practically unchecked at the outbreak of the great 
 war. 
 
 There is ample proof that hordes of women fol- 
 lowed behind all the great European armies during 
 at least the early years of the war and that their hid- 
 eous traffic was conducted on a gigantic scale. There 
 is ample evidence that certain of these armies at times 
 had more men under hospital treatment for venereal 
 disease than for wounds received in the big battles 
 then raging. There is ample evidence to prove that 
 when the great war began, white slavery as an adjunct 
 of army life was an accepted practice on the part of all 
 the so called civilised nations, including our own be- 
 loved country. Indeed, this was one of the grossest 
 and most fraudulent obsessions that has ever gripped 
 the minds of an intelligent, free-thinking humanity. 
 While many intelligent men were long ago disgusted 
 with the white slave situation in connection with army 
 life, even these considered the situation as hopeless, in 
 so far as eradication was concerned. 
 
 AMERICA STARTLED THE WORLD 
 
 Up to the time of the mobilisation of our enlarged 
 army along the Mexican border in 1913 the United 
 States Army was committed to the disheartening cus- 
 tom of the world at large in respect to white slavery. 
 A red-light district of some sort was within reach 
 of practically every place where our troops were quar- 
 
206 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 tered for a considerable period of time. The venereal 
 poison contingent, true to tradition and custom, also 
 followed our army to the border and there began to 
 conduct business on the usual extensive scale. 
 
 But just here there came a turn in affairs which 
 should properly go down in history as a sensational 
 turn in the career of the army white slaver. The 
 credit for a new vision respecting this ugly monster, 
 and the masterful courage to put the new purpose 
 through belongs to Dr. James Naismith, then a mem- 
 ber of the faculty of the University of Kansas on 
 leave, and the Reverend A. C. McKeever, a minister 
 of the gospel residing at Garden City, Kansas, and 
 known throughout the Middle- West as an able lec- 
 turer. Dr. Naismith and Mr. McKeever both went 
 to the Border as chaplains of companies of Kansas 
 National Guard troops. 
 
 The majority of the Kansas youths who went to the 
 Border under the chaplaincy of these two men were 
 clean in body and mind and spirit. They knew prac- 
 tically nothing by way of personal experience, about 
 either the liquor traffic or the white slave traffic. We 
 can imagine the disgust and indignation of all these 
 men and boys as they witnessed the aggressions of 
 the two soul-destroying monsters named above. 
 Within a short distance of the camp where their regi- 
 ment was located there began to be erected with fever- 
 ish haste a cheap stockade with the astonishing ar- 
 rangement of one-hundred separate stalls for scarlet 
 women. Naismith and McKeever pleaded with the 
 poison squad but were turned away with a bluff. 
 They applied to the local court but none dared to 
 
THE WAR ON WHITE SLAVERY 207 
 
 act. They laid the case before the higher local army 
 command, but were dismissed on the theory of "sex- 
 ual necessity," and were assured that "nothing had 
 ever been done about this thing and nothing ever could 
 be." Finally the authorities at Washington were im- 
 portuned, but without the result of either proposal 
 for relief or encouragement to continue any effort to 
 get relief. Beyond a doubt our national government 
 was then still in the grip of the traditional obsession 
 as to the necessity of a white slave business in con- 
 nection with every army camp. 
 
 But the two pioneer crusaders mentioned above 
 would not quit. Acting within the restraints and the 
 dignity proper for men in the uniform they tried every 
 phase of legal procedure that promised any sign of 
 relief. At last, after expending hundreds of dollars 
 of their own money, they were successful in persuad- 
 ing an obscure county court miles from the scene to 
 invoke a somewhat forgotten law and issue an injunc- 
 tion against the white-slave stockade described above. 
 The builders and their devilish gang were driven out 
 at the point of more than one army weapon. 
 
 THE SPREAD OF AN IDEA 
 
 After the painful and somewhat tragic demonstra- 
 tion conducted by Chaplains Naismith and McKeever 
 in driving out a white slave camp, the idea of an at- 
 tack on the venereal evil in the army began to spread 
 like magic. Army physicians, ranking officers of the 
 line, and high government officials quickly accepted 
 the revolutionary scheme and began to set in motion 
 
208 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the machinery necessary for making it general. For- 
 tunately for the cause, this second stage of its devel- 
 opment came at about the time many thousands of our 
 innocent youths were being hurried into the army. 
 The white-slave business was thus suddenly flaunted 
 'before the disturbed minds of parents everywhere as 
 the ugliest thing confronting their boys in the pros- 
 pective military venture. A great cry went up to 
 Washington, and a mighty and history-making move- 
 ment was thus launched. 
 
 The white slaver and white slavery began to be 
 herded and hounded unmercifully. An effort was 
 made to establish a moral zone about nearly every 
 army camp and to patrol this against the encroach- 
 ments of liquor and scarlet women. None of us will 
 claim that the effort was a full success, and yet none 
 of us will deny its extreme helpfulness in driving out 
 the enemies opposed. The Kansas legislature, for 
 <example, provided a "farm" for scarlet women and 
 as fast as these were caught hanging about the army 
 camps within the state they were hurried off to this 
 place of detention to remain during the period of 
 the war. Many of their backers were fined and im- 
 prisoned. 
 
 It may be asserted without question that the sexual 
 health and the sexual morality of the young men in 
 our great American army camps became a conspicuous 
 example to the country at large and to the entire 
 world. It was not only so far above what is con- 
 sidered the normal white slave situation in our larger 
 cities that the officials of many of these were shamed 
 into making a radical improvement therein ; but it was 
 
THE WAR ON WHITE SLAVERY 209 
 
 also a startling example to our allies when our clean 
 troops arrived over-seas. And there followed in Eu- 
 rope a most significant and far-reaching attempt to 
 drive back the entire disgusting army of white slav- 
 ery. 
 
 'BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES 
 
 The white slave business may be driven back and 
 temporarily defeated, but little permanent progress 
 will be made against it until we get down to a bed- 
 rock foundation for a beginning point. So long as 
 we permit boys everywhere to talk white slavery in 
 their common intercourse with one another they will 
 become slowly obsessed with the idea of its necessity 
 for themselves as individuals and for the masses. So 
 long as we admit a dual standard of morality for the 
 two sexes, blaming or punishing girls and not boys 
 for sexual wrong, accepting a "wild oats" period as 
 normal for the latter and not for the former to this 
 extent we shall continue to bring up succeeding gen- 
 erations of men who at best believe in white slavery 
 as a necessary evil. 
 
 Wrong thinking is the primary cause of all wrong, 
 and right thinking is the only natural corrective. We 
 have lived under a false philosophy of the relations 
 of the sexes and have thus perpetuated an ugly and 
 unnatural situation. We may blast away with our 
 big guns and our little ones in a campaign to drive 
 out the traditional sex evil, and always get encourag- 
 ing but temporary results. While the big fundamental 
 problem of creating a new social philosophy remains 
 practically untouched our progress will amount to lit- 
 
210 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 tie. There could be rendered a most important service 
 to the future of society therefore, if a group of ex- 
 perts should set themselves to the task of planning a 
 program of right relations of the two sexes to each 
 other during the period of growth and education. 
 
 "There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes 
 it so" is an apt phrase here if we understand the 
 word "makes" to mean "creates." So we must strive 
 to create a new sex conscience through the instrumen- 
 tality of a safe-guarded and well directed sex con- 
 sciousness during the years of character development 
 How is a pre-adolescent boy to regard girls? How 
 is a youth to regard the young women of his age? 
 How are common men to regard common women 
 wherever they are met or mingled with? The fore- 
 going are mighty questions as related to the training 
 of the individual in matters of sex and as related 
 to human welfare at large. 
 
 WOMAN AND PROGRESS 
 
 It is interesting to notice that the nations which have 
 subjected women as the pawn and plaything of man 
 were, as a rule, arrayed on the side of the superman 
 in the recent struggle. It is interesting also to ob- 
 serve the significant and epoch-making fact of the 
 advancing status of the women of the so called Allied 
 nations since the beginning of the armistice. With 
 women recognised as human beings and as entitled to 
 all the privileges of human beings, a big start is made 
 toward the solution of the point here at issue. The 
 act of the Presjdent of the United States twice appear- 
 
THE WAR ON WHITE SLAVERY 211 
 
 ing before Congress with an earnest plea for full 
 woman suffrage, and the act of the British people in 
 nominating a dozen or more of their best women for 
 places in Parliament these events are unprecedented 
 in the history of mankind. If such matters be car- 
 ried to their logical conclusions it means in time that 
 woman shall come into a position where she may de- 
 fend her sex against inhuman treatment with the 
 powerful instruments of the ballot and the law. 
 
 BOY TRAINING INVOLVED 
 
 The men who are clean in their sex life are those 
 who were so trained either intentionally or by ac- 
 cident during boyhood. The men who are vile and 
 filthy in such matters learned their evil ways during 
 the same juvenile period. He that was then filthy will 
 be filthy still. The future of society, therefore, in 
 respect to the social evil is in the hands of the trainers 
 of the young, especially the boys, for, except in a few 
 abnormal cases, girls are never originally the aggres- 
 sors in the sexual sin. A very simple course of train- 
 ing may be made most effective in directing the minds 
 of boys toward sexual purity. Little space remains 
 for discussion of the matter here, but a brief outline 
 might be given as follows: 
 
 1. Safeguard both boys and girls during all times 
 against the use of coarse and suggestive language 
 or stories to match which inculcate the evil sex 
 ideation. 
 
 2. Train adolescent young people always in co- 
 educational institutions bringing them daily together 
 
212 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 in open and free, yet chaperoned, associations. Thus 
 fully accustom them to commingling in an atmosphere 
 of purity and in relations which stimulate mutual self- 
 respect and esteem. 
 
 3. Take over the love affairs of the young and 
 direct these emotional interests as you would the other 
 fundamental types of their schooling. Keep in mind 
 here the ideal of a slowly approaching happy marriage 
 and the sacred relations of husband and wife in family 
 rearing. 
 
 4. Teach the youth to regard every normal girl or 
 woman as a potential mother and as one whom Divine 
 Wisdom has sent into the world to carry the beautiful 
 treasury of inheritance on to a succeeding generation. 
 Teach him to think of himself as a possible lover of 
 every worthy young woman and as one who would 
 fight to defend her virtue rather than conspire to 
 destroy it 
 
 5. Teach the adolescent girl how to safeguard her 
 virtue, through right standards of conduct, and to 
 think of herself as deserving the protection of every 
 good man and as owing to society a clean and unde- 
 filed status of sexual health. 
 
 6. Teach the two together the fundamentals of 
 their own natures and the right methods of safeguard- 
 ing themselves against all forms of sexual pollution. 
 There are certain definable situations where the temp- 
 tation of adolescent young people may be strained to 
 the breaking point. 
 
THE WAR ON WHITE SLAVERY 213 
 
 WILL MEN REFORM 
 
 It has been found that men are slow and ineffective 
 in reforming themselves once they have learned to 
 patronise the red-light business. An enforced re- 
 form is almost the only practical procedure; to re- 
 move to a place where such patronage is impossible 
 or to be deterred through physical restraint, such as the 
 new army life has recently brought to men. It is en- 
 couraging and very suggestive as to the future solution 
 of the sexual problem to hear many men testify as to 
 the practicability of continence after a rule of re- 
 straint has held them for a while. Not a few men who 
 were "rounders" during civil life at home have ex- 
 pressed surprise and satisfaction at the discovery of 
 the abundant physical strength and poise which a term 
 of abstinence in the army brought them. 
 
 Now, since those in charge of national affairs have 
 made a sensational discovery of the far-reaching 
 possibilities of enforced sexual decency in the ranks 
 of the great army of fighters, is it not an opportune 
 time to plan to hold the same general rule over the 
 heads of a larger army of civilians? Government 
 control of railroads, telegraph and telephone lines 
 seems to promise to remain as an economic inheritance 
 of the war. Why not government control of sexual 
 re-direction as a social inheritance of the war? 
 
XXI 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND ALTRUISM 
 
 Life tends to grow mean and selfish in case one 
 continues long in the exclusive pursuit of his vocation 
 or business, unless that life work chances to include 
 an element of altruism. Life tends to grow narrow 
 and eccentric in case one becomes a professional altru- 
 ist. The exclusive business man scorns and some- 
 times almost despises the professional reformer. The 
 missionary, long set apart in his exclusive altruism, 
 mistrusts and pities the "indifferent" and "worldly" 
 man of affairs, as he regards him. What is the 
 trouble ? Are both these classes in some degree wrong 
 and misfits in a progressive social order? I believe 
 they are 
 
 SOCIETY NEVER FIXED 
 
 The country will never be completely "saved." The 
 world will never be entirely "safe for democracy." 
 The sinners will never all be brought into the fold. The 
 millennium will never completely arrive. The greatest 
 law of the universe is not anything fixed or perfect; 
 it is change. The theory of an eternal "flux and 
 flow" of this is manifest everywhere and the universe 
 itself is just as much in the making to-day as it was 
 a million years ago. Man is still in the making, the 
 
 214 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND ALTRUISM 215 
 
 individual is always changing expanding or con- 
 tracting in his personality, living or slowly dying 
 and nothing is ever finished or fixed in its place. 
 
 Who desires perfection ? What do we want with a 
 thing which does not move, or grow, or expand, or 
 continue to need a readjustment? Who desires to sit 
 all the time with a harp in his hand, a crown on his 
 head and eternally singing hallelujahs? Monotony, 
 lack of change even in case we possess the sup- 
 posedly dearest treasure ever sought this becomes 
 the stalest, dullest thing imaginable. 
 
 It is not meant here to blame the professional re- 
 former in a personal way. The desire is rather to 
 praise him for his unselfish devotion and his intrinsic 
 goodness. But it is our purpose here to contend that 
 his relation to society at large as presently organ- 
 ised is an anomaly, and his life as judged by that same 
 society, an obsession. His disadvantage is tremendous 
 and his effort is necessarily a tragedy. Some of us 
 believe indeed that the reformer is more nearly right 
 than the remainder of the world, but both he and the 
 others cannot be right. 
 
 It is not our purpose here to condemn the man who 
 "attends strictly to his own business and lets other 
 people attend to theirs," who lives what we call a 
 decent, honest life taking care of his family, paying 
 his taxes and voting at election whenever his interests 
 are involved. As things are now rated he may be en- 
 titled to the grade of "good citizen." 
 
216 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 ALL TO BE REFORMERS 
 
 But the theory here to be advanced is that every 
 normal person should be in some sense a reformer, 
 both of society and of himself. He should regard 
 himself as needed to help the world grow, to help 
 society get back on its feet after a crisis like war, to 
 help the state get its purposes through, to help the 
 local community brace up and clean up, to re-examine 
 himself frequently for the indication of a necessary 
 reform of his own character. 
 
 In a very practical sense we all belong to one an- 
 other, we need one another's examples and standards 
 as patterns for our own self-direction. The man at 
 my side who becomes course and debauched weakens 
 me, the man who fails in his business disheartens me, 
 while those of the opposite character add strength to 
 my own. The man who comes to me as a professional 
 reformer is likely to presume too much upon my weak- 
 ness and neglect and otherwise underrate me. I im- 
 mediately feel myself putting up a guard against him 
 or shrinking from him. If he has another business 
 than reform, however, and is doing his altruistic work 
 as an important incident of his life, I am more in- 
 clined to listen to his plea and perhaps join him. 
 
 A compromise between the professional reformer 
 and the exclusive business man is the urgent need of 
 society as it moves to-day. We should then have a 
 hundred times more reformers and business would 
 suffer not a whit. The powerful stimulus for general 
 reform and for society to become one hundred per 
 cent, reformers, as occasioned by the war, gave us an 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND ALTRUISM 217 
 
 example of the practice which we might well desire 
 to see perpetuated. Every one giving, boosting, deny- 
 ing himself some pleasure or privilege, consciously 
 attending part time to the common good that is the 
 new rule of individual procedure which would become 
 cumulative in its efforts and would advance the cause 
 of human welfare immeasurabl" as compared with old 
 methods. 
 
 CAN WE HOLD THE POINT ? 
 
 Shall we be able to profit by the experience of all 
 boosting together during the war? Or, is business 
 to go back to its mean, selfish basis while the further 
 advancement of society is to be left again to the few 
 professional reformers? Just here is to be a test of 
 the permanent strength of the American nation. With 
 all spending part time in the field avocationally as help- 
 ers and backers of the common good, with thousands 
 offering suggestions and schemes for the accomplish- 
 ment of some worthy purpose, we should continue to 
 evolve a consensus of opinion and a unity of action 
 that would amount to a tremendous force in bringing 
 about reform. 
 
 The progress of America in the world war was in 
 some respects the marvel of human history. And, 
 why? Simply because tens of thousands, not merely 
 the few, went into the stimulating game of finding 
 out a better way to accomplish the several separate and 
 larger divisions of the work. Ideas, ideas! From 
 every quarter they came. Men and women by the 
 thousands contributed until the head workers found it 
 necessary to appoint committees of experts to go over 
 
218 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 the proffered plans for every attempted task and single 
 out the practical ideas and suggestions. The brainiest 
 general manager and the humblest shopworker, with 
 all classes between, got into the game eagerly and did 
 a worthy part. Nobody in particular won the war, 
 so far as America was concerned. The glory belongs 
 to the millions of "reformers," "missionary workers,'* 
 "avocational altruists," who did a mighty team work 
 together. There were hundreds of instances wherein 
 obscure individuals contributed a device, an idea or an 
 invention which proved highly valuable. There were 
 many other instances where the method or the instru- 
 ment finally decided upon was a very composite affair, 
 embodying the thought of many. 
 
 Now, all the foregoing explanation of how we did 
 our conspicuous part in winning the war amounts to 
 saying that we were drawn into the task with such 
 enthusiasm that we acquired a habit of altruism. We 
 all for the time became missionaries, backing our sol- 
 dier boys on their quest of the heart of humanity. And 
 very significant also is the fact that our altruism 
 was necessarily bound up with our egoism. "Busi- 
 ness as usual" was the watchword, but business partly 
 for the sake of our own gain and partly for the sake 
 of the nation's mission. 
 
 A NEW AMERICANISM 
 
 There is a so called American Missionary Society. 
 All praise to its efforts and all glory to its accomplish- 
 ments. But it is not big and general as it should be. 
 There would soon develop a conspicuous turn in the 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND ALTRUISM 219 
 
 course of human progress if the American people 
 should all unite in a permanent world-wide mission as 
 urged in a former chapter. We should scarcely miss 
 one hundred million dollars per annum or one dollar 
 per capita. This amount devoted to the equipment 
 and support of a general crusade of missionary assist- 
 ance would prove a tremendous blessing both to the 
 givers and to the beneficiaries. The effort would in- 
 clude a propaganda of health, sanitation, general 
 schooling for all children, moral and spiritual well 
 being, improved methods of industry and thrift. Per- 
 haps the best approximation of this idea is our altruis- 
 tic programme in the Philippines, where we seem to 
 have no motive other than to set the benighted in- 
 habitants upon their feet, and finally to make them a 
 happy, independent and self-sustaining people. 
 
 If the American people will sign a heavy indemnity 
 bond not to exploit the people of Mexico or their 
 natural resources and to observe the strictest non-inter- 
 ference with their state or church if we should pro- 
 ceed with a large and bountiful scheme of uplift and 
 general enlightenment in Mexico that prostrated 
 country could be set on its feet in a decade or so and 
 made to prosper in all things material and spiritual as 
 never before dreamed of by its ignorant inhabitants. 
 Nothing to sell, nothing to trade, nothing to gain 
 this should be the motto of Big Brother America while 
 he goes into Mexico with his missionary movement. 
 
 Imagine an American Red Cross centre in every city 
 in Mexico, with its corps of nurses, despensers, teach- 
 ers and demonstrators of all that is best known upon 
 the subject of health and sanitation. Imagine a mis- 
 
220 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 sionary school in every local centre of that country, 
 with a full equipment for free instruction of the head, 
 hand and heart of all children whose parents could be 
 induced to send them. Imagine a school of American 
 experts in agriculture and soil treatment demonstrat- 
 ing to the natives there how to produce the best crops 
 and animals and how to make the most profitable use 
 of the same. This service could be likewise adapted 
 to the mining and manufacturing industries, and 
 should carry with it a full guarantee of the non-ex- 
 ploitation of the wealth of the country by foreign 
 capital. 
 
 BACK TO THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 Now, our motive in seeking an outlet for an en- 
 larged and continuous programme of missionary effort 
 for the American people as a whole is partly to illus- 
 trate the best possible motive for individual altruism. 
 If such a purpose can be kept before the public and its 
 policies constantly re-directed by their discussions and 
 managed by their appointed committees, then we 
 shall find it comparatively easy to keep ourselves all 
 the while in a missionary mood, as proved to be the 
 case during the war. 
 
 But all this consideration of individual altruism 
 most certainly leads us back to the problem of training 
 the young and to the task of inculcating the missionary 
 spirit along with the general programme of exercises 
 in the schools. Hitherto we have contended for a 
 course of instruction in civics, loyalty and patriotism. 
 Now, why not add the point of altruistic service ? A 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AND ALTRUISM 221 
 
 careful examination of the standard course of study 
 written for the public schools shows an over amount 
 of instruction in getting and practically no instruction 
 in giving. This course as now managed is well calcu- 
 lated to deprive the child of whatever natural impulse 
 of altruism he may possess and to harden his heart 
 against service and missionary work. 
 
 The contest idea, the thought of competition still 
 dominates the method and the sentiment of the school. 
 Indeed, here is another of our national obsessions: 
 the theory that the school is primarily an institution 
 for training the individual to win over others who are 
 supposed to become his future competitors. Study 
 hard, get ahead, be prepared to defeat your com- 
 petitors ; only the strong can win while the many weak 
 ones must fall out; defeat your opponents and win 
 in this game or else fall back to the ignominy of 
 common labour such is the discouraging obsession 
 into which the typical American system has fallen, the 
 university, the elementary and the secondary schools 
 all inclusive. 
 
 EVERY CHILD A MISSIONARY 
 
 Every child could and should be trained from the 
 first in the true missionary spirit. He should be 
 taught to struggle; yes, but to overcome his weaker 
 self and not some other child at his side. He should 
 be taught to win honours; yes, but the honour should 
 be that of service performed at some place of human 
 need. He should be taught success ; yes, but a form 
 
222 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 of success which would bear the test of some kind of 
 altruism. 
 
 No child should be given a grade or promotion in 
 the school until he is ready for some kind of mission- 
 ary service to society, and until he is conscious of his 
 missionary relation thereto, to give a certain part of 
 his time, his talent, his handwork, his invention, his 
 ideas, his genius, his anything worth contributing 
 this should be the test and it should be elastic enough 
 to allow for individuality. And, finally, when the 
 child quits the formal school for his vocation, there 
 should be made a careful test of both his disposition 
 and his trained ability to render something back to the 
 society which has expended so much to produce him. 
 Here is the question to put to him : Explain in detail 
 how you propose to render through life an unselfish, 
 unpaid service to society. Thus instead of teaching 
 children in the school how to defeat and hinder one 
 another, we should be instructing them as to methods 
 whereby they might join their efforts with all others 
 in a contribution to the common good. All this would 
 naturally strengthen the individual for earning a 
 competence and for sustaining himself in the world of 
 business enterprise. 
 
XXII 
 ANOTHER GREAT STRUGGLE COMING 
 
 "He was not one of your story-book heroes who calls 
 for his mother or sweetheart when at the point of 
 death. He just puffed away at his cigarette, cursed 
 the boche till his voice faded into a whisper and 
 quietly went west." From a soldier's letter reporting 
 the death of a comrade. 
 
 This twentieth century has already seen the greatest 
 physical struggle in the history of mankind to date and 
 it is destined to witness the greatest moral struggle 
 ever known. The coming conflict will slowly gain 
 headway during the next decade here in America and 
 will ultimately spread around the world. The ordinary 
 boy, and perhaps the ordinary girl, will be the prize 
 allotted to the winner, as its issue will determine who 
 is to control the destiny of the young, the seductive 
 nicotine or the sympathetic parents and teachers. 
 
 THE POINT AT ISSUE 
 
 It is yet difficult for even those most concerned about 
 the future of the individual and of the race to under- 
 stand precisely what has happened during this present 
 century to render nicotine a new and distinctive prob- 
 lem in the life of society. It is this : the introduction 
 
 223 
 
224 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 of tobacco as a factor in the character-building of boys 
 and youths. Less than a generation ago, the tobacco 
 habit was confined to men and as a rule it was not 
 begun till the years of maturity had been reached. The 
 boy who smoked was a rare individual and marked as 
 something of a delinquent or a degenerate. But to- 
 day, literally millions of boys ranging from age seven 
 upward, are thorough-going victims of the cigarette. 
 The recent war period probably doubled this army of 
 regular juvenile smokers. And while the insidious 
 nicotine poison stunts the physique of boys, weakens 
 their morals, impairs their intellect and lowers their 
 general efficiency, it strikes even a greater blow at the 
 spiritual instinct. The smoking of tobacco during the 
 character-forming period of the individual life is not 
 only the greatest menace to our spiritual welfare to- 
 day but it threatens to take the place as a substitute 
 for religion. 
 
 Indeed, on a vast and unprecedented scale the to- 
 bacco interests are conducting a world-wide campaign 
 for the enslavement of boys and youths to the subtle 
 effects of nicotine. It has been found that the younger 
 the boy when he begins to smoke the heavier he will 
 use the narcotic and the larger will be his lifetime 
 contribution to the tobacco business. Also, once he 
 is thoroughly habituated to the practice of smoking 
 the chances that he will continue are more than nine 
 to one. 
 
 As yet the church and religious workers are not 
 awake to the dreadful opposition which nicotine is 
 about to assert boldly against the sound principles of 
 religion. The awakening may come too late. And 
 
ANOTHER GREAT STRUGGLE COMING 225 
 
 while it might seem that the war has aroused a new 
 religious spirit among men the hopeful situation will 
 doubtless lapse into a sort of pipe-dream. However, 
 the purpose here is not to contend that tobacco-using 
 and Christianity are incompatible but rather to try 
 to show that early tobacco using is a sinister influence 
 in the life of our youth to-day in that it cuts off their 
 prospect of sane and wholesome religious practice. 
 
 But in order to get at the purpose as stated above 
 we must proceed in a rather roundabout way. 
 
 As we view the individual man and the masses in 
 their inter-relations we observe the most critical period 
 of the former as being that of the emotional storm 
 which surges through his being during the years 
 following adolescence. The first phase is that of the 
 social instinct as it seeks an outlet through experi- 
 ence with the crowd, and therefore sanction of the 
 public mind; and the second is the religious instinct, 
 which seeks a favourable relation with what is con- 
 ceived to be the Divine Mind. Now, we cannot hope 
 to set the individual squarely on his feet as a helper of 
 society till we have assisted him through this second 
 period of emotional struggle. 
 
 THE GENERAL IDEA RECALLED 
 
 Let us not forget that we are attempting in the 
 course of these discussions to present a new and more 
 comprehensive theory for the training of the individ- 
 ual than is common for the makers of the ordinary 
 curricula. Our plan embodies, first, the idea that the 
 individual must realize through his own trial-and- 
 
226 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 error experiences the larger elements of the racial 
 inheritance within him; second, the idea that the 
 course of training must be headed all the time toward 
 a participation in the experiments with new modes of 
 self-direction and self -improvement in which the race 
 at large is engaged ; and, third, the idea that vocational 
 occupation or economic success is not properly re- 
 garded as an end in education but merely a happy 
 incident or by-product thereof. 
 
 THE EMOTIONAL UNREST 
 
 Nowhere under heaven is there to be found a more 
 superb specimen of God's handiwork than a completely 
 developed man unless it be his feminine counterpart 
 a man in full bloom and vigour of life, blessed with 
 the development of all his best physical and spiritual 
 powers, and capable of directing his own career in ac- 
 cordance with a system of well chosen ideals. But 
 such a man is not necessarily a scholar, a scientist or 
 a rare expert of any class or kind. He is only one of 
 the millions of common-born who has realised himself 
 with relative completeness. But at certain points in 
 the life history of every such man there is a large 
 amount of struggle which is initiated by an emotional 
 unrest or a painful dissatisfaction with conditions as 
 they then are. In an attempt to throw off extreme 
 embarrassments, or what appear to be intolerable re- 
 straints, the youth normally struggles out upon higher 
 ground. 
 
 Wherefore, adolescence is the great storm period of 
 the individual life. A new, keen sensitiveness to the 
 
ANOTHER GREAT STRUGGLE COMING 227 
 
 presence of others marks its beginning. Fear of 
 failure, of criticism, of being irregular or off colour 
 in social standards, now disturbs the inner conscious- 
 ness of the youth and brings him much dissatisfaction 
 with himself. As a result of this secret pain he be- 
 gins a long series of determined responses or an emo- 
 tional struggle to appear more worthy in the eyes of 
 the society around him. The far-reaching signi- 
 ficance of this love-dream period we have discussed 
 previously. 
 
 THE CRY OF RELIGION 
 
 It is the second aspect of the emotional unrest of 
 adolescence the religious phase which we shall now 
 consider. At about the middle of the so-called teen 
 years the typical youth becomes emotionally disturbed 
 about his religion and the salvation of his soul, and is 
 ready for what we call conversion to an active faith. 
 Just as during his epoch of social sensitiveness he was 
 disturbed again and again with the secret questioning, 
 "Who are all these persons watching me, and how can 
 I become pleasing to them ?" his new self-inquiry now 
 becomes, "Who is this All-Seeing One looking into 
 the depths of my soul for a sign of my belief in Him?" 
 In short, "What shall I do to be saved ?" is a universal 
 cry which calls despairingly out of the depth of the 
 normal adolescent nature everywhere. At first, this 
 sudden sense of the disapproval of the Divine Mind is 
 a matter of deep pain and soul anguish. Evidently the 
 intense dissatisfaction here inflicted on youth is meant 
 to initiate a series of determined efforts to "get right 
 with God," as we say, and finally to live in His service. 
 
22% MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 The vital question here arising is this : How can we 
 provide that the youth suddenly struck with the fear of 
 God be served with the instrumentalities for reliev- 
 ing him from the pain of God's disfavour? We cheat 
 him out of a vital section of self -directive experience 
 by the use of the dopes, drink and other forms of dis- 
 sipation, as before stated. 
 
 A FALSE SENSE OF PEACE 
 
 Anything which gives the youth a false sense of 
 peace at this time of emotional struggle, stops his ef- 
 fort and shuts off his possible schooling. When con- 
 science speaks, go seek the answer. When there is a 
 lost sense of self-respect, strive to make amends. 
 When there is a conviction that God is displeased at 
 your conduct, seek peace with Him thus working out 
 your own salvation with fear and trembling. Or, 
 should we put the troubled conscience to sleep with 
 various dopes, drinks and other forms of dissipation, 
 till it cries out no more? We believe the former course 
 to be the correct one and the only one which will 
 guarantee at length a big, wholesome personality. 
 But society to-day is following the latter course. It is 
 defeating certain of its own best purposes and those 
 of the individual as well by shutting off the normal 
 struggle of youth to free himself. 
 
 RELIGION AS A GROWTH 
 
 In its outward forms religion is a sane and helpful 
 system of behaviour acquired by the practice of the 
 
ANOTHER GREAT STRUGGLE COMING 229 
 
 individual. Under a normal course of procedure it 
 begins with the crude fear and mystery of youth and 
 slowly develops into a complex set of happy and sym- 
 pathetic relations both to God and man. The church 
 has suffered long under the obsession that religion 
 suddenly strikes the individual with a conviction of his 
 sin and that he is then and there born again and 
 enters the kingdom of the accepted of God. The old 
 idea carried with it the dogma that at this time the 
 convert accepted certain conditions of faith or belief 
 and that he was then and there "saved." 
 
 But as analysed by the psychologic study now ac- 
 ceptable to the modern religious teachers the new con- 
 vert, though stirred deeply by a conviction of his 
 sins, is not saved but has only manifested a start to- 
 ward salvation. To be saved he must begin to act on 
 his new faith and must go on from that point to a con- 
 tinuous discovery of the truth of religion as best 
 related to his own life. 
 
 There is no use questioning the fact that in case of 
 the youth one cigarette inhaled for a minute or two 
 will give a feeling of rest and security, of freedom 
 from trouble or anxiety. It will temporarily put aside 
 his sense of unworthiness, his thought of the serious 
 consequences of failure and will give everything 
 relative to the duty at hand a roseate hue. But the 
 cigarette, as it affects youth, does not actually remove 
 trouble or danger or responsibility; it simply causes 
 these to disappear. It therefore quiets the ambition 
 and takes away the desire to strive to improve con- 
 ditions which are fundamentally bad. 
 
 To the youth, therefore, smoking seems like an easy 
 
230 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 and inexpensive short cut to the end of his troubles, 
 and he is quick to take advantage of it. At his time 
 of immature judgment, to win his point in the easiest 
 way appears to be a common rule of progress. Get 
 your advantage in the easiest way possible. Get your 
 lessons without study if you can. Get your money 
 without earning it through serious effort. All these 
 get-there-quick methods are to him, for the time being, 
 very sensible mottoes. Finally, he reasons, you can 
 drive away your troubles with a penny cigarette. Why 
 pay more for an antidote? 
 
 TAKE THE JUVENILE CENSUS 
 
 Those who are interested in the cigarette as related 
 to the religion of youth and as a factor in the future of 
 the church are asked to make a quiet investigation of 
 the matter and thus to satisfy themselves on the posi- 
 tion here outlined. Let them count the cigarette- 
 smoking boys in any Sunday School and find, as they 
 will, few if any of this class present who have not been 
 compelled to attend by some strong home influence. 
 They will find relatively few of this compulsory class, 
 for such boys soon break away from home authority. 
 
 Let the investigator now turn to the adolescent de- 
 partment of the Sunday School and of the other 
 church societies and discover how few cigarette 
 smokers there are regularly in attendance and how 
 seldom one of these takes an active part in the religious 
 service. All this applies especially to the Protestant 
 churches. 
 
 Almost without exception the young cigarettist 
 
ANOTHER GREAT STRUGGLE COMING 231 
 
 scoffs at the religion of his non-smoking associates. 
 He regards it as a trivial matter and is fully satisfied 
 that he has something more appropriate for a manly 
 appearance in society. If he is found at the young 
 peoples' religious meeting at all usually it is because 
 he has been drawn there by the presence of some 
 young woman. And his influence upon the girl of his 
 choice is very much in the direction away from the 
 church, with the dance, the theatre or some place of 
 social pastime as a substitute. 
 
 CHRIST OR THE CIGARETTE 
 
 With the ordinary Christian churches and the relig- 
 ious bodies allied thereto, in so far as they try to deal 
 constructively with the youth of the land, the issue 
 has now got to be met. It will be Christ or the cigar- 
 ette but it will not be both. No youth can serve at 
 once these two masters. They are Christ and anti- 
 Christ. The fine sense of need of the Christ in one's 
 life and the appropriate feeling of reverence and hu- 
 mility are transformed into a jest by the influence of 
 the poison on the nerves and in the brain. 
 
 Through the habit of smoking the normal inner un- 
 rest which would initiate strife and development being 
 repeatedly put to rest, the victim finally settles down to 
 nothing better than an intellectual regard for religion 
 and he becomes an apologist for the church. He is 
 never able to appreciate the meaning of real religion 
 and real heart service because of having been denied 
 these things during the period of character develop- 
 ment. Thus the church has lost permanently his much 
 
232 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 needed sympathy and help and the community has lost 
 his hearty co-operation in the majority of its best 
 purposes in behalf of the young. 
 
 THE PROBLEM SUMMARISED 
 
 There will be no attempt here even to outline the 
 long and depressing array of evidence to show the 
 extreme damage of the cigarette to the physical, moral 
 and intellectual aspects of juvenile life. The one issue 
 here presented is enough to give us most serious re- 
 flections as to the future of our youths and the spirit- 
 ual welfare of society. We may preach and argue and 
 resolve to the extreme limit as to forms of combating 
 the cigarette habit among youths. But there is only 
 one effectual way to deal with this monster evil and 
 that is to apply the psychology of publicity and propa- 
 ganda in practically the same manner as used by the 
 tobacco interests in building up their business. To 
 fight an enemy successfully you are often compelled 
 to use his weapons. For the time being the battle 
 against the cigarette is lost. Anti-Christ is in posses- 
 sion of the best weapons, the most munitions, and is 
 holding all the front-line trenches. When will the host 
 arise to march forward and battle the nicotine super- 
 man to his death ? 
 
XXIII 
 PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN BETTERMENT 
 
 As an instrument for general education, for self- 
 direction, for success in practical business, and for so- 
 cial betterment, psychology stands in a class to itself. 
 If we assume that our greatest hope of the self-gov- 
 ernment and the self -improvement of nations is to be 
 grounded on Common Man's knowledge of himself, 
 then we must admit at once that a universal study of 
 the psychology of human behaviour is the best imme- 
 diate step toward that cherished end. 
 
 HOW THE MIND GROWS 
 
 I watched a cooing infant feebly attempting to 
 thrust a rubber rattle into its tiny mouth. I watched 
 a romping three-y ear-old trying awkwardly to spin his 
 older brother's top. I watched a little girl fumbling 
 in a first effort to sew up a garment for her dolly. I 
 watched a big-footed scout eagerly hurrying off to the 
 woods for a hike. I watched a bashful youth suffer- 
 ing from alternate palpitation and cold perspiration 
 while the girl he secretly loved was walking by. I 
 watched a candidate suddenly grown affable and cor- 
 dial after his nomination for the assembly. I watched 
 a fortune-wheel trickster smoothly playing up the win- 
 
 233 
 
234 MAIST AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 ners and hurrying the losers quietly away. I watched 
 the passing throngs upon the streets of the great city 
 and saw in every face and every manner some sign of 
 the thought and action which had gone on before and 
 given meaning to the present conduct. 
 
 So the rhythm of human events swings on. To 
 the child, the world is filled with things just things, 
 to get, to have, to use. To the boy, it is deeds. The 
 rough and heroic accomplishments of men and other 
 creatures absorb the entire attention. But to the 
 youth, the world is filled with people men and 
 women, young and old, with thoughts and feelings and 
 a thousand moods. If we could only bring in every 
 fifteen-year-old at the time of his new social awaken- 
 ing, and conduct him through a systematic study of 
 the psychology of the behaviour of every human class 
 and temperament the salvation of the race would 
 certainly be accelerated. Also the youth thus guided 
 would be led into an endless enticing quest of the in- 
 tricacies of this grand old nature of ours. 
 
 ARE WE STAR-GAZERS STILL? 
 
 The most ancient philosophers of which we have 
 record appear to have been little concerned about man 
 and his career on the earth. They peered far off into 
 the starry firmament and asked themselves endless 
 questions which man has never yet been able to answer. 
 Thus it is, too, with the common individual to-day. 
 He is extremely slow at self -discovery. When as a 
 walking child he first beholds the image of himself in 
 a mirror it is thought to be the form of another child. 
 
PSYCHOLOGY AND BETTERMENT 235 
 
 If left alone to stumble and find his way through the 
 world as best he can he may go on through all the 
 stages of life and to the brink of the grave still gazing 
 wonderingly at the stars but questioning his own na- 
 ture almost not at all. 
 
 Wherefore, it is our purpose now to insist that 
 psychology is the greatest instrumentality of self-reve- 
 lation which man has ever discovered. It is the key 
 to his individual success, to his collective progress and 
 to a door that will open the way toward a status far 
 higher than he has ever before reached during his 
 earthly existence. 
 
 At the time of the settlement of America illiteracy 
 was the accepted rule of the masses, while literacy was 
 regarded as the special instrument of the few who 
 might preach or teach. The school as we have it now 
 is a sort of accidental offspring of the church. New 
 converts needed to be able to understand and defend 
 the scriptures. Hence they were taught to read. It 
 is difficult for us to realise the slow and painful road 
 over which the human mind had to travel before the 
 peoples of the world finally accepted the idea of the 
 necessity and the practicability of universal elementary 
 schooling. 
 
 PSYCHOLOGIC AWAKENING 
 
 Psychology has been travelling over the same tedi- 
 ous course as universal education. This young branch 
 of study was for considerable time a division of meta- 
 physics, a form of speculation about the mind and the 
 soul. But a short generation ago the masterful Wil- 
 liam James explained to the world in an epoch-making 
 
236 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 work how man might systematically study his own 
 mind and apply this knowledge to the practical affairs 
 of life. Even then this charming new subject of study 
 failed to find its way on to the full attention of the 
 masses. Finally, however, it reached the point of 
 being regarded as a necessary discipline of the teacher 
 and as something of a convenience for the minister of 
 the gospel. 
 
 Come to examine the matter, it is strange that we 
 should accept of a psychology of teaching and not a 
 psychology of merchandising; that we should accept 
 a psychology of preaching and not a psychology of 
 plowing; that we should finally accept a psychology of 
 play but not a psychology of work, a psychology of 
 advertising and not a psychology of buying. And yet 
 there is a most practical, a most valuable psychology 
 of any and all these lines of human endeavour. 
 
 Psychology is the instrument best suited to fill up 
 the common life of man anywhere he may be at work 
 with a constant flow of rich and interesting ideas. 
 Life is made up chiefly of thought and sentiment. 
 The life more abundant, under analysis, proves to be 
 chiefly a matter of a happy, radiant, stimulating flow 
 of ideas about oneself and the relations of his effort 
 to the duties which lie before him. The man who 
 can think of himself in the largest number of happy 
 relations to his work is the one who enjoys the fullest 
 sense of power and supremacy. The study of psychol- 
 ogy is best suited to yield him such a large fund of 
 spiritual wealth. 
 
PSYCHOLOGY AND BETTERMENT 237 
 
 WHAT OF THE "THREE R'S?" 
 
 Of the traditional "three R's" reading is far the 
 most in common use, writing is perhaps less in de- 
 mand than ever before, on account of the many new 
 instruments for personal communication. It may go 
 out of use entirely and a personal radiograph take the 
 place. Arithmetic is becoming slowly obsolete, as ma- 
 chines are introduced to do our calculating. Probably 
 a small device which can be concealed in the pocket 
 will do all the necessary figuring for the future man 
 of affairs. 
 
 NEW DEMANDS FOR PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 But the study of human behaviour was never so 
 much in demand. For the domestic helper to know 
 how to think out in advance every stroke of her day's 
 work may mean a saving of fifty per cent, of the ef- 
 fort. For the iron-worker to understand the intrica- 
 cies of applying his mind to every movement of his 
 muscle may increase the product of his work four- fold 
 and at the same time cut his fatigue in half. For the 
 merchant's clerk to know how to watch the reactions 
 of all classes of purchasers and to classify the same 
 may be a guarantee of his rapid promotion. For the 
 farmer to know intimately the various types of rural 
 opinion and prejudice may enable him to round up his 
 home community and lead the people all into a de- 
 lightful social fellowship. For a newsboy to know 
 how to cry his wares on a busy street corner so as 
 quickly to get the attention of all classes of people 
 
238 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 may mean a source of supply for a hungry household 
 at home and a definite step toward a more lucrative 
 business. For a general to know how to select his 
 under-officers and how to appeal to his men may prove 
 to be the chief secret of a mighty victory over the 
 enemy. "What do you fear? You have Caesar with 
 you." So calling to his men the great Roman general 
 was enabled to drive his hordes on to the death 
 struggle. For the great head of the nation to know 
 intimately the laws of human behaviour under pres- 
 sure of hatred and battle may mean that he will finally 
 rank in history as the one who was able to point a 
 way out of a madness into which all the powerful na- 
 tions of the world had deteriorated. 
 
 THE FIRST LAW OF SUCCESS 
 
 So, the first law of success in any business or trade 
 or pastime is to know the psychology of human be- 
 haviour. Such knowledge enables us not only to judge 
 as to the present conduct of others, but also to esti- 
 mate something of their past and to predict something 
 of their future. We should and can know one an- 
 other through and through. We can quickly and 
 easily take a rough measure of one another's person- 
 alities. We can become so well informed as to the 
 common and uncommon types of human conduct as 
 to be deceived by very few, misled by practically none 
 and yet inspired by all. 
 
 A certain man owned a grocery store. He stood 
 near the front door and met the patrons, shaking 
 hands, cajoling, palavering and mixing in generally as 
 
PSYCHOLOGY AND BETTERMENT 239 
 
 a good fellow while his clerks systematically cheated 
 the customer with short weights and spoiled goods. 
 In six months the store was deserted. The psycholo- 
 gist would have known better and not tried to fool the 
 common people thus. Another grocer used similar 
 methods of good-fellowship with his customers, ex- 
 cept that his clerks made every transaction reflect the 
 apparent honesty and faithfulness of the proprietor. 
 Six years later the business was still going and bigger 
 than ever. 
 
 Thus a thousand instances could be given, covering 
 every phase of human intercourse to show the sig- 
 nificance of psychology as an instrument of success 
 and happiness. We can learn to read one another's 
 thoughts in outline, and to discern one another's mo- 
 tives by means of an intimate knowledge of the work- 
 ings of the mind of the common individual as his ideas 
 fall into their discoverable channels of classification. 
 We can enjoy the helpful check upon our temptation 
 to treat others unfairly when we know that they too 
 understand the activities of the mind and are likely 
 to catch us in our wrong. We can enjoy the charming 
 experience of watching the ordinary infantile mind 
 slowly unfold as a correlate of the child's conduct till 
 the personality assumes the complexity of the adult. 
 What a wonderful piece of work is man, indeed, if 
 we understand how to witness the magical operations 
 of his growing mind! 
 
 THE SIN OF EXPLOITATION" 
 
 "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thou- 
 sands mourn," says the Scottish bard. But why, and 
 
240 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 how ? In practically all such cases it is merely a mat- 
 ter of the exploitation of the masses ignorant of the 
 laws of their own natures by the classes who know 
 these laws and know how to use them to their ex- 
 clusive advantage. What was the false idea of the 
 superman so recently exploded at a mighty cost other 
 than a foolish theory as to human nature and human 
 behaviour? Could the masses of inhabitants of the 
 warring nations have known how the consciousness 
 grows definitely out of one's experience; could they 
 have been taught from the first how to watch the rela- 
 tionship between thought and conduct ; could they have 
 been roughly informed as how to "take the measure" 
 of the one who would lead them to their destruction 
 then the war should never have been started. Judg- 
 ment, reflection, an intelligent estimate of the possible 
 outcome of such a cruel venture would have checked 
 the beastly ambitions of the war lords. 
 
 IS THERE A LIGHT AHEAD? 
 
 So long as the great Common Man remains in super- 
 stitious ignorance of the workings of his own mind 
 and that of others, I do not see much light ahead for 
 human society. A few designing ones will continue 
 to spring up here and there to exploit the unknowing, 
 kings or no kings. There is little in a name. Just 
 now there is in session over the waters a company of 
 psychologists engaged in a peace conference. Their 
 appalling task is to determine what to do with mil- 
 lions of human beings who know so little about the 
 management of themselves. What to do with them? 
 
PSYCHOLOGY AND BETTERMENT 241 
 
 Save the mark ! The fact that the peace delegates are 
 all warm with a desire to deal sympathetically with the 
 masses in the back areas means a most generous set- 
 tlement. But the peace parley at which sit delegates 
 other than those duly chosen by the people concerned 
 is wrong in principle, and historically it has many 
 times meant the beginning of worse bloodshed for the 
 future generations. 
 
 How can we do it? Who will make a course of 
 training that will at least rank the study of human 
 conduct in a practical way along with study of the old 
 standard elementary school branches? Who will ex- 
 plain how we may teach the child to watch himself 
 do things and to watch others do things? Who will 
 explain how we may teach men and women to watch 
 one another in their common vocational and avoca- 
 tional activities? Who will explain how to teach all 
 to watch the people as they move in groups and crowds 
 and thus to discern the rules whereby they act? Who 
 will teach us all how to observe psychologically the 
 course of human events so that we may become intelli- 
 gent participants in the world's progress? 
 
XXIV 
 BRINGING UP THE NEXT GENERATION 
 
 "Invest your money in the next generation ; this one 
 is lost," declared a lecturer recently who was address- 
 ing a large religious gathering. His message was that 
 of the extreme pessimist. But if we may be permitted 
 to paraphrase the statement somewhat, it may prove 
 more acceptable. "Invest your money in the next 
 generation and thus be assured of five-fold greater 
 returns." 
 
 "If you ever wish to go in for philanthropy, if you 
 ever wish to be of any use in the world, do something 
 for the little children. If you ever yearn to be truly 
 wise, study children. We can dress the sore, bandage 
 the wound, imprison the criminal, heal the sick and 
 bury the dead; but there is always a chance that we 
 can save the child. If the great army of philanthro- 
 pists ever exterminates sin and pestilence ever works 
 out the race salvation it will be because a little child 
 has led them," said David Starr Jordan. 
 
 REFORM SLOW AND DIFFICULT 
 
 The most persistent thing in all the familiar world 
 of spirit is habit. The most unyielding force derived 
 from the inherent dispositions of an ordinary man is 
 
 242 
 
BRINGING UP NEXT GENERATION 243 
 
 his whole character. While with the child the very 
 law of life is change, with the mature adult perma- 
 nence of character is the great law. Then, why do we 
 spend so much time and effort trying to reform adults? 
 Why not expend the energy in preventing the young 
 from taking up the ways which are deplored in the 
 conduct of the adult? It is partly an impatient and 
 unreasonable desire to get quick results, partly a sel- 
 fish desire to win money or fame or prestige through 
 a propaganda of reform, and partly an honest over- 
 estimate of what can be done to change grown men. 
 The third point of view is usually characteristic of 
 the younger class of reformers and of those who are 
 new at the game. But as the effort continues prac- 
 tically every worker grows increasingly pessimistic 
 about adult reform on any considerable scale. A few 
 even give up in despair. 
 
 The one thing which tends to cheer and brighten 
 the long-term worker for human welfare is the marked 
 possibilities of juvenile reform and the preventive 
 measures which may be brought into use. 
 
 PLANNING A CAMPAIGN 
 
 A whole-life plan for training the young has never 
 yet been attempted on a large scale. The school has 
 been provided for doing its part very well within the 
 class-room. It has long been understood that the 
 home should be held responsible for a major part of 
 the training of the coming generation, but no far- 
 reaching or systematic measure has yet been perfected 
 for getting this valuable work done. The church also 
 
244 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 is looked to for its share of child instruction and dis- 
 cipline; but its possibilities of contributing a vital part 
 in training the young for common life and citizenship 
 have never been carefully planned or outlined. 
 
 And, as previously explained, the community is not 
 yet awake to its responsibilities to the young. Much 
 less has it provided a method for its significant part in 
 mothering the children. 
 
 We have recently done our part in winning a great 
 war to make the world safe for democracy. But the 
 democracy is somewhat like the rainbow : it seems to 
 recede as we advance. But just as the function of the 
 rainbow is to be admired and sought and never caught, 
 so with a perfect democracy. It is a beautiful ideal 
 ever to advance toward but never to reach. The pos- 
 sibilities of an ever-growing and improving de- 
 mocracy are most promising to-day when we turn 
 our thought to the infantile and juvenile population. 
 With the aid of the new psychology with which first 
 to make an inquiry into the changing moods and dis- 
 positions of the growing child; and, second, to direct 
 these changes, the outlook seems most cheering. 
 
 THE NEXT GREAT STEP 
 
 We already know enough about the nature of the 
 common child to supply us for a long time to come 
 with a working basis for his direction and improve- 
 ment. Our point of greatest lack is a method of pro- 
 cedure. While the makers of the school curricula 
 are very well agreed as to what constitutes a vital 
 course within the class-room the after-school at large 
 
BRINGING UP NEXT GENERATION 245 
 
 is yet without a definite outline of method or a co- 
 operative plan of any sort. Here it is every one for 
 himself. The air is full of schemes and the field is 
 full of isolated organisations intended to help the 
 after-school situation so vital to future society, but 
 there is no centralised effort or team work. 
 
 The next significant step in social progress, there- 
 fore, is a programme broad and comprehensive enough 
 to make allowance for the after-school direction of all 
 the children of all the people and in all parts of the 
 community. And, fortunately, we are now fairly well 
 prepared to offer such a scheme of work. Informa- 
 tion drawn from hundreds of communities and experi- 
 ments and demonstrations conducted in as many more, 
 have brought out a fund of first-hand knowledge. In 
 the case of something like one hundred twenty-five 
 urban and rural communities where the juvenile ef- 
 fort was best organised the first significant movement 
 was in the direction of centralised and co-operative 
 effort. 
 
 THE DEADLOCKED SITUATION 
 
 For long years preceding the great war, Germany 
 and France were so deadlocked in an endeavour each 
 to hold the other off with bristling war preparations 
 that mountains of wealth and untold progress in other 
 more fundamental affairs were forced into the base 
 purpose. As we are convinced, Germany was the ag- 
 gressor in this matter, but France was compelled to 
 keep pace with her fortifications in order to prevent 
 withering away under the Prussian menace. So, along 
 scores of miles of the army trenches during the middle 
 
246 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 years of the war, for months at a time, the two oppos- 
 ing forces expended all their vast resources simply 
 holding each other at bay. 
 
 On a small scale this stalemate situation is being en- 
 acted in thousands of places throughout the Ameri- 
 can commonwealth. Churches are holding against 
 churches, business men's clubs against other business 
 men's clubs, reform associations against reform asso- 
 ciations, and even juvenile welfare societies against 
 others of their class. Indeed, the large amount of this 
 deadlocking opposition to be found in urban and rural 
 communities is the most baffling and disheartening 
 situation confronting every class of welfare promoter 
 in the field to-day. Many relatively well-managed 
 movements have been launched on a broad national 
 platform only to go to pieces on the tough social 
 snag which is here under condemnation. 
 
 During the past decade I have watched a half dozen 
 or more of these big courageous programmes of uplift 
 shattered by the deadlocking jealousies of the local 
 forces expected to conduct the work as outlined. The 
 Country-Life Movement, so ably launched by the late 
 President Roosevelt and so well headed by Dr. E. H. 
 Bailey, dwindled away chiefly because of the petty lo- 
 cal, factional fights which developed everywhere in 
 connection with the campaign. A certain high repre- 
 sentative of one of the great American church socie- 
 ties worked most strenuously for a decade upon a cam- 
 paign of church extension work, and then retired, sick 
 and discouraged, with the significant exclamation, 
 "The people of the local communities simply will not 
 work together. Factional jealousies develop every- 
 
BRINGING UP NEXT GENERATION 247 
 
 where and prostrate the effort." Many other such 
 testimonies could be given. 
 
 MEETING A DELICATE SITUATION 
 
 To bring together on a fair and generous basis of 
 effort a lot of opposing factions is a task which most 
 certainly calls for astute diplomacy. To solve this 
 problem for all is to enable the world to take a long 
 stride toward a higher civilisation and a more per- 
 manent peace and good-will among men. Just now 
 the millions concerned are sitting back and watching 
 in the distance the most momentous effort at concilia- 
 tion of opposing factions ever known. To deal fairly 
 and justly with all the nations concerned at the great 
 peace conference assembled at Versailles and to make 
 a programme upon which all will unite for the future 
 well-being of the race seemed a task well-nigh beyond 
 human conception. But at least the first great step 
 toward that end is now in actual accomplishment. 
 
 But the same general problem awaits us in ten thou- 
 sand communities to-day a plan for such unity and 
 co-operation of action as will draw all forces into a 
 progressive movement for human betterment. Now, 
 the one who would accomplish this proposed centrali- 
 sation of effort on the part of a given community must 
 first make a brief socialogical survey of the place. He 
 must know "Who's who and why?" If his business 
 is juvenile welfare he must ask for a full list of the 
 local organisations and societies which have, or could 
 have, anything to do with the direction of the young. 
 These groups will fall into several classes, as, so- 
 
248 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 cial, religious, educational, welfare, philanthropic, 
 municipal, economic, commercial and political. The 
 name and the active or recognised leader of each of 
 these groups must first be obtained. Each of these 
 heads may then be urged to appear at a general con- 
 ference as representative of his order, or send some 
 one to act in his stead. 
 
 During the course of his inquiry the advance agent 
 of a proposed welfare organisation will test the situa- 
 tion carefully for factional friction and for the group 
 or society apparently most generally acknowledged 
 as having the best right to assume the leadership. 
 Thus, while the invitation to participate in a central 
 movement will be a strictly whosoever-will affair 
 and for that reason most appealing the movement 
 will very probably have to find a head within one of 
 the co-ordinate groups. 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF LEADERSHIP 
 
 In the course of organising a new movement among 
 any ordinary people the visiting promoter for such 
 he should be will find the psychology of leadership 
 a most delicate affair to handle. He must always test 
 the whole situation carefully for the name of one 
 around whom the largest number will rally. Other 
 things being equal, it is very desirable to select this 
 person from a list of those who stand in a class to 
 themselves. For example, a city has several church 
 heads, several presidents of clubs all co-ordinate 
 and to choose one of these as the general leader is 
 often a signal for the most bitter jealousy and opposi- 
 
BRINGING UP NEXT GENERATION 249 
 
 tion. However, the same place necessarily has only 
 one mayor, one superintendent of schools, one head of 
 federation of clubs, and so on. To have one of these 
 appointed to head the new organisation is often the 
 safest procedure. 
 
 A DEFINITE PURPOSE 
 
 The next important step in attempting to organise 
 a home community for better child welfare and a 
 better future for democracy is to draw up a clear out- 
 line of the work to be undertaken. Now is the time 
 to avoid confusing details and to undertake a few 
 important things rather than a large number. The 
 people of the community must be enabled easily to 
 keep a clear vision of the purposes as launched or their 
 efforts will wane. 
 
 Therefore, what form should the proposed cam- 
 paign assume baby saving, child health and sanita- 
 tion, new school conditions, vacation employment of 
 the young, home-and-school gardening, street-and-alley 
 safe-guards, better adolescent social affairs, and the 
 like? Half a dozen divisional parts are enough into 
 which to divide any constructive programme for juven- 
 ile improvement. Each of these should have its sub- 
 committee responsible to the general committee, and 
 each should occasionally report progress at a general 
 meeting called for that purpose. 
 
 As explained in a chapter above, publicity is most 
 important for any kind of progressive movement. 
 The people must be kept closely in touch with the de- 
 tails of the effort to the end that they will continue to 
 
250 MAN AND THE NEW DEMOCRACY 
 
 reflect upon its purpose and to discuss its merits and 
 possibilities. It is the thing which the common people 
 are gossiping about on the street corners and in their 
 chance meetings which "goes over" with commendable 
 energy. The publicity agent for any important wel- 
 fare movement should be selected with unusual care. 
 He must be a person who can first visualise the move- 
 ment but he must also have a sense for news. His task 
 will then be that of writing terse and interesting news 
 items for the press at home and at large, all intended 
 for the good of the cause. It is necessary to urge here 
 that these items must first have the merit of news, and 
 second, the merit of propaganda material. 
 
 PATIENCE AND PROGRESS 
 
 Finally, if we can succeed with our programme of 
 juvenile betterment and spread its purposes abroad into 
 every corner of the land especially into the much 
 neglected after-school we shall not necessarily worry 
 about the welfare of the coming society, for that will 
 tend to take care of itself. And then, if we can induce 
 the nations abroad to believe as we do, that juvenile 
 welfare is the first great fundamental step toward 
 higher enlightenment, we shall have made tremendous 
 advancement toward making the entire world safe for 
 democracy. 
 
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