262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Not that he does not feel the need of a unified world, but he deprecates a 

 unity with half the world left out. The unity which he seeks must em- 

 brace it all. If existent he can not see it. If not existent, it may yet 

 be achieved through his and others' labors. 



So also it is with democracy. It holds itself ready to give due jus- 

 tice to hitherto neglected interests. For this reason it does not have 

 the stability so advantageous to interests already recognized and estab- 

 lished. If one wishes stable government, h'e can find it in monarchies 

 better than in democracies. Until within the last short while the Chi- 

 nese citizen knew far more definitely upon what to depend in the way of 

 future wealth or public office than did the citizen of Ohio. The lineage 

 of his parents and their wealth, and the inescapable doom of sex, preju- 

 diced his whole future within very narrow and definite limitations. 

 For four hundred years the firm grip of Manchurian power, abetted by 

 a religion which emphasized the virtue of tradition and the established 

 order, gave China a government which for stability has seldom been 

 equaled. During the same period the more democratic western peoples 

 have seen turbulence, transition, and constant shift and change of 

 policies. 



Nor is the democratic state always the most efficient state. Let the 

 German emperor conceive that the future German Empire is dependent 

 upon particular forms of education and particular humanitarian move- 

 ments, and he can by virtue of his concentrated power effect the neces- 

 sary changes in a brief time. The single man can move more swiftly 

 to the achievement of a clearly conceived end than can a whole people 

 be brought up in response to the prophet's vision. It is because of this 

 that Germany in a generation has accomplished industrial, educational, 

 and social changes which would have required much longer if they had 

 been the work of the whole population of the German Empire. 



But whatever sacrifice of stability and efficiency must be made the 

 democrat is willing to make in the interest of a larger end. That end is 

 the possibility of forcing to the front interests which the existing govern- 

 ment does not recognize. If he wishes to add to his governmental 

 machinery a new instrument, such as preferential primaries, the income 

 tax or universal suffrage, he does not want the way too effectually 

 blocked. Just as men in the sphere of thought refuse to construct a 

 closed system, so do they in the field of government refuse to make their 

 laws and constitutions too rigid, or their public officers too secure in 

 their positions. They want their government fluid and responsive to 

 change, for the moral issues of life are as surely in a process of develop- 

 ment as are the intellectual ones. To fix a government on the basis of 

 the moral ideas of 1789 is as repugnant to the man who thinks as to 

 write a natural history in the year 1913 with the theory of evolution 

 left out. Just as certainly as the century has widened our vision of the 



