ry in the democratic scheme.
Liberty is the next step, and is the means by which that end is secured.
It is so cardinal in democracy as to seem hardly secondary to equality
in importance. Every State, every social organization whatever, implies
a principle of authority commanding obedience; it may be of the absolute
type of military and ecclesiastical use, or limited, as in
constitutional monarchies; but some obedience and some authority are
necessary in order that the will of the State may be realized. The
problem of democracy is to find that principle of authority which is
most consistent with the liberty it would establish, and which acts with
the greatest furtherance and the least interference in the
accomplishment of the chief end in view. It composes authority,
therefore, of personal liberty itself, and derives it from the consent
of the governed, and not merely from their consent but from their active
decree. The social will is impersonal, generic, the will of man, not of
men; particular wills enter into it, and make it, so constituted,
themselves in a larger and external form. The citizen has parted with no
portion of his freedom of will; the will of the State is still his own
will, projected in unison with other wills, all jointly making up one
sum,--the authority of the nation. This is social self-government,--not
the anarchy of individuals each having his own way for himself, but
government through a delegated self, if one may use the phrase,
organically combined with others in the single power of control
belonging to a State. This fusion is accomplished in the secondary
stage, for the continuous action of the State, by representation,
technically; but, in its primary stage and original validity, by
universal suffrage; for the characteristic trait of democracy is that in
constituting this authority, which is social as opposed to personal
freedom,--personal freedom existing in its social form,--it includes
every unit of will, and gives to each equivalence. Democracy thus
establishes the will of society in its most universal form, lying
between the opposite extremes of particularism in despotism and anarchy;
it owns the most catholic organ of authority, and enters into it with
the entire original force of the community.

This universal will of democracy is distinguished from the more limited
forms of states partially embodying democratic principles by the fact
that nothing enters into it except man as such. The