individual, in so
far, loses his particularity, and at the same time intensifies and
strengthens that portion of his life which is thus made one with the
general life of men,--that universal and typical life which they have in
common and which moulds them with similar characteristics. It is by this
fusion of the individual with the mass, this identification of himself
with mankind in a joint activity, this reenforcement of himself by what
is himself in others, that a man becomes a social being. The process is
the same, whether in clubs, societies of all kinds, sects, political
parties, or the all-embracing body of the State. It is by making himself
one with human nature in America, its faith, its methods, and the
controlling purposes in our life among nations, and not by birth
merely, that a man becomes an American.

The life of society, however, includes various affairs, and man deals
with them by different means; thus property is a mode of dealing with
things. Democracy is a mode of dealing with souls. Men commonly speak as
if the soul were something they expect to possess in another world; men
are souls, and this is a fundamental conception of democracy. This
spiritual element is the substance of democracy, in the large sense; and
the special governmental theory which it has developed and organized,
and in which its ideas are partially included, is, like other such
systems, a mode of administration under which it seeks to realize its
ideal of what life ought to be, with most speed and certainty, and on
the largest scale. What characterizes that ideal is that it takes the
soul into account in a way hitherto unknown; not that other governments
have not had regard to the soul, but, in democracy, it is spirituality
that gives the law and rules the issue. Hence, a great preparation was
needed before democracy could come into effective control of society.
Christianity mainly afforded this, in respect to the ideas of equality
and fraternity, which were clarified and illustrated in the life of the
Church for ages, before they entered practically into politics and the
general secular arrangements of state organization; the nations of
progress, of which freedom is a condition, developed more definitely the
idea of liberty, and made it familiar to the thoughts of men. Democracy
belongs to a comparatively late age of the world, and to advanced
nations, because such ideas could come into action only after the crude
material neces