cation is necessary to economic and political efficiency; but it
has the deepest interest in the development of a higher quality of
individual self-expression. There are two indispensable economic
conditions of qualitative individual self-expression. One is the
preservation of the institution of private property in some form, and
the other is the radical transformation of its existing nature and
influence. A democracy certainly cannot fulfill its mission without the
eventual assumption by the state of many functions now performed by
individuals, and without becoming expressly responsible for an improved
distribution of wealth; but if any attempt is made to accomplish these
results by violent means, it will most assuredly prove to be a failure.
An improvement in the distribution of wealth or in economic efficiency
which cannot be accomplished by purchase on the part of the state or by
a legitimate use of the power of taxation, must be left to the action of
time, assisted, of course, by such arrangements as are immediately
practical. But the amount of actual good to the individual and society
which can be effected _at any one time_ by an alteration in the
distribution of wealth is extremely small; and the same statement is
true of any proposed state action in the interest of the democratic
purpose. Consequently, while responsible state action is an essential
condition of any steady approach to the democratic consummation, such
action will be wholly vain unless accompanied by a larger measure of
spontaneous individual amelioration. In fact, one of the strongest
arguments on behalf of a higher and larger conception of state
responsibilities in a democracy is that the candid, courageous, patient,
and intelligent attempt to redeem those responsibilities provides one of
the highest types of individuality--viz. the public-spirited man with a
personal opportunity and a task which should be enormously stimulating
and edifying.

The great weakness of the most popular form of socialism consists,
however, in its mixture of a revolutionary purpose with an international
scope. It seeks the abolition of national distinctions by revolutionary
revolts of the wage-earner against the capitalist; and in so far as it
proposes to undermine the principle of national cohesion and to
substitute for it an international organization of a single class, it is
headed absolutely in the wrong direction. Revolutions may at times be
necessary and on the