problem of democracy is a problem of education, then our whole system of
education, for child, youth and adult, should be reconstructed to focus
upon the building of positive and effective moral personality.

American education began as a subsidiary process.  Children got organic
education in the home, on the farm, in the work shop.  They went to
school to get certain formal disciplines, to learn to read, write and
cipher and to acquire formal grammar.  With the moving into the cities,
the industrial revolution and the entire transformation of our life, the
school has had to take over more and more of the process of organic
education. If children fail to get such education in the school, they
are apt to miss it altogether.

With this entire change in the meaning of the school, old notions of its
purpose still survive.  Probably no one is so benighted to-day as to
imagine that the chief function of the school is to fill the mind with
information; but there are many who still hold to the tradition that the
chief purpose of education is to sharpen the intellectual tools of the
individual for the sake of his personal success.  This notion is a
misleading survival, for tools are of value only in terms of the
character using them.  The same equipment may serve, equally, good or
bad ends.  Only as education focusses on the development of positive and
effective moral character can it aid in solving the problem of
democracy.

Need it be added that this does not mean teaching morals and manners to
children, thirty minutes a day, three times a week?  That is a minor
fragment of moral education.  It means that all phases of the process--
the relation of pupil and teacher, school and home, the government and
discipline, the lessons taught in every subject, the environment, the
proportioning of the curriculum, of physical, emotional and intellectual
culture--all shall be focussed and organized upon the one significant
aim of the whole--_character_.

Further, if education is to overcome the menaces and solve the dilemma
of democracy, it must be carried beyond childhood and youth and outside
the walls of academic institutions.  The ever wider education of adult
citizenship is indispensable to the progress and safety of democracy. It
is one of the glaring illustrations of the inefficiency of our democracy
that there are still communities where school boards build school houses
with public money, open them five or six hours, five days in the week,
and refuse to allow them to be opened any other hour of the day or
night, for a civic forum, parents' meeting, public lecture or other
activity of adult education; and yet we call ourselves a practical
people!  Surely, in a democracy, the state is as vitally interested in
the education of the adult citizen as of the child.

Herein is the significance of those various extensions of education,
developing and spreading so widely to-day.  University-extension and
Chautauqua movements, civic forums, free lectures to the people by
boards of education and public libraries, summer schools, night schools
for adults--all are illustrations of this movement, so vital to the
progress of democracy.  Through these instrumentalities the popular
ideal may be elevated, the public mind may be trained to more logical
and earnest thought, citizenship may be made more serious and
intelligent, and finally a most helpful influence may be exerted on the
academic institutions themselves.  It is an easily verifiable truth that
any academic institution that builds around itself an enclosing
scholastic wall, refuses to go outside and serve and learn in the larger
world of humanity, in the long run inevitably dies of academic dry rot.

In the endeavor to solve the problem of democracy cannot we do more than
we have done hitherto in cultivating reverence for moral leadership--the
quality so much needed in democracy at the present hour?  This may be
achieved through many aspects of education, but especially through
contact with noble souls in literature and history.  History, above all,
is the great opportunity, and, from this point of view, is it not
necessary to rewrite our histories: instead of portraying solely
statesmen and warriors, to fill them with lofty examples of leadership
in all walks of life?

Women as well as men: for surely ideals of both should be fostered. A
colleague, interested in this problem, recently took one of the most
widely used text-books of American history, and counted the pages on
which a woman was mentioned.  Of the five hundred pages, there were
four: not four pages devoted to women; but four mentioning a woman.
What does it mean: that women have contributed less than one part in a
hundred and five to the development of American life?  Surely no one
would think that.  What, then, are the reasons for the discrepancy?
There are several, but one may be mentioned: men have written the
histories, and they have written chiefly of the two fields of action
where men have been most important and women least, war and
statesmanship.  Surely, however, if American history is to reveal the
American spirit, exercise the contagion of noble ideals and develop
reverence for true moral leadership, it must present types of both
manhood and womanhood in all fields of action and endeavor.

One who has stood with Socrates in the common criminal prison in Athens
and watched him drink the hemlock poison, saying "No evil can happen to
a good man in life or after death," who has heard the oration of Paul on
Mars Hill or that of Pericles over the Athenian dead, who has thrilled
to the heroism of Joan of Arc and Edith Cavell, the noble service of
Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale, the high appeal of Helen Hunt
Jackson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who has heard Giordano Bruno
exclaim as the flames crept up about him, "I die a martyr, and
willingly," who has responded to the calm elevation of Marcus Aurelius,
the cosmopolitan wisdom of Goethe, the sweet gentleness of Maeterlinck's
spirit and the titan dreams of Ibsen, can scarcely fail to appreciate
the brotherhood of all men and to learn that reverence for the true
moral leader, that dignifies alike giver and recipient.

XX

TRAINING FOR MORAL LEADERSHIP

Since the path of democracy is education, moral leadership is more
necessary to it, than in any other form of society; yet there are
exceptional obstacles to its development.  We speak of "the white light
that beats upon a throne": it is nothing compared to the search light
played upon every leader of democracy.  With our lack of reverence, we
delight in pulling to pieces the personalities of those who lead us.
Thus it is increasingly difficult to get men of sensitive spirit to pay
the price of leadership for democracy.

Is it not possible to do more than we have done, consciously to develop
such leadership?  Where is it trained?  In life, the college and
university, the normal school, the schools of law, medicine and
theology.  Yes, but if not one boy and girl in ten graduates from the
high school, surely we want one man and woman in ten to fulfill some
measure of moral leadership, and the high school is directly concerned
with the task of furnishing such leadership for American democracy.

If that is true, is it not a pity that the high school is so largely
dominated from above by the demand of the college upon the entering
freshman?  It is not to be taken for granted that the particular regimen
of studies, best fitting the student to pass the entrance examinations
of a college or university, is the best possible for the nine out of ten
students, who go directly from the high school into the world, and must
fulfill some measure of moral leadership for American democracy.  The
presumption is to the contrary.  College professors are human--some of
them.  They want students prepared to enter as smoothly as possible into
the somewhat artificial curricula of academic studies they have
arranged. The Latin professor wishes not to go back and start with the
rudiments of his subject, as the professor of mathematics with the
beginnings of Algebra and Geometry.  The result is they demand of the
high school what fits most smoothly into their scheme.

Now if it is not possible to serve equally the needs of both groups,
would it not be better to neglect the one tenth of the students, going
on to college, even assuming they are the pick of the flock, which they
are not always?  They have four more years to correct their mistakes and
round out their culture.  If any one must be subordinated, it would be
better to neglect them, and focus upon the needs of the nine out of ten,
who go directly from the high school into life and have not another
chance; yet there are states in the Union, where it is possible for a
committee of the state university at the top to say to every high school
teacher in the state, "Conform to our requirements, or leave the state,
or get out of the profession."  The threat, moreover, has been carried
out more than once.

That situation is utterly wrong.  We want organization of the
educational system, with each unit cooperating with the next higher, but
if education is to solve the problem of democracy and furnish moral
leadership for American life, we want each unit to be free, first of
all, to serve its own constituency to the best of its power.  The
problem is not serious for the big city high school, with its multiplied
elective courses, but for the small rural or town high school, with its
limited corps of teachers and its necessarily fixed courses, the burden
is onerous indeed.

Is the American college and university doing all that it might do in
cultivating moral leadership for American democracy?  The last decades
have seen an astounding and unparalleled development of higher education
in America.  In the old days, the college was usually on a
denominational foundation.  It was supported by the dollars and pennies
of earnest religionists who believed that education was necessary to
religion and morality.  The president was generally a clergyman of the
denomination; he taught the ethics course, and all students were
required to take it. There was compulsory chapel attendance, and once a
day the entire student body gathered together to listen to some moral
and religious thought.

Then came the immense expansion of higher education.  Courses were
multiplied and diversified.  Universities were established or endowed by
the state.  Academies became colleges, and colleges, universities.
Institutions were generally secularized.  Compulsory chapel attendance
was rightly abandoned.  Each department served its own interest apart.
Until to-day certain of our great universities are not unlike vast
intellectual department stores, with each professor calling his goods
across the counter, and the president, a sort of superior floorwalker,
to see that no one clerk gets too many customers.  It is an impressive
illustration of what has happened to our higher institutions that, in
certain of them, the one regular meeting place of the entire student
body in a common interest, is the bleachers by the athletic field. One
continues to believe in college athletics, in spite of the frequent
absurdities and worse, done in their name; only if the numbers of those
playing the game and those exercising only their lungs and throats from
the bleachers, were reversed, better all-round athletic education would
result.  Is it not, however, a trenchant criticism on the situation in
our higher education, that so often the one common interest should be in
something that is, at least, aside from the main business of the
institution?

Moreover, no institution can rightly serve democracy, unless it is
itself democratic.  Thus the growth of an aristocratic spirit in our
colleges and universities is an ominous sign.  For instance, it is still
true that any boy or girl, with a sound body and a good mind and no
family to support, can get a college education.  Money is not
indispensable: it is possible to work one's way through.  Will this
always be true?  One wonders.  It is significant that it is easiest to
work your way through college, and keep your self-respect and the
respect of your fellows, in the small, meagerly endowed college on the
frontier.  It is most difficult, with a few exceptions one gladly
recognizes, in the great, rich universities of the East. What does that
mean?

Straws show the tide: it was announced some time ago by the president of
one of our richest and oldest universities that henceforth scholarships
in that institution would be given solely on the basis of intellectual
scholarship, as tested by examination; and applause went up from the
alumni all across the country; yet what does it mean?  It means that the
boy who has to work on a threshing machine, sell books to an
unsuspecting public, or do some other semi-honorable work all summer to
get back into college in the Fall, cannot pass those examinations
equally with a rich man's son of equal mind, who can take a tutor to the
seashore or the mountains and coach up all summer.  Thus foundations,
established by well-meaning people to help poor boys self-respectingly
through college, become intellectual prizes for those who do not need
them.  That is all wrong.

Take the special student problem.  When a college or university is
founded, it needs students: they are the life-blood of the institution.
Really all that is needed to make a college is a teacher and some
students: buildings are not indispensable, but students the school must
have.  Thus it is apt to keep its bars down and its entrance
requirements flexible.  Special students, often mature men and women,
who are not prepared to pass the freshman examinations, are admitted on
the recommendation of heads of d epartments, to special courses they are
well fitted to take.  Students are admitted freely, and then sifted out
afterward, if they prove unworthy of their opportunity: not a bad
method, by the way.

A dozen years pass, and the institution wants to become respectable.
It is just as with the individual: the man, at first, is absorbed in
money-getting, and when he has it, yearns for respectability.  Now
getting respectable, for a college or university, is called "raising the
standard of scholarship."  Let this not be misunderstood: painstaking,
infinitely laborious, accurate scholarship is a noble aim, well worth
the consistent effort of a lifetime; but there are two sides to raising
the standard of scholarship.  Does an educational institution exist for
the sake of its reputation, or to serve its constituency?  If it seeks
to advance its reputation at the expense of its fullest and best service
to those who need its help, is it not recreant to its duty and
opportunity?

Well, in the mood cited, the institution raises and standardizes its
entrance-requirements and generally excludes special students.  One
readily sees why: it is much easier to work with the regularly prepared
freshman, he fits much more smoothly and comfortably into the machinery
of the institution.  Many a wise teacher will admit, nevertheless, that
the best students he ever taught and the ones whose lives he is proudest
of having influenced, were often men and women, thirty, forty, fifty
years of age--teachers who suddenly realized that the ruts of their
calling had become so deep they could no longer see over them, ministers
awakening to the fact that they had given all their store and must get a
new supply, business men aware of a call to another field of action--
working with a consistent earnestness the average fledgling freshman
cannot imagine--he is not old enough; yet generally the tendency is to
exclude such students, unless they will go back and do the arduous, and
often for them useless, work of preparing to pass the examinations for
entrance to the freshman class.  That, too, is all wrong.

The American college and university stands to-day at the parting of the
ways: this generation will largely determine its future.  If the
American college and university ever becomes a social club for the sons
and daughters of the rich, an institution making it easy for them to
secure business and professional opportunity and advancement, to the
exclusion of their poorer fellows, it may be as necessary to
disestablish the foundations of our great universities, as statesmen in
Europe thought it necessary to disestablish the monastic foundations at
the close of the middle age.  They, too, began as educational
institutions. If, on the other hand, the American college and university
remains true to its task, if it keeps its doors open and its spirit
democratic, if it seeks to render ever larger service to the great
public and to develop moral leadership for American democracy, then,
indeed, it will go ever forward upon its noble path.

XXI

DEMOCRACY AND SACRIFICE

We have seen the conflict of ideas in the War: the German philosophy
that man exists for the state, the contrasting idea of democracy that
the state exists for man.  We may well ask why any institution should be
regarded as sacred, except as it has the adventitious sacredness, coming
from time, convention and hoary tradition.  It was said long ago that
"the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath," and the
statement may be universalized.  Every institution on earth--marriage,
the family, education, the church, the state--was made for man and not
man for the institution.  Humanity must always be the end.  Why should
we perpetuate any institution that does not serve life?  Kant voiced the
principle in his second imperative of duty: "Always treat humanity,
whether in thine own person or that of any other, as an end withal, and
never as a means only."  Kant was a Prussian philosopher: one wonders
what he would have thought of the "Kanonen-Futter" theory of manhood!

An organization or institution is only a machine, an instrument for a
purpose.  Thus always it is a means, never an end: its value lies in
serving its purpose--the end of human life.  So the whole existing order
must justify itself.  Where it rests on forms of injustice, it must be
broken or destroyed, and there is no reason to fear the breaking.

Thus there is no "divine right" of kings.  They represent a vested
interest, surviving from the past.  They must justify themselves by the
service of those under them, or pass.

Similarly, there is no divine right of a class or caste, enjoying
supremacy or special privilege.  It also is a surviving vested interest,
that must justify itself, or be swept aside as an incubus.

The same test applies to an empire.  It, too, is a vested interest,
developed out of conditions prevailing in the past.  If it does not
justify itself by the largest service of all within it, then it, too, is
an anachronistic survival, no longer to be tolerated.

The principle is universal: the institution of private property, the
controlling power of captains of industry, the capitalistic system,
finally, the state itself, in every form: all are vested interests that
may be permitted to continue in the exercise of power only as they prove
their superiority to any other form of organization in serving the good
of all.

This does not mean that, under democracy, the individual shall fail of
sacrifice and the dedication to something higher than himself. That is
the glory of life, transfiguring human nature, and without it, life
sinks to sordid selfishness.  Your life is worth, not what you have, but
what you are, and what you are is determined by that to which you
dedicate yourself.  Is it creature comforts, pleasure, selfish
privilege, or the largest life and the fullest service of humanity? What
you have is merely the condition, the important question is, what do you
do with it?  Is it wealth, prosperity: do you sit down comfortably on
the fact of it, to secure all the selfish pleasures possible; or do you
regard your fortunate circumstances as so much more opportunity and
obligation of leadership and service?  Is it poverty, even starvation:
do you whine and grovel, or stand erect, with shut teeth, andwring
heroic manhood from the breast of suffering?

That is why peace can never be an end: it, too, is merely a condition or
means.  The question is, what do you do with your peace, for peace may
mean merely sloth and cowardly ease, where war may mean unselfish
heroism.  That is what the peace promoters forget.  War has its
brutalities, and terrible indeed they are: unleashed hate, lust, cruelty
and revenge; but war has its heroisms.  It calls out the devotion to
something higher than the individual from even the commonest of men.
To-day all over the earth, ordinary men are quietly going out to
probable death or mutilation in its most horrible forms, and going for
the sake of an ideal larger than themselves.  Women are doing even more
than that. For it is not so hard to die, but to send out those you love,
dearer than life itself, to almost certain death--that, indeed, is
difficult, and women are doing it everywhere with a smile on their lips
and choked-back tears.

Peace, on the other hand, has its virtues: the softening and refining of
life, gradual development of sympathy, achievement of comfort and
beauty; but peace has its vices.  In times of peace and prosperity there
seems to be no great cause at stake.  Of course, always it is there, but
we do not see it.  We become increasingly absorbed in selfish interests,
in the good of our immediate family.  Thus petty, time-serving
selfishness is the vice peculiarly characteristic of times of peace and
prosperity. Consider, for instance, the spirit of France during the
closing years of the nineteenth century, and at the present dark, but
pregnant, hour of destiny.

Thus the question is not whether you have peace or war, but what you do
with your peace or war.  It is not whether you are rich or poor, but
what you do with your riches or poverty.

Suppose we were able to reconstruct our entire social and industrial
world, so that every human being would have plenty to eat, plenty to
wear and a comfortable house to live in: would we have the kingdom of
heaven? Not necessarily: we might have merely a comfortable,
well-decorated pig-sty, if men lived to nothing higher than pigs.  "Man
cannot live by bread alone," important as bread is, but by dedication to
the things of the spirit.

Thus there must ever be the capacity for self-forgetfulness,
self-sacrifice, the dedication of life to supreme aims, but that does
not mean the dedication of man to the institution.  Rather it is the
consecration to the welfare of humanity.  Man for the State means
autocracy and imperialism; Man for Mankind is the soul of democracy.
That is the ideal to which we must rise, if democracy is to prove itself
worthy to be the form of human society for the great future.

This ideal is realized through many lesser forms and instruments, but
always with the same final test.  The family, for instance, is one of
these lesser forms, and the subordination of the individual to the
family unit is just.  Thus there is a measure of right in seeking first
the interest of the family group; but when this is sought to the end of
special privilege and debauching luxury, against the welfare of all, it
becomes, as we have seen, an evil.

There is, similarly, a certain justice in the subordination of the
individual to the social class or group interest.  It is right that
artisans should unite in trade unions, that employers should get
together in associations for common benefit.  One need only contrast the
conditions where each workman had to bid in competition against all
others, and each manufacturer, the same, to realize the advance made
through group union and cooperation.  When either group, however, seeks
to further its own interest at the expense of the welfare of the whole
society, as in securing class legislation, achieving monopolies, holding
efficient workers to the level of production of the slowest and least
capable of the group, then the class or group spirit becomes an evil
that must be fought for the good of all.

It is exactly the same with the nation.  Its interest is justly served
only in harmony with the welfare of humanity.  Any current problem will
illustrate the principle, as, for instance, that of immigration.

Certainly the nation has the right to prohibit immigration which
produces unassimilated plague-spots and threatens to cause racial
deterioration, as in phases of Oriental immigration to the Pacific
coast.  Similarly, it is right to restrict immigration that would
further economic prosperity, at the expense of the manhood of the
nation.  We must answer the question, whether we want factories or men.
It is desirable to have some of both, of course, but when one is to be
obtained at the expense of the other, it is manhood that must be the
deciding end.

On the other hand, when it comes to refusing a refuge to the poor and
oppressed, who are physically and morally acceptable, but lack a small
amount of money, or are unable to respond to a literary test, then the
welfare of humanity demands the opposite decision.  Better give them the
fifty dollars--a healthy slave was worth more than that in the old days.
So teach them to read and write.  The nation, can readily pay the small
economic price and accept the incidental difficulties for the sake of
the larger end.

Thus the deciding principle must always be the welfare, happiness,
growth, intelligence, helpfulness of each individual in harmony with all
others. Humanity is incarnatein each man.  While, therefore, the
individual must dedicate and, at times, sacrifice himself, it is for the
sake, not of the state, church or other institution, but for the welfare
of all--_Man for Mankind_.

From so many sources the view finds expression that modern life has been
"weakened by humanitarianism."  If there is truth in the view, we would
better take account of it and radically revise our ethical philosophy.
If it is false, it is a damning error, the reiteration of which tends to
undermine all that has been achieved for the spirit.

An interesting comment on the view is the fact that, in spite of all its
horrors, this War has given _no attested instance of arrant cowardice on
any front_.  Cruelty, lust, brutality, hate: these have appeared in
unspeakable guise, but apparently no cowardice or weak timidity; yet the
mail clad heroes of ancient wars, who met their adversaries face to
face, were subjected to no such strain as the men standing in trenches
waiting momentarily death or mutilation from an unseen foe.  No, modern
life has not lost strong fiber and is capable of supreme heroism.

The old society secured its leadership through _noblesse oblige_--the
obligation of nobility.  Men of aristocratic family and rank felt that,
because they stood above the people, they owed a certain leadership and
service, and they gave it, often in abundant measure, but always
condescendingly from above.

We have lost "noblesse oblige": we may even be glad it is gone, if we
can substitute for it something larger and better.  It is not the
obligation of nobility, but the obligation of humanity that is the need:
to realize that all power is obligation.  As you can, you owe; and as
you know, you owe.  If you have money, it is so much obligation of
leadership and service.  If you have talent, education, social or
political influence, it is all so much obligation of leadership and
service.  If, as individuals, we can generally realize that and act upon
it, then indeed we may hope to carry to successful completion the
experiment of democracy and see our beloved country fulfill the measure
of moral leadership to which we believe she is called among the nations
of the earth, but fulfilling it not as master over slave, nor as one
empire among others, but as a more experienced brother toward others
following the same open path.

XXII

THE HOUR OF SACRIFICE

The supreme world crisis is on.  We have entered the War in the purest
spirit of democracy.  We state frankly in advance that we want no
indemnity, no extension of territory.  We war with no people, except as
that people identifies itself with aggressive autocracy and imperialism,
imperilling our safety, as of all democracies, and seeking to ride
tyrannically and unjustly over the rights and liberties of other
peoples. Thus we enter the War solely for the cause of democracy and
humanity.

The hour of sacrifice has struck for the American people: will it rise
to the test?  When one considers the characteristics of our surface life
for recent decades--the devotion to money-getting, the rapid increase of
senseless and debauching luxury, the reckless frivolity, the unthinking
haste and selfish pleasure-seeking--one questions.  Underneath, however,
is a tremendous latent idealism.  We are young, enthusiastic, capable of
glorious consecration.  Cynical disillusionment is all upon the surface
--the cult of the clique of cleverness, uprooted from the soil of common
life and the deeps of the eternal verities.  Beneath in the great mass
of the people is profound faith in life, deep trust in the ideal, belief
in the great future of humanity.  Democracy will justify itself.  We
shall rise to the test; but how we need to hear and heed the call!

"Awake America" means Americans awake!  For in democracy the individual
is the soul.  On each person rests the responsibility.  Let us accept
the bitter burden and meet the supreme test, giving time, money,
service, life and those we love better than life, for the sake of the
safer, freer, nobler world that is to be.  Since we stood apart so long
and entered the horrible devastation so late, it is our privilege to do
all we can to save the spiritual heritage of humanity, to keep our
hearts clean from the corrosive acid of national and racial hatred, to
do all in our power to remove it from the breasts of others.  Injustice
in high places is possible only because there is injustice in the hearts
of men.  To overthrow tyranny is but the initial step of emancipation:
unless the tyrant hate in the heart is dethroned, the external tyrant,
in some form of social injustice will surely return.  He who conquers
hate and the lust for revenge in his own breast is spiritually free and
master of the tyrant that wrongs him.  Thus it is our privilege and duty
to hate no one; but to hate injustice, greed, tyranny, aggressive
selfishness, the wicked ambitions of autocratic imperialism, to resist
and help to overthrow them, and so do our part in bringing in the free
brotherhood of the nations and peoples in one humanity, that will be the
dawn of the longed-for era of universal and permanent peace for mankind.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Soul of Democracy, by Edward Howard Griggs