actising the Steinway Grand
principle in not being bad as there are people, but they all consist
apparently in selecting some big, positive thing that one wants to do,
which logically includes and bundles all together where they are
attended to in a lump, all the things that one ought not to do.

Most sins (every one who has ever tried them knows this) most sins are
not really worth bothering with, each in detail, even the not-doing them
and the most practical, firm method of getting them out of the way
(thousands of them at once, sometimes, with one hand) is to have
something so big to live for that all the things that would like to get
in the way, and would like to look important, look, when one thinks of
it, suddenly small.

The distinctive, preeminent, official business for the next four years,
of making small things in this country look small and of gently,
quietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our people
recently, to Mr. Woodrow Wilson.

Now it naturally seems to some of us, the best way for Mr. Wilson's
government to do in getting the Trusts to give up lying and stealing, is
going to be to place before them quietly a few really big, interesting,
equally exciting things that Trusts can do, and then dare them, as in
some great game or tournament of skill--all the people looking on--dare
them, challenge them like great men, to do them.

There are three ideas President Wilson may have of the government's
getting people to be good.

First, not letting people be bad. (Moses.)

Second, being good for them. (Karl Marx.)

Third, letting them be good themselves. (Any Democrat.)

The first of these ideas means government by Prison. The second, means
government by Usurpation, that is, the moment a man amounts to enough to
choose to do right or do wrong of his own free will, the moment he is a
man, in other words, being so afraid of him and of his being a man, that
we all, in a kind of panic, shove into his life and live it for
him--this is Socialism, a scared machine that scared people have
invented for not letting people choose to do right because they may
choose to do wrong.

The third, letting people be good themselves, letting them be
self-controlling, self-respecting, self-expressing or voluntarily good
people, is democracy, a machine for letting men be men by trying it.

Moses was the inventor of a kind of national moral-brake system, a
machine for stopping people nine times out of ten.