o with the modern democratic
state. Statesmanship cannot rest upon the good sense of its program. It
must find popular feeling, organize it, and make that the motive power of
government. If you study the success of Roosevelt the point is
re-enforced. He is a man of will in whom millions of people have felt the
embodiment of their own will. For a time Roosevelt was a man of destiny
in the truest sense. He wanted what a nation wanted: his own power
radiated power; he embodied a vision; Tom, Dick and Harry moved with his
movement.

No use to deplore the fact. You cannot stop a living body with nothing at
all. I think we may picture society as a compound of forces that are
always changing. Put a vision in front of one of these currents and you
can magnetize it in that direction. For visions alone organize popular
passions. Try to ignore them or box them up, and they will burst forth
destructively. When Haywood dramatizes the class struggle he uses class
resentment for a social purpose. You may not like his purpose, but unless
you can gather proletarian power into some better vision, you have no
grounds for resenting Haywood. I fancy that the demonstration of King
Canute settled once and for all the stupid attempt to ignore a moving
force.

A dynamic conception of society always frightens a great number of
people. It gives politics a restless and intractable quality. Pure reason
is so gentlemanly, but will and the visions of a people--these are
adventurous and incalculable forces. Most politicians living for the day
prefer to ignore them. If only society will stand fairly still while
their career is in the making they are content to avoid the actualities.
But a politician with some imaginative interest in genuine affairs need
not be seduced into the learned folly of pretending that reality is
something else than it is. If he is to influence life he must deal with
it. A deep respect is due the Schopenhauerian philosopher who looks upon
the world, finds that its essence is evil, and turns towards insensitive
calm. But no respect is due to anyone who sets out to reform the world by
ignoring its quality. Whoever is bent upon shaping politics to better
human uses must accept freely as his starting point the impulses that
agitate human beings. If observation shows that reason is an instrument
of will, then only confusion can result from pretending that it isn't.

I have called this misplaced "rationality" a piece of learned foll