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 (if such evils there be), 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.
Government is now being examined, we all see, from points of view not hitherto taken. The conscientious objector raises the question of the ultimate basis of the right of the many to control the lives of individuals, and he asks especially whether there is any ground for the assumption that in this sphere, more than in any other, might makes right. Conscription, in fact, has driven us to consider the meaning of liberty and the foundations upon which the right to it rests. This stern fact of conscription, therealization that in a moment the most democratic governments in the world are capable of bringing to bear, quite constitutionally, absolute control over the most basic possessions of the individual, has led many to ask seriously whether government is after all a good in itself, or is merely a necessity having many attendant evils. They wish to know whether there is in the principle of government something that takes precedence over all the assumed rights of the individual. Does government, they inquire, have arightto the individual; or is it only inservingthe individual that it is entitled to exercise authority that limits the individual?
These are questions, manifestly, that involve the whole foundation of sociology, but we need not be unduly dismayed at that. This is a time when naïve thinking and exact science must make compromises with one another. For better or for worse we must find some working hypothesis upon which a fair adjustment may be made in the practical life of the present moment. Thisworking hypothesismust also serve—and perhaps that is after all its main function—as something to guide us, something having solidity upon which we can stand, in performing our work as educators.
What we need, what we believe all feel now the need of, is a conception of government satisfying to the multitude of common people. We wish to know whether we live for the state, we say, or whether the state lives for us. We wish to understand what the basic rights and duties of the individual are. As average individuals, willing to give service in any cause that seems good, we do not ask so much to have determined for us precisely what type of government best satisfies the requirements of science or philosophy, but what the best working basis for harmonious adjustment in the social life of the future is to be. These enquiring moods on the part of the people are a part of the temperament that has issued from the war. We shall make a mistake if we regard it as a mere passing effect, however;it means a deep stirring of the political consciousness of people throughout the world.
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.
Taking public opinion as a whole, Germany, England, France and America seem to represent distinctly different attitudes toward government. The State in the German philosophy of life, as every one is now aware, is all; the individual derives his reality and his value, so to speak, from the idea of the supreme state. Individuality and freedom in this philosophy of life do not refer topoliticalindividuality and freedom at all. In England, and perhaps to some extent in all democratic countries, the prevailing thought seems to be that the government that governs the least is, on the whole, the best government. The English government is supposed to be the servant of the people, and the individual has been in the habit of looking to the government for many services. The individual, free and self-determined, is the unit of value and of society, and the regulation of his conduct by government is at best a necessary evil. It came as a surprise to the Englishman when he realized that the state could command the most personal service and the most complete surrender of the property rights of the individual.
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 ofthe 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.
These temperamental attitudes toward government, we said, seem quite apart from scientific and philosophic conceptions of state. We see, however, something of the temperament reflected in the philosophies. Philosophers do not wholly detach themselves from the mores of their race. The monarchy of Germany, Munsterberg says, appeals to themoral personality and the æsthetic imagination. Its main function, however, is to safeguard the German people. Its faults are the faults of its virtues. Other German writers praise the German government especially for its efficiency, for its incomparable body of officials—indeed for its very clock-work perfection that Bergson hates in Prussian life. Lehmann goes so far as to say that the German state had reached theperfect balancebetween individualism and communism. These writers see plenty of self-realization in German society, and quite enough of participation, on the part of the individual, in the government. Schmoller (51) denies that Germany ever lacked the spirit of free institutions, and even compares Germany with ancient Attica, which he thinks was great not because of the rule of thedemos, but because the people followed theiraristocratic leaders. Troeltsch tries to show that the German idea of freedom is different from, and indeed superior to, that of all other peoples. The French, he says, rest their idea of freedom upon the doctrine of the equality of all citizens, but in reality lawyers and plutocrats prevail. The English idea of freedom comes from Puritanic ideas; the individual's independence of the state is based upon the idea of natural rights, and upon the theory of the creation of the state by the individual. But German freedom is something entirely different. Here freedom is in education, and in the spiritual content of individuality. German freedom is the freedom that comes from the spontaneous recognition of rights and duties. Parliaments are good in their place, but after all they are not the essence of freedom.
Totally different conceptions of state are easily found. Consider, for example, the views of Russell. Through every page of his book there shines the determined belief in the inalienable rights of the individual. Self-expression of the individual through creative activity is the basic value, or at least the fundamental means of realizing values. Russell sees nothing sacred or final in any form of existing government. He would like to see government expanded in some directions and contracted in others, for the functions of government cannot all be vested in one body or organization. For defense the nation isnot large enough. For all civic government the nation istoo large. In its internal control it treats the individual too ruthlessly. Wasteful and in large part even unnecessary, it antagonizes the free development of the individual. Government should cease its oppression, it should no longer support unnatural property rights, or interfere with the personal affairs of individuals. At the present time, however, we should not expect a radical cure for all the evils of government. If only we can find the right direction inwhich to make advance, we should be satisfied with something less perfect than an ideal.
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 purposeof 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.
We have to look somewhere in actual life for the elements and principles of government. Why should we not look for them in American life, where government has grown up comparatively free from traditions and prejudices and where it has been by all the ordinary testssuccessful? There has been something both ideal and generic in American life. Whatever personal equation may be involved in saying this, the point of view has some objective justification. It is a genetic method, at least. In early American life society was simple, and life was earnest, and we see government and the individual in their essential relations to one another.
In this primitive and yet modern society we see the individual as a collection of functions, so to speak, existingin a group. The individual also has various desires, which do not appear to be wholly in agreement with his social functions. Some of these desires of individuals are strongly antagonistic to society. In this society, government is plainly the means of protecting the individual or the group, by the suggestion or the exertion of lawful force, from the threat of lawless force. Law is a means of enabling and also compelling the individualto perform the various functions whichbelong to him as an individual or as a member of the group. To some extent the law alsoaidsthe individual in performing his functions. But this simple social order already shows certain basic disharmonies. It is an experimental regulation of the individual. Every restriction the individual helps to put upon other individuals by participating in or acquiescing in the establishment of government and law reacts to limit his own freedom, in ways which he cannot wholly predict. Freedom of the individual, even in the simplest social order, becomes greatly limited, if not necessarily, at least naturally—and indeed necessarily, since the only choice appears to be between lawful and lawless limitation of freedom. From the beginning, therefore, there can be no perfect satisfaction of individual desires or of either general or individual needs, in the ordered social life. Society as a whole regulates the conduct of the individual both by aiding and by inhibiting his activities, and must do so. In doing this, it is plain, it promotes all or most of the functions of the individual. Ordered society widens the total sphere of action of the individual. The individual left to himself tends to become an end-in-himself. Law makes him to a greater extent a means. In doing this it serves him and it also uses him, and there can never be any guarantee, in any individual case, of what the sum of these services and restraints shall be. Society uses the individual in part, but not exclusively, in his own service. The good and the evil, the necessity and the dilemma ofall government are outgrowths of this primitive service of the social organization and this original disharmony among the wills of individuals and the will of the group to serve the individual and also at the same time certain general purposes which may not in any given case coincide with either the desire or the need of the individual. For this reason we conclude that there can be noperfectgovernment. All government is experimental and exists by compromise.
What, then, in the most general way, can we say is the legitimate function or purpose of government? Hocking says that government is the means of assuring the individual that his achievements will be permanent. To this end it puts order into the structure of society. In our view something similar, but not identical with this, is true. We can say that in its complex forms it is in principle only what we found it to be in its primitive or simple forms.Government is ideally a means of aiding all the functions of every individual.Functions, let us observe and not primarily desires are served. These functions are such functions as the individual has as a member of every group to which he naturally belongs. Government, then, so to speak, has no standing of its own. Its proper function is to facilitate all other functions. Neither individuals nor governments have any rights as abstracted from the sum of functions which they essentially are.
If this be true, we can certainly define no one best and eternal type of government, any more than a fixed and perfect plan of life for an individual can be defined. Government might be supposed properly to change according to the functions which from time to time were most important for the society in question. Social life, under government, differs from a free and unorganized social life mainly in that a certainobjectivityis acquired in regard to the functions of the individual. The individual becomes a creature of functions rather than ofdesires and needs. Common interests, or the interests of the group are served, we say; in doing this the individual is made to serve his own interests, perhaps, but the most outstanding fact is that in this organized life theimmediate desires of the individual are likely to be thwarted. Regularity is put into conduct, and conduct is made to serve multiple and distant ends. The functions of the individual, left to the desire of the individual, will seldom be harmoniously performed. They will lack precisely objective consideration. But in the organized social life there will also be no perfect order and harmony, no final balance of functions. Everything is still relative and experimental. Government is a system in which any one individual at any moment may gain or may lose. Buton the whole, under the good government, both more freedom for the individual and better conditions and better life for the individual will presumably be obtained than in any possible disordered or unorganized society. But government will really add nothing that does not already belong to the functions that naturally develop in any social group.
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 andmake 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.
In all this we have been makingobjectivevaluations of government. An ideal or a definition of government in terms of its functions and the degree of efficiency in the performance of them might still, we ought to observe, leave a wide scope for preference in regard to forms, and other subjective valuations. Even between aristocratic and democratic forms, there may be still room for valid appreciations on æsthetic or moral grounds. Our objective valuations of government must in fact in various ways impinge upon fundamental questions in which no purely scientific considerations will be wholly decisive.
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 upsociety. 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.
Democracy has become the "great idea of the age." It is our own fundamental principle, so we of all people ought to be able to understand and to defend it—and todefine it. Yet many writers complain and more imply that the idea of democracy has never been very clear, and perhaps not even very sincere. Sumner says that democracy is one of the many words of ambiguous meaning that have played such a large part in politics. Democracy, he says, is not used as a parallel word to aristocracy, theocracy, autocracy, and the like, but is invoked as a power from some outside origin which brings into human affairs a peculiar inspiration and an energy of its own.
Democracy has apparently meant quite different things to different people. To some it is essentially a form of government in which control is represented as in the handsof the majority of the people. Some seem to have no further interest in democracy, if only they see that the democratic form in government is preserved and jealously guarded and the majority by its ballot rules. To some it is the aspect of democracy as individualism that has appealed most—freedom of the individual even from the restraint of law and custom—or again equality of opportunity. These perhaps think of freedom as a supreme value in itself. Some think of democracy more in terms of its internal conditions or its results. They think of freedom as a means ofaccomplishinggood, not as merelybeinga good. They believe that the good of the individual is not necessarily represented by the satisfaction of his desires, and so perhaps think of the law and order of the democratic community, the control and regulation of the individual in his daily life by the will of all, as the essential feature of a democracy.
Here in America, taking our history and our life as a whole, it seems certain that the dominating mood has been the love ofindividual freedom. Our democracy is founded upon the idea of therights of the man. But these rights and privileges of the man can be secured only by social organization that immediately takes away some of them. So our national life, just because of the strong individualism with which it began, also began with a firm principle of law and order modifying the idea of freedom. Some would say it began thus in a paradox or a delusion. Even to be morally free was not allowed. The group, in the Puritan society at least, exercised strict supervision over the moral life of the individual. Giddings says, in fact, that this experiment in moral control on the part of the people over all individuals is one of the chief characteristics of American life.
Our history is the story of an experiment in freedom, in which according to some we have more and more suppressed the individual. Grabo says that the history ofdemocracy here is the story of a dream rather than an accomplishment. Such views, however, do not appear to be true representations of the case. They assume that the independence of the individual is more real or more realizable than it can be in any society. Is it not rather true thatour apparent relinquishment of the idea of freedom is the reverse side, so to speak, of the persistence throughout our history of an impossible ideal of independence of the individual? It is individualism, rather than control, that has increased. The original freedom was a freedom such as comes from the willing participation of the individual in an order in which the control was immediate and vested in the whole. Control has become more definite and precise as the individual has become further removed from the direct influence of the social environment. We have developed relatively too much our original idea of independence, and from time to time elements have been added to our national life that represent an ideal of radical individualism, as for example Jacksonian democracy. Willingness to participate freely in the functions of society, and desire on the part of the individual to perform all his functions, have been relatively too slight. Even in politics it is not so much by the desire to participate in government that we have shown our democratic spirit as by the desire not to be individually governed. The old colonial spirit of coöperation and neighborliness with which we started has been (speaking relatively again) neglected. We have developed toward individualism and control rather than toward free association under leadership. We have lacked ability as individuals to see ourselves from the standpoint of the whole of society. Now, therefore, we are faced by the apparent still further decline of our principle of freedom, because we see that we may haveefficiencyonly by increasingauthority.
The question may fairly be asked whether we are not at a parting of the ways, when our democratic idea mustbe 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.
Cramb has stated a fundamental truth, from our point of view, in saying that hithertodemocracy has been more interested in its rights than in its duties. It is very true that thesubjective state of freedomhas been the real attraction and appeal in our social life. It has brought to our shores vast numbers of people who would otherwise never have crossed the seas. Perhaps it has brought us too many, and those with too keen a love of freedom. At any rate, the question is now whether as a people we shall be able to take a more advanced view of the individual, a more functional view, so to speak, a new and enlarged conception of the meaning and place of the individual man in society. Democracy, in a word, must henceforth, certainly if it is to be a world state or order and not a condition of world-wide anarchy, go beyond the negative idea offreedom, justice and equality, to a more positive idea of service, in which we think of individuals as having more complex, more free and more internal relations among themselves.
In this idea of democracy, freedom is seen to mean first of all freedom to perform all the functions which belong to an individual as a part of a highly organized society. It does not include, however, freedom not to perform these functions. It is freedom to lead a normal life, in a word, not freedom to lead an abnormal life. Whether, in thisdemocracy, the performance of these functions will be more or less under compulsion, whether the individual will voluntarily surrender certainrightsassumed to be inherent in the principle offreedom, or whether these rights will be taken away by the show of force on the part of authority, seems to depend now mainly upon two things: whether in this society superior leadership will have an opportunity and be strong enough to exert deep influence upon the people; and whether, in general, such an educational program can be carried on as will make men susceptible to such leadership, capable of judging its values and able also to organize freely for the accomplishment of the purpose and functions of the social life. In such a democratic society as this, it is plain, the evils of individualism and also the evils of control willtendto disappear. Perfect identity of individual and social will we should not expect to be attained anywhere.
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 stimuliof 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 (speaking of Russia especially) 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.
Of the actual political changes impending and those that ought to be advocated this is not the place to speak, except to say that they must by their nature be tentative and experimental. The radical mind is to-day one of the most dangerous elements in society, just because all the world over men are very ready to be influenced and are eager for change and are uncritical. Cleveland in an essay entitledCan Democracy be Efficient?exhibits a type ofthinking about political questions that ought to appeal to all practical thinkers. It is his method rather than, in this connection, his conclusions that one should notice. Cleveland would study all countries with reference to the efficiency of their governments in fulfilling what seem to him to be the proper and essential functions of a government, working under our present conditions. Germany, France, England and America, he observes, have all adopted different ways of conducting the work of government. These essentials of government he reduces to five: 1) Strong executive leadership; 2) a well disciplined line organization; 3) a highly specialized staff organization; 4) adequate facilities for inquiry, criticism, and publicity by a responsible personnel independent of the executive; 5) means of effective control in the hands of the people and their representatives. Of these principles, Germany used only the first three, England left out the second and the third, France used all (but was late in seeing the need), America has left out all of them.
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.
If the source of power in the future is to be vested in the people, the education of the people with reference to their function as rulers will naturally be one of the most vital and permanent of the requirements of the social life. Dickinson says that the time has gone by for entrusting the destinies of nations to the wisdom of experts. If this be true, and popular opinion is to supersede the wisdom of the experts, if the people are really to have power, and be competent critics of good government, or merely to become good material in the hands ofconstructive statesmanship, education must include or be essentiallypolitical education. The people must be educatedfordemocracy, but also made competent tocreatedemocracy.
Of course everything we do in the school, the intention of the school to represent what is best in civilization, and to be a center in which creative forces come together has some reference to education for the democratic life, but there are also more definite and more specifically political things to be taught. And yet, if what we have said before has any truth in it, it seems certain that no educational policy at the present time can include the teaching of specific politicaldoctrines, or try to prejudice the minds of children or the people to any political creed. We are in a position in regard to political teaching very similar to that in which we stand about religion: we must not teach creed, but we may and must teach natural religion. We cannot teach politics as such, but we must teach natural democracy, or at least the fundamental social habits and functions.
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 noadvantages 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.
The work of education in the field of politics is not merely to give information, but to establish what we may best callmorale. We need an attitude and spirit throughout the public life of the nation in which there shall be constantly displayed the same qualities which we see so quickly coming to light in time of war. Enthusiasm, seriousness of purpose, devotion of the individual to common purpose are the essential elements of this war spirit. To produce and sustain this in the activities of peace is aneducationalproblem. The first task is presumably to establish the causes and the organizations through which they may be served, butpolitical education itself consists largely in the production of public spirit. The correction of evils in the political system is of course but a small part of the work of political reform. Dowd says that it is the low personal idealism of mankind that creates our multitudinous social problems and strews the path of history with wreck and ruin. That is of course true. Raising the quality of the personal idealism of the people is the real work of political education. Political thought which is most concerned as it is now with securing advantage for party, class and individual must be superseded by a widerinterest in government as a means of aiding the performance of the functions of the individual and the group. It is the purpose to be accomplished by government, not its form, and certainly not the interest of the few or of any class that must be emphasized, until partisan politics no longer dominates our political life. To accomplish this change means, we say, raising the quality of the personal idealism of the people. This may seem an ideal and impossible task, but we have some of our experiences of the war at least to give us encouragement.
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 ofeducation. 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 (except as a temporary make-shift) 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 beproduced 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 tooclosely 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.
But perhaps after all we are asking the impossible. Perhaps the forces needed cannot be brought to bear upon the child. Perhaps conditions are too unfavorable, and an educational situation cannot be devised that will be greatly superior to what we have already. Perhaps the time is too short. Perhaps worst of all the nature of the child himself is too trivial and unpromising. But if we believe this, we certainly at the same time conclude that democracy is a failure and is not in any true sense possible at all. Democracy cannot be created by forces from without, for this would be indeed a negation of its nature. Democracy is self-creative. It grows from within. But how can it grow from within unless the new life whichenters into it be creative; and how can this life be creative and progressive unless it be so lived that it shall absorb all the good the old life has in it, and also be inspired to go beyond it in every possible way? Unless democracy is merely a product and natural direction of growth in society, democracy and education are not unrelated to one another. If democracy is a good that can be obtained only by conscious effort, we may suppose that one of the greatest factors in producing it will be education.