feeling is influenced by ideas which, although
they are products, as we say, of the primitive biological processes
that underlie history, are also outside these processes, as definite
purposes, desires, visions, ideals. At least we seem to depend now
upon these superior influences for many things that we regard as
good--for the rate at which we shall make progress, and for the
certainty of making progress at all. Upon these conscious factors
directing and shaping the plastic forces represented in the moods of
our time, we shall assume, the course of history will depend.

We are no longer to be satisfied with _natural progress_. We have gone
too far and too long, let us say, upon a rising tide of biological
forces, and we have not yet realized what conscious evolution might
mean. We have been too well satisfied with the physical resources and
the psychic energies that seemed sufficient for the need of the day. A
world in which democracy is going to prevail can no longer live in
this way. It will not grow of itself in a state of nature. Its
principle, on the other hand, forbids program-making after the manner
of autocratic societies. Democracy, as the form in which the youthful
and exuberant spirit of the world now makes ready for creating the
next stage of civilization, will advance, we may suppose, neither by
nature nor by force. It is the main work of our day to find for
ourselves a new and better mode of shaping history, by bringing to
bear upon all the social motives of the day the best and strongest
influences. Our whole situation is from this point of view an
educational problem. Probably there was never a greater need than that
the democratic forces of the world now have great leadership. It is a
practical world, a world of politics and of business, but it is also a
world exceedingly sensitive to many influences, good and bad, a world
in which, we may think, nothing great and permanent can be
accomplished unless moral, religious and aesthetic influences prevail
and give to our civilization its new dominant.

It will depend upon these conscious forces--upon our efforts to make
progress and upon the clarity of our vision--it must depend upon
these--whether in the future our great war shall be looked back upon
as after all an upheaval of primitive forces and a debauch of
instincts, or as the beginning of a new life. It is for us to create
out of the war the foundation of a better order. We cannot go back to
the ol