ped off, a whole
class is guillotined, reform movements come and go, the masters fight
every inch of their retreat, and pile stratagem upon stratagem, device
upon device, to retain their spoils.

The democratic formula of freedom for all comes to the fore. So at
last universal suffrage is introduced as the panacea. Freedom seems
within grasp. Now it looks as if a method and an objective have been
hit upon, that will lead both the free and the enslaved out of their
mutual bondage, and release the handcuffs which have bound them
together. All the trial and error tests to which history had subjected
institutions appeared to culminate in the formula that would
automatically yield Liberty. The French wanted a little more and added
Equality and Fraternity. The Americans put it quite definitely as the
formula that would assist the Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness.
That formula is: the _democracy of the normals_.

To be sure, a civilization might be organized for the breeding and the
glorification of the supernormals. Such a civilization may yet have to
be tried. But as the supernormals, as we know them today, are merely
biologic sports, in a sense, simple accidents, no one can tell whether
they will turn out true shots or just flashes in the pan. So it looks
the better course to stick to the plan of nature, which seems to be
the raising of the level of the normals, and the gradual increase of
their faculties and powers.

WHAT THE STATESMAN IS UP AGAINST

Under the terms of the democratic formula the problems of the
statesman seem to become enormously simplified. That is, if one
assumes that he has worked out a perfectly clear idea of what
a democracy means and what the normal means. Assuming these
unassumables, his problem simplifies into the definite object of
producing and developing the greatest possible number of normals--or
if you will, the greatest happiness of the greatest number of normal
lives.

Furthermore you then begin to have the entirely novel possibility in
the world: some sort of collective effort for a collective purpose,
beyond the personal greeds and fears, factions and hatreds. So the
state, instead of fulfilling its old function of serving as the tool
of certain powerful individuals, latterly known as the Big Men, might
be transformed into an instrument toward freedom. With the ideal of a
democracy of the normals ever before him, the statesman could go on
to construct and modify his social ma