eadway
towards the most far-reaching and thorough-going democratic ideals by
the taking advantage of real conditions and using realistic methods. The
result may wear to advanced social reformers the appearance of a weak
compromise. The extreme socialist democrat will find a discrepancy
between the magnificent end and the paltry means. "Why seek to justify,"
he will ask, "a series of proposals for economic and institutional
reform most of which have already been tried in Europe for purely
practical reasons, why seek to justify such a humble scheme of
reconstruction by such a remote and lofty purpose?" It might remind him
of a New Yorker who started for the North Pole, but proposed to get
there by the Subway. The justification for the association of such a
realistic practical programme with an end which is nothing short of
moral and social improvement of mankind, is to be found, however, by the
manner in which even the foregoing proposals will be regarded by the
average American democrat. He will regard them as in meaning and effect
subversive of the established political and economic system of the
country; and he would be right. The American people could never adopt
the accompanying programme, moderate as it is from the point of view of
its ultimate object, without unsettling some of their most settled
habits and transforming many of their most cherished ideas. It would
mean for the American people the gradual assumption of a new
responsibility, the adoption of a new outlook, the beginning of a new
life. It would, consequently, be radical and revolutionary in
implication, even though it were modest in its expectation of immediate
achievement; and the fact that it is revolutionary in implication, but
moderate in its practical proposals, is precisely the justification for
my description of it as a constructive national programme. It is
national just because it seeks to realize the purpose of American
national association without undermining or overthrowing the living
conditions of American national integrity.

CHAPTER XIII

CONCLUSIONS--THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NATIONAL PURPOSES

I

INDIVIDUAL VS. COLLECTIVE EDUCATION

Hitherto we have been discussing the ways in which existing American
economic and political methods and institutions should be modified in
order to make towards the realization of the national democratic ideal.
In course of this discussion, it has been taken for granted that the
American people