our original idea of
independence, and from time to time elements have been added to our
national life that represent an ideal of radical individualism, as for
example Jacksonian democracy. Willingness to participate freely in the
functions of society, and desire on the part of the individual to
perform all his functions, have been relatively too slight. Even in
politics it is not so much by the desire to participate in government
that we have shown our democratic spirit as by the desire not to be
individually governed. The old colonial spirit of cooeperation and
neighborliness with which we started has been (speaking relatively
again) neglected. We have developed toward individualism and control
rather than toward free association under leadership. We have lacked
ability as individuals to see ourselves from the standpoint of the
whole of society. Now, therefore, we are faced by the apparent still
further decline of our principle of freedom, because we see that we
may have _efficiency_ only by increasing _authority_.

The question may fairly be asked whether we are not at a parting of
the ways, when our democratic idea must be more clearly defined, and
we must decide whether we shall change toward autocracy; or now, at
the end of our stage of primitive democracy, enter upon a plane of
higher democracy. Sumner says that always in a democracy it is a
question what class shall rule, that the control in a democracy always
tends to remain either in the hands of the upper class or the lower
class, and that the great middle class, the seat of vast powers, is
never organized to rule. Such conditions show, again, the effects of
the individualism that prevails--national unity and the capacity for
free organization without individual or special motives are wanting.

Cramb has stated a fundamental truth, from our point of view, in
saying that hitherto _democracy has been more interested in its rights
than in its duties_. It is very true that the _subjective state of
freedom_ has been the real attraction and appeal in our social life.
It has brought to our shores vast numbers of people who would
otherwise never have crossed the seas. Perhaps it has brought us too
many, and those with too keen a love of freedom. At any rate, the
question is now whether as a people we shall be able to take a more
advanced view of the individual, a more functional view, so to speak,
a new and enlarged conception of the meaning and place of the
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