Read Ebook: The Psychology of Nations A Contribution to the Philosophy of History by Partridge G E George Everett

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abrogation of the sentiment of patriotism is, as we have intimated, a rationalistic doctrine. It is an attempt to extend objective principles into the realm of social values. Reason tells us, they say, that we ought to organize universally and obliterate national lines. Reason tells us we should make no distinction between ourselves and strangers, between enemies and allies. But by the same rationalism we may break up any loyalty. Patriotism is an inner, a spiritual force, and it has its roots in moods and forms of appreciation which have a certain finality about them, for the reason that they are deposits from the whole course of human history. Veblen says it is a matter of habit to what particular nationality a man will become attached on arriving at years of discretion. That is true, and it is of course the whole secret of loyalty. But it is not a matter of unimportance whether a man shall become attached to any country. It is the dynamic power of loyalty that is in question, if we consider its practical value. Loyalty grows because it has a use, which is related to the most basic feelings. It is not a product of reason, and cannot justly be judged on purely rational grounds.

Some views about patriotism which thus disparage it seem to be based upon a biological conception of it. Not a few writers apparently think of patriotism as a fixed trait of the human organism, even as a kind of mendelian character unrelated to other social qualities. This trait antagonizes social progress, but it is preserved because of secondary values which it represents, such as moral or aesthetic values. According to these views patriotism may be complex, but it acts like a unitary character. It is subject, theoretically, to selection, but as a matter of fact it remains a strong factor in the temperament of nearly all races.

But in our view patriotism is something less precise than all this would imply. It is a form in which the most fundamental and general of desires are expressed, in becoming fixated upon their most natural and necessary objects. It is an aspect of the whole process of development of the affective life. Leaving out patriotism would mean a break in the continuity of the social life. It would leave one group of functions without their natural support in desire. Economists sometimes seem to leave out of account the profound emotional forces and the irresistible tendencies which make social groups. They want organizations without the moods and impulses by which alone social bodies are formed or sustained; and they expect to see organization broken up or interest in it lost while all the conditions that keep alive the passion for it are intact. Patriotism and the existence of nations seem, however, to be the opposite sides of the same fact. And we may assume that so long as nations exist, at any rate, patriotism will exist, and one of the most necessary functions of public education will be the regulation of the motives and feelings which are contained in this sentiment.

Patriotism is first of all to be considered, then, as a phase of the social life as a whole, rather than as an unique emotion or a special variety of loyalty. It is a way in which the sum of tendencies that enter into the social life become fixated upon certain qualities of the environment, or upon certain objects. Patriotism will best be understood in a practical way by observing its objects. Patriotism is a total mood; country is a total object. But the mood of patriotism expresses varied desires, and the object of patriotism is a highly complex and variable object. In being loyal to or devoted to country in the sense which we usually mean when we say one is patriotic, we are devoted to at least the following objects: 1) physical country as home; 2) the ways, customs, standards and beliefs of the country; 3) the group of people constituting the nation; and here race, social solidarity, ideal constructions of an united people having common purposes and possessions enter; 4) leaders; 5) country as an historical entity having rights and interests--a living being having experiences, ideals and characteristics. The educational problem is of course the regulation of the attachment of the individuals of a nation to these objects. In one sense this educational problem of patriotism is nothing less than that of developing social consciousness itself. It is precisely the task of fostering or creating in the child the basis of all loyalty. Given a loyal mind in the child and a normal environment, we need to be concerned but little about the causes and the groups upon which that loyalty will expend itself, for the conditions are all present for forming an attachment to every natural group. Considered generically and psychologically there is no patriotism, we say, marked off from everything else, and there is no one object that excites patriotic loyalty. All educational influences that strengthen attachment to home, all social feeling, devotion to the ways of any group and obedience to its standards, respect for all law and authority, all appreciation of historic relations, help to develop patriotism, merely because country, in these aspects, is an omnipresent object to which the feelings thus engendered will automatically become to some extent attached.

The first task in the teaching of patriotism is to give all children a vivid sense of country as physical object, and a deep aesthetic appreciation of this object--although of course this idea of physical country cannot be detached from everything else. Each country has its different problem. Ours is to create a total country, in the imagination of the young. A German writer not long ago predicted that the future of America lay in the direction of breaking up into a little England, a little Ireland, and a little of the other nationalities here represented. That particular danger may seem remote enough, but in another way we do continue to be lacking in unity. Our patriotism has been too local, and America, even after the great war, is to some extent still a collection of geographical regions. New England, the South, the Coast are more real to many than country as a whole. Our great distances, and the impossibility of clearly imagining them have necessarily presented obstacles thus far to a unified image of country. The time may come, and perhaps soon, when such a divided consciousness of country will be a grave flaw in our national life.

It must be a serious function of some kind of geography to give reality to the idea of country, although of course we cannot separate entirely geographical from historical idea of country. The teaching of the geography of the native land must be different from other geography. Native land must have a warmth and home feeling about it that other countries do not have, but as yet the psychological conditions for this have apparently not been worked out. With our present facilities in pictorial art, the geographical element in the idea of country seems controllable. The minds of children are exceedingly impressionable in this direction. Intensity of feeling and vividness of imagination are at the disposal of the educator. The love of color, especially, must be used to make lasting impressions upon the mind. We need to notice also that the idea of physical country that enters most into patriotic feeling is not an idea of city streets but of the open country. It is the country that inspires the strongest home feeling, and it is the country that is the basis of the sense of changelessness and eternity of native land, that is a strong element in patriotic sentiment. This element of patriotism, it is plain, is something aesthetic. It is not so much a moral loyalty to country that is inspired by the everlasting hills, as an aesthetic love of it as the home land. This aesthetic love of the home land is a response to such stimuli as the beautiful arouses everywhere. It is susceptible, therefore, to all the influences of art--of music, picture, symbol; these must all be employed in teaching patriotism. The theme of home is especially sensitive to the effects of music. It is this idea of home, enlarged and enriched by pictorial representation of country, deeply impressed and influenced by music, and unified and imbued with the feeling of personal possession by the story of country that is the core of patriotic feeling. It is the function of art, especially of music, to help to make the home feeling of the child normal and enthusiastic--to raise it above the stage of being an "anxiety of animal life," as Nicolai terms the primitive love of home. Art must help to remove the fears and depressions that may lurk in the idea of home, which are great obstacles to the development of the higher devotions. It is the lack of normal love of home in the city, we should say, that makes socialism and all forms of internationalism that breed so rapidly there such dangerous moods in a democracy. Without true home love, we may conclude, the wider loyalties can never be quite wholesome, although they may be intense and fanatical.

Must our ambition be to teach American children that American ways are the best, and that these ways ought to be established in the world? There is both an evil and a good, both an absurdity and a sublime loyalty in the view which all nations have, that their own culture and life are the best. This conceit is in part a product of isolation, and is pure provincialism. But it is also of the very essence of the reality feeling and the sense of solidarity of peoples and of their loyalty to country. It must not be dealt with too ruthlessly. There is a primitive stratum of it that must remain in all peoples. Nations, however benighted, will not be dispossessed of this idea, but experience and education will make nations more discriminating so that they can at least see what is essential and what is superficial in their own characteristics. Certainly whatever is ethical in our foundations we, and all other peoples, will be expected to hold to. We feel it a duty to spread our moral truth abroad and our mores are necessarily right for us, and this idea of rightness of mores must imply a desire to make them prevail in the world. We may recognize, abstractly, other standards of conduct, but there is something in moral belief which, of course, cannot voluntarily be changed, and which must stand for the ultimately real in consciousness so long as it is held to be so by the mass of the people. This must extend also to aesthetic standards, and to all final judgments of values to some extent.

There are three things at least, as regards our mores that cannot be accomplished. For this we may take our evidence and our warning from Germany. Culture cannot be spread by force, since force does not conquer spirit. Devotion to the basic principles of one's civilization cannot rationally nor safely be extended to include all customs and manners, so that we may assume that there is a right way in everything which is ours and a wrong way which is foreign. The mores of a people cannot be changed or manipulated by education and propaganda without uprooting the moral structures of society. When we begin to practice a Social-politik we enter upon dangerous ground.

The work of the intellectual leaders of a people is to uncover this kernel of sincere belief and worth, and strip nationalism at the same time of its encrustations of vanity and deception. There are, we may suppose, at the bottom of every nation's consciousness such sincere principles which are entitled to a fair field in the competition of the civilizations and the cultures of the world. We may be sure that there is Americanism that needs to be taught both for the sake of the world and for our own sake; something which constitutes our best contribution to an experimental world in which the over-emphasis of all sincere principles can ultimately do no harm. Americanism, with all the errors it may contain, and all the limitations it may have as a universal principle is better for us and for all, we may believe, than any dispassionate and well considered intellectualism, or a cosmopolitanism that is based upon a fear of provincialism. Let us be prepared, therefore, to go forth not to conquer but to participate in the life of the world.

THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM

It is this more conscious bond of function and propinquity at least that must be taken into account in the education of patriotism--certainly American patriotism. We in America can hardly emphasize race patriotism, without producing internal disruption. It is common function that is the distinguishing mark of the individuals of a group, rather than common origin. Common function, especially subsumption under one ordered government, particularly if the purpose be that of securing common protection, can plainly overcome all loyalty to race. Common religion antagonizes race consciousness, and we see therefore within nations races splitting up along lines of religious difference. We see within races also greater antagonism and greater lack of common interest between classes than between the same classes as found in different races. Aristocrats everywhere, for example, appear to have greater mutual sympathy and sense of nearness than do the upper and lower classes of the same race.

This gives us a clew at least to a practical principle for the education of social loyalty. We must secure participation on the part of the individual in every function that belongs to each group to which the individual himself is attached. Thus all degrees and kinds of loyalty may be made to exist in the same mind without conflict or confusion, precisely because the loyalty desired is loyalty to people as groups or organizations having causes, not to collections of individuals as such.

The teaching of loyalty to any cause appears to be a lesson in patriotism. So far as teaching of patriotism is centered directly upon the production of loyalty to the whole group which constitutes the nation, the first object must be to create a sense of reality of the group in the mind of the individual. We may expect to do this in part by the teaching of geography and history in an adequate way, but we must also instill such patriotism by inducing individuals to participate in nation-wide organizations, which are capable of realizing dramatic effects. The experiences of the war have taught us to see this. It is organization or co?peration for practical ends, under conditions in which deep feeling is aroused, that most quickly and effectually creates the sense of solidarity in great groups of individuals. We must study the psychological side of this matter, and see how the power and momentum that are so readily gained in time of need can be better controlled for all the routine purposes of education and the practical daily life. The organization of national activities by means of voluntary associations will be likely to be one of the main educational methods of the future. If we are far-seeing we shall try to utilize the powers of organization, co?peration and communication to overcome many antagonisms now existing in society. War temporarily suspends class distinctions and many other forms of social dualism. The reaction after the war may be in the direction of increasing all the former antagonisms. To attain a strong morale and unity in times less dramatic than those of war is an educational problem, in a wide sense, but it is also a problem of the practical organization of all the social life.

In this, as in all other phases of education now, we must consider how the great energies hidden in the aesthetic experiences can be put to use. The aesthetic, especially in its dramatic form, is a power to be reckoned with. Interest, organization, moral obligation do not control or release all the energies contained in the social life. We need the high moods of dramatic situations to reach the most fundamental motives. The teacher must not only present ideas; he must generate power. And this is true of all efforts to employ for any end the interests of the people, old or young. The social life, if it is to be effective, must constantly be brought under the influence of dramatic stimuli. Dillon, a political writer, earnestly pleads for an extension and deepening of the sympathies of children, and says that patriotic sentiment must be engrafted upon the sensitive soul of the child. No one could refuse to admit this. The question, however, is of ways and means. In our view it is mainly through play, or better, art, that the soul of the child is thus made sensitive. A dramatic social life must be the main condition upon which we depend for thus extending and deepening the sympathies of the child.

Among these dramatic social effects we seek, the use of national holidays, all methods of symbolizing events, causes, or functions which are nationally significant are of course not to be ignored, but after all it is through practical activity made social and raised to dramatic expression or feeling, either by its own inherent idea and suggestive power, or by the addition of aesthetic elements, that loyalty to the greater group and its functions will best be educated. It is precisely the lack of these dramatic elements and these mass effects in the social life that now leaves the social sense in its national aspects weak, and allows the various dividing lines throughout society to make even the most necessary activities to a greater or less degree ineffectual.

A fourth factor in patriotism we recognize as loyalty to government, to state, or to leader. The place of such loyalty in a truly democratic country as contrasted with an autocratically governed country seems plain. It is not only sovereignty but statesmanship as well that must reside in the people. The people must not only have the power but the wisdom to rule. Even the ideals of the country must come out of the common life, or there at least be abundantly nourished. The German writers protest that the purely native ideals of the people do not represent the meaning and purpose of the State. The natural feelings of the people lack purpose and definiteness. The State is something very different from the sum of the people and the representation of their will. The native sense of solidarity is not at all like the organization that comes through the State. But this abstract conception of the State as a being different from the people is precisely, in the view of such writers as Dickinson, the cause of wars. Upon this point Dickinson sees now a wide parting of the ways. We must have either one kind of world or the other. We must continue our warlike habits, and make the God-state the object of our religion, or abandon all this for a thorough-going democracy. It is the special interest that is assumed to inhere in the God-state that is the menace to peace everywhere. The abstract theory of State inspires far-seeing policies, democracy lives more by its natural instincts and feelings. The theory of necessary expansion, the right to grow and to intrude, is a natural deduction from the conception of the God-state; loyalty to the State demands ever increasing lands and population in order to have more military power.

It seems to be a part of the work of education to create popular heroes, to do upon a higher level what the public press does in its own way, but mainly partisanly and too often from wholly unworthy motives--make reputations. We must do more in the teaching of history and biography than to glorify the lives of dead heroes. We need to be quite as much concerned about coming heroes. We must excite the imagination of the young and prejudice the public mind through educational channels, in favor of sincere and true leaders. The opportunity of the story teller is large, in this work, and we need also to develop to a very high degree of excellence the educational newspaper. One of our great needs in education in this country is a daily newspaper for all schools--one that shall be both informing and influential, appealing by every art to the selective faculties, governed absolutely by ethical, or at least not by political and partisan motives. The power of such a press might be very great indeed. As an unifying influence and a ready means of communication, and an instrument of use in the organization of all children, the function of this press would be a highly important one.

All means of creating political ideals from within, of forging the links between leader and people in the plastic minds of children and youths, will be an education in one of the fundamental elements of patriotism. Such an education would be very different, however, from the state planned and authorized education that has been carried on under autocratic regimes. The difference is one of spirit and result, rather than of method. In one case the State becomes a kind of Nirvana, in the thought of which personality and individuality are negated. Patriotism produced in the minds of the young under the influence of a democratic spirit tends to become a creative force rather than a blind devotion to an accepted order. Institutions are made and advanced rather than merely obeyed and defended in this educational process. The widest scope and the freest opportunity are allowed for superior qualities of leaders and for right principles to have an effect upon society , but the conditions would be such that no other kind of authority would be able to exert a wide influence. To secure these conditions is, of course, one of the chief tasks of all the administrative branches of our educational service.

The final factor of patriotism, according to our analysis, is loyalty to country as an historical object. The ideas and the feelings centering about the conception of country as personal, as living, as having rights and experience, duties and individuality are likely to be vivid and intense. They are the inspirers of supreme devotion to country, and also at times, of morbid national pride and fanatical country-worship. The education of this idea of country we should suppose would be one of the fundamental problems of the development of patriotism. Presumably we are not to try to destroy this idea of country that all people seem to have, or to show it as one of the illusions of personification. Country is, of course, different from the mere sum of the people. It has continuity and it performs functions and it is an historic entity. Modernize and reform this idea, we must, but we cannot do away with it as something archaic and superstitious. Country is real, the concepts of honor and right belong to it, and country is something to which the mind must do homage.

This implies no teaching of pure internationalism. We still recognize as fundamental the whole spirit of nationalism. Country must remain first after all. All must indeed learn to take in some way the statesman's point of view in regard to country--with its sense of the future, of wide relations and long periods of time, and its practical vision. It is futile to think of this future as one wholly without struggle and competition. We must teach history also far more with the forward view. History has dealt too exclusively even in America with the past. National ambition that has as its aim to realize, with independence and power, all the good that an enlightened nation contains, but at the same time to act with justice and with the thought of the nation as a part of a co?rdinated world must take this point of view.

It is not only possible and fair, therefore, but necessary that patriotism be enlightened. It is possible to be devoted each one first of all to his own country, to have few illusions about its values, and at the same time to have tolerance for all other nations. What other spirit is there, in fact, in which our history can now be taught? It seems absurd to say that such a spirit is weak. It implies consciousness of strength, of being able to hold one's own in a fair field, to have the dignity and sense of maturity that come from contact with a real world. With such a spirit it would not be necessary to accept as inevitable the brutality of all national development, to use the words of Mach, a recent writer. We need no longer believe that war is the only thing that can prevent national disintegration, as many maintain. National consciousness certainly makes progress even without such dramatic and tragic events as have recently taken place. Boutroux says that in France, after the Dreyfus affair, although strong nationalistic feeling was stirred, there was also a new vision of the destiny of the French people as not only defenders of their own country but as champions of the rights of all nationalities. German writers have not failed to notice this, and have been inclined to regard this spirit of France as a sign of degeneration and decay of the national life. We see now that generosity and justice are far from being evidences of weakness, and also that in the larger logic of history these weaknesses generate strength; at least they bring powerful friends in time of need.

Once Germany herself was affected by such ideals of history. In the time of Goethe, Cramb reminds us, mankind, culture and humanity were the great words. But upon this love of humanity and culture and love of the homeland a political spirit was engrafted, and this new spirit of Germany has manifestly now led to her downfall. No! there is no threat to national existence and no disloyalty to country in the form of internationalism that now is before us. As social consciousness widens and social relations become more intricate and more practical, national lines are not lost, but indeed become clearer. These national boundaries are not temporary or artificial or imaginary lines, for they represent and define activities and interests that engage the most fundamental and the most persistent of human motives.

It is in this spirit that loyalty to country as historic object should, we believe, be taught. This idea we teach of course through history, in part, but history alone in any ordinary sense, as we might think of it as a subject in the curriculum of a school, is not enough. These ideas must be made persuasive and dynamic. For this as we see over and over again, art is the true method. The object to be presented and which must inspire devotion is an ideal object. It is complex and it performs practical functions, but it is through and through such an object as appeals most deeply to the aesthetic feelings. The image of this object must be made impressive. Since the ideal of our country is more abstract than that of most countries, as an object still less vivid and less personal, since it lacks some of the means of appeal to the feelings that imperialistic countries have, there is all the more need of art to make the figure of ideal country stand out sharply before us. As we pass beyond the patriotism which is only a love of home, or a devotion to a political unit, to a patriotism that is a loyalty to a more abstract and more intangible idea, the art by which the idea of country is conveyed would, we should suppose, also become more abstract. Hocking says that it is through symbols that the mind best gropes its way to the realization of ideas. Feeling and imagery, we know, are very susceptible to the influences of the symbol, and also to the phrase which is a lower order of symbol. Dramatic representation, all pageantry, pictorial art, music, even the art of the poster artist and the cartoonist have a place in the work of portraying country as an ideal object, and inspiring devotion to it and its causes. A far-seeking educational policy will scorn none of these in its effort to crystallize the concept of country and give it power and reality.

We shall have a true patriotism, we should say, only when country is an idea that is worked for by all classes; when it is an idea that is woven into the daily lives of the people; when it makes the daily toil lighter and touches it with glory, and when it enters into all the enthusiasm of the more favored classes and inspires it with the spirit of daily service.

POLITICAL EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY

One of the results of the war has been to raise in the minds of all peoples, to an extraordinary degree, the most earnest questions about the nature and validity of government. The political sense of all peoples has been stimulated. We see on every hand new conceptions of government and demands for more and better government, but also the most radical criticism and the denial of all government. The determination in very fundamental ways of what government is, and must be, what ideas must prevail, what must be suppressed, what an ideal government is, if such an ideal can be formed, the question of evils inherent in the idea of government itself , the laws of development of government in all their practical aspects--all these questions now come up for examination, and will not be repressed. If we do not take them at one level we must upon another. Naively or scientifically, philosophically or radically, the nature of government must be dealt with.

Significant differences may be observed in the general attitude toward government among the people in the great nations of the world. Each nation appears to have its own political temperament, and this quite apart from the views represented especially by political parties and the like, and quite independently of the scientific and philosophical conceptions of government and its functions of which there are a great number, and among them certainly no agreement upon the main issues and values.

Le Bon says that the Frenchman, too, thinks of the state as something to be kept at a minimum and to a certain extent to be opposed. Opposition to the government is a part of the Frenchman's plan of life. Boutroux says the same--that in France the habit of thinking of the government and of society as two rivals has not been overcome.

Our own idea of government is certainly somewhat different from these. We are watchful of individual right, but we do not tend to think of government either as opponent or as servant. We do not ask the government to take care of us as individuals, and we do not feel in the public attitude the resistance to government that the French writers observe in France. The American expects on the whole to look out for his own interests and he has never felt the pressure and over-powering force of government--until perhaps now. Mabie says that the American has conceived of his government as existing to keep the house in order while the family lived its life freely, every individual following the bent of his own genius.

The state in Russell's view, instead of being an ideal institution, is even harmful in many ways and terribly destructive. It promotes war. It makes the individual helpless, and crushes him with a sense of his unimportance. It abets the injustice of capitalism. It excludes citizens from any participation in foreign affairs. We must indeed not let this incubus of state overwhelm us. We must keep it in its proper place, even in performing its necessary functions, such as preserving public health. It is better to take some risk, even in such matters, than to override too much the individual's personal rights. All the functions of the state must be made to center more about the welfare of the individual, and in doing this the state must plainly regard as fundamental the right of the individual to free growth and the development of all his powers. We must learn to think more in terms of individual welfare and less in terms of national pride.

In syndicalism in some form Russell sees the most promise for reform of government. Some type of government at least which does not make the geographical unit the basis of everything must be the government of the future. This would lead in the end to a higher state than that based primarily upon law, for it would be a government in which free organization would be the first principle.

Plainly we are to-day in a time of flux in which ideas and institutions are unsettled, and there is a great variety of political theories of all kinds. We can hope to find no agreement among theorists and certainly no common ground for the reconciliation of conflicting parties. Still, even for the most practical daily life we must find some guiding principles. We must look for some means of bringing order out of the present diversity and conflict. Some valuation of government, some idea of the ultimate purpose of government ought to be agreed upon, if for no other reason that we may have some principle which will give us continuity in our educational work.

Consider the varieties of political creed now offered us, and there can be little doubt both of the difficulty and the necessity of finding guiding principles for the practical life and to preserve sanity of mind. The monarchical idea still lingers; there is a variety of conceptions of democracy, differing widely; there are socialists--state socialists, Marxian socialists of the old line, Bolshevists, regionalists, syndicalists, and others--and anarchists of pure blood. Of internal and party differences, policies, and plans there is no end. Through all these we have to thread our way, and reach what conclusions we can.

No American can of course be expected to see the question of government otherwise than through American eyes. He is to some extent prejudiced and bound to the ideas of liberty, individualism, and democracy, whatever his variety of party politics be. Democracy he may regard as an assumption, but it will seem now even more than ever a necessary assumption upon which to build a working conception of government.

The actual functions of governments are, therefore, highly complex, because it is in some way involved in all the functions of the individuals themselves. Governments will be judged good or bad in two particulars: according to the completeness with which they include all the social functions, and as regards their efficiency in facilitating these functions. We must not make the mistake of judging a government merely by its form. Under the same constitution and holding the same ideals, there is room for widely different forms of activity on the part of the government, and great differences in efficiency and in the functions performed. The same functions may be performed and the same degree of efficiency reached apparently with different organizations. Cleveland shows, for example, how our own government might become much more efficient and make radical changes in the mechanism of the legislative and executive functions without sacrificing any principle we hold to, and perhaps without any change in our constitution.

It is this idea of the proper functions of government and the relative adequacy of existing governments to perform them that seems to be deeply questioned. Life has suddenly grown more complex. The individual is brought face to face with new demands upon him. He becomes, it may be, a member of new groups, having new functions. Government also, and correspondingly, expands. The question is not now of the efficiency of government in doing what it has hitherto undertaken; we wish to feel sure that government is adequate to meet the requirements of a rapidly changing social order. That just now is indeed a very vital question. Governments, we say, may be obliged to adapt themselves to entirely new tasks. Society assumes new external relations, and therefore we should expect that new organs would be needed for performing these new functions.

We can certainly find no precise way of valuing in detail or in their totality existing or proposed forms of government. Our most valid method, however, appears to be to refer at every step the functions of government back to the functions of the individuals who make up society. Every phase of legitimate government must thus go back to the individual, and his desires and functions. If we do this we shall see again why in national life we have the same kind of experimental problem that we have in the life of the individual. There can be no perfect adjustment among the acts of an individual, and no final valuation of them. There is no perfect balance between present use and future good, between individual and social values, between desires or needs and functions. The reason for this, we say, is that life is so complicated and made up of so many functions and of so many conflicting desires that it cannot be conducted according to any single principle or combination of principles. If we think of government as only a phase of the widest social living, and so as being through and through of the nature of the life of the individual, we ought to have the right point of view for all practical consideration of it. We must not expect consistency or perfection in government, and we can have no hope of passing absolute and final judgments upon it. Radical politics, in our present situation, must be regarded as one of our greatest dangers.

The question may fairly be asked whether we are not at a parting of the ways, when our democratic idea must be more clearly defined, and we must decide whether we shall change toward autocracy; or now, at the end of our stage of primitive democracy, enter upon a plane of higher democracy. Sumner says that always in a democracy it is a question what class shall rule, that the control in a democracy always tends to remain either in the hands of the upper class or the lower class, and that the great middle class, the seat of vast powers, is never organized to rule. Such conditions show, again, the effects of the individualism that prevails--national unity and the capacity for free organization without individual or special motives are wanting.

The evils of our present democratic society--the individualism, party politics and class rule--appear in sharp relief when we compare existing institutions and the present spirit with what is required in a true democracy. The old idea that the will of the majority must prevail is seen to be inadequate, if we mean by will of the majority the average or the sum of the desires and opinions of the majority. These do not necessarily represent the good, and indeed under existing conditions, they cannot. We want the will of the superior man to prevail, but to prevail not by force, but by the power of influence. The politicians talk about the soundness of the instincts of the people Something more than instinct is wanted in a democracy. Instincts are not progressive. Individualism, the pleasure of the moment, and mediocrity are represented too much by instincts and in every expression of the mere will of the majority. People in the mass are governed too much by impulse. Conduct and purpose are too discontinuous and fragmentary; or perhaps we had better say that the stimuli of the moment are too likely to control conduct. Whereas social life under the influence of the highest type of leadership is governed by more complex states of consciousness, by moods, which are more original and creative, and in which desires and impulses are no longer the controlling factors in conduct.

This view of democracy shows that democracy is something still to come. It is not an achieved social order or a well-founded doctrine that must merely be exploited and spread abroad over the world. Democracy is experimental civilization. We do not know whether it represents the ultimate good in government and society or not, and whether it is destined to continue and to prevail. That will depend, we suppose, upon what we make it. We have our evidences of history, but after all democracy is still based upon assumptions. It is an experimental order, we say, in which we try to realize many desires and to harmonize many functions. The final justification of democracy must be in the far future. It must be judged then by its fruits, rather than by rationally testing the validity of its principle. Thus far it is a working hypothesis.

The precise form which government in a democracy ought to take is, from our present point of view, of secondary importance. Democracy is a spirit, an idea, a social quality, first of all. A monarchial government, though it might be otherwise out of date, might be entirely democratic in spirit; and republics, we know, may be anything but democratic. Where control is in the hands of the people and not of a class, but of the people subject to the best leadership--a leadership that is based upon influence rather than upon any excess of authority or show of force, there is democracy, and of this, of course, the ballot itself is by no means the only test. But where thus far shall we find any democratic society that is so sound that it can offer itself as a model to the rest of the world?

Most of the political questions of the day appear to be relative and conditioned questions. The question of governmental control of industry is an example. This seems to be a question of expediency, and to be conditional upon local needs and the status of particular governments. It is certainly no fundamental question of the social order. Those who make socialism a supreme and universal principle also appear to be too radical. Sellars says that socialism is a democratic movement, the purpose of which is to secure an economic organization of society that will give a maximum of justice, liberty and efficiency. Drake, in "Democracy Made Safe," says that socialism implies equality everywhere; more than that, it means social, political, economic and legal equality throughout the earth. One cannot but feel that these enthusiastic writers are making the mistake of undertaking to do by political mutation, so to speak, that which can be accomplished, we may suppose, only by a slow process of experimentation in government, and the still slower but more certain method of education, in which all people are trained in fundamental social relations. Radical and venturesome change in so great and complex an organism as a great nation is now dangerous, because only a part of the conditions can be taken into account, and the result, therefore, must be conjectural.

Radical socialism that threatens to throw political power into the hands of a political class, or of any social or economic class, bolshevism which Dillon says is doomed to failure because of its sheer economic impossibility, any plan which tends to concentrate authority in any class is threatening to our future. The democratic spirit must hold fast against the rising tide from the lower classes, just as it has been obliged to contend against autocracy. Democracy has on one side to assimilate aristocracy, and not overturn it. So it resists the rise of the proletariat, not to turn this force back, even if this were possible, but to control it. It is precisely because of the deep movement of the people--the world revelation and the world revolution, as Weyl calls it--that we must make all political institutions flexible and adjustible, and also throw into the balance all the powers of education and thus save democracy from itself.

These dangers to democracy are not to be taken too lightly. Democracy indeed faces two dangers. Hobson in "Democracy After the War" has stated one of them. He says that the war will result in no easy victory for democracy, for the system of caste and bureaucracy is very likely to become fixed. Democracy therefore must be worked for, and to that end there must be a union of all types of reformers. We must play off the special interests against one another, says Hobson, work for industrial democracy, educate the people. On the other hand there is that danger from the rising of the masses which Weyl heralds. This war underneath and after the war is as Weyl sees it, the war of the poor and exploited against all the exploiters. These elements are at heart antagonistic to government. Democracy, if all this be true, is neither well defined as an idea nor well established in the world. An unjust and privileged class above and an unwise and uneducated class beneath threaten it. But the case seems by no means hopeless. Indeed the remedies and the way of escape seem in a general way plain. Political changes on one side and political education on the other must become, we should suppose, the order of the day.

This is the type of thought, we suggest, that seems best adapted to meet present requirements for a practical theory of government. Analysis of the functions of government, critical examination of the needs of the present time, and a plan of modifying what already exists, rather than of making revolutionary changes, seem to be the right direction of progress.

There are two essential educational problems of democracy that have especial reference to the political aspects of it. The first is to teach universally in as practical a manner as possible the materials out of which political wisdom may be derived. We maintain that the lack of political education and experience is one of the most serious defects of the German people. These people are at first submissive to an extraordinary degree and then they become dangerously revolutionary. The lack of political competence is shown in both cases. We wish, of course, neither of these excesses in our own country. And yet we do have to cope at the present time with both a tendency to fanaticism, radicalism and intense partisanship, and with indifference and ignorance of the nature and purpose of our institutions and government. Both the indifference and the partisanship play into the hands of party politics, and no advantages gained by the balance of parties in opposition to one another can compensate for the loss of energy and the encouragement of inefficient service the system fosters.

To help offset these tendencies it must be possible to give to all youths, and of course we mean both sexes, through our educational system and otherwise an education in politics, and besides this some practical experience in public service in institutions and in organizations. This is a vital spot in education in a democracy; we have tried too much to reform or make progress in government from within the political system itself, and too little by going back to the ultimate sources of social life and educating the people as a whole with reference to playing their part in political life.

If we wish to consider details, we may notice that in an educational process having such ends as we have suggested, the teaching of civics, for example, becomes more functional, the teaching of what an individual in a community and what all governments do, rather than analyzing the structure of government. Such civics teaches the meaning of individuals as having functions which are represented and fulfilled in the institutions and organizations of society, including every department of government. It is not the intention to enter here into the special problems in regard to the content and method of teaching civics in the schools, although it is evident that this subject must have an increased place in the future. We already see advances both in the purpose and the plan of civics teaching and in the literature prepared for the schools. Dunn, for example, makes fundamental in all the teaching of civics the question, What are the common interests which people in communities are seeking? Tufts also tries to deal with the fundamental ideas upon which government is based.

Presentation of facts is surely a necessary part of all education, for it is an indispensable means of giving the content of experience upon which wisdom as a selective appreciation of experience is based. But erudition is only a part of education. We must hold firmly now to the principle which is indeed an aspect of the democratic ideal itself, that participation is also a necessary part of education. Institutions become real to the child through the child's association with them in some active way. We shall probably see the idea of free organization carried far, and in every organization and every institution, private and public, there must, we believe, be some place for the services and the interest of all. Let us take the position that there is nothing in government, in any of its branches, that is outside the sphere of the practical life of the individual and we shall have the right point of view even for the work of the school room. Government, in a word, is not a specialization of function in which the few are involved, but it is a generic function, the means, we assert, of carrying to completion all the projects of individuals in all their social relations. Therefore all, not merely those who just now are included among voters, but all women and children, must have a part in the general education for democracy and also have a part in some way in the institutions of government. From first to last government must be thought of and understood in terms of what it does, as a phase of the total social life of the nation, not as something outside the social order. Government is a collective activity. It is as an aspect of the day's work of the nation, that government must be impressed upon all--both legal citizens and citizens in the making.

The second phase of the educational problem in regard to government is perhaps after all only the first in another form. If we hope to have a democratic civilization in any real sense anywhere, we must secure efficiency and superiority both in individual and in social conduct, not mainly by the exertion of authority but by making all the people of a nation susceptible to the influences of the best life and thought the nation contains. This means the voluntary and intentional development of leadership. This we have spoken of as a general need; it is also a phase of political education. The genius, the leader, must of course himself be produced in part by education. We must have such conditions as shall allow natural leadership to come to the surface, and every spark of genius must be carefully nourished. But there must be also opportunity for what the genius produces to work its effect upon all, as a stimulating and directing force, in turn arousing the creative activities of the people. Democracy seems to be wholly dependent upon what seems now the accident of genius for raising it above the mediocrity of the average, or even preventing a decline in its civilization. It is this idea of the relation of the best to the average that James evidently thought to be the fundamental point in education. Education consists in his view in the development of ability to recognize the good in every department of life, the ability to recognize all sham and inferiority and the habit of responding to and choosing the best. Applied to the problems of government, this means such a method of educating the young as will make all susceptible to and appreciative of the superior qualities of mind and character that may be exhibited in public life. Such responsiveness being itself creative and a powerful factor in producing and bringing to the front the superior man, it must be regarded as one of the most necessary and fundamental qualities of a democracy.

We might single out the teaching of history and biography as the best means of educating the appreciative powers in regard to values in human life, and the best means of facilitating the emergence of the best individuals and the best principles, and of making their influence powerful, but after all it is something more than any or all teaching that is required. Most fundamentally, no one can refuse to admit it is such an organization of the whole educational situation as will allow, or rather cause and encourage, precisely the total of the good and progressive life of the world to play upon the mood and the spirit of the school. Assuredly the school is not to-day so fortunately situated. It is too much removed from some influences and far too closely joined to others. Much of the good of society is walled out from the school by barriers that arise in politics, City ways, all the bad life of the streets, the trivial interests of the day, affect the school too much. We are greatly at fault in all this, because we do not take education as yet seriously enough. There must be now a decision. Either the school must be content to remain what it is now, a local institution performing a very limited service, or it must arise to quite new heights, and mean far more as a civilizing and creative force than it has thus far. The school must occupy more hours of the day and more days in the year. It must claim the child more completely. It must extend its influences further, and draw its life from a deeper soil. We certainly shall never allow the school to become a great evil in society, but it is almost as bad morally to leave it but a feeble good. Let no one speak any longer of good schools. Our schools were good for yesterday, perhaps. But of to-morrow's needs they are not yet even fully aware. The school has yet to learn with certainty to lay hold upon the fundamental things in the nature of the child, and to appreciate the child's real and greatest needs. Continuity and creativeness are still for the most part beyond the powers of the school.

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