omic, and social power, they will remain morally and intellectually
at the bottom of a well, out of which they will never be "uplifted" by
the most extravagant subsidizing of good intentions and noble words.

The sort of institutional and economic reorganization suggested in the
preceding chapters is not, consequently, to be conceived merely as a
more or less dubious proposal to improve human nature by laws. It is to
be conceived as (possibly) the next step in the realization of a
necessary collective purpose. Its deeper significance does not consist
in the results which it may accomplish by way of immediate improvement.
Such results may be worth having; but at best they will create almost as
many difficulties as they remove. Far more important than any practical
benefits would be the indication it afforded of national good faith. It
would mean that the American nation was beginning to educate itself up
to its own necessary standards. It would imply a popular realization
that our first experiment in democratic political and economic
organization was founded partly on temporary conditions and partly on
erroneous theories. A new experiment must consequently be made; and the
great value of this new experiment would derive from the implied
intellectual and moral emancipation. Its trial would demand both the
sacrifice of many cherished interests, habits, and traditions for the
sake of remaining true to a more fundamental responsibility and a much
larger infusion of disinterested motives into the economic and political
system. Thus the sincere definite decision that the experiment was
necessary, would probably do more for American moral and social
amelioration than would the specific measures actually adopted and
tried. Public opinion can never be brought to approve any effectual
measures, until it is converted to a constructive and consequently to a
really educational theory of democracy.

Back of the problem of educating the individual lies the problem of
collective education. On the one hand, if the nation is rendered
incapable of understanding its own experience by the habit of dealing
insincerely with its national purpose, the individual, just in so far as
he himself has become highly educated, tends to be divided from his
country and his fellow-countrymen. On the other hand, just in so far as
a people is sincerely seeking the fulfillment of its national Promise,
individuals of all kinds will find their most edifying ind