340 £SSAVS IN PHILOSOPHY 



democracy," they will say, "crushes the very spirit 

 of freedom itself, for its exaggerated individualism 

 erases individuality. It is one endless round of 

 dull repetition, a lethal monotone. Universal exal- 

 tation to eternity, in destroying God and his dif- 

 ferentiating supremacy, has destroyed the interest 

 of existence, has cast a banal blight upon all origi- 

 nality, and so upon all the verve of life. Restore 

 difference, by subordinating man ! — or else confess 

 that in a godless exaltation of freedom you have 

 made freedom the deadliest bondage, the bondage 

 to the tame and the stale." Nor is it sufficient to 

 reply to this, as no doubt one may, with a tu qjioqiie ; 

 for though the old-fashioned subordination to the 

 will of the sovereign God also comes to a monotone 

 of death in life, this does not obviate the charge 

 laid at the door of individualism. It simply shows 

 that, to present appearance, neither view contains 

 a solution of the moral-religious problem, and that 

 our search must be pushed farther. 



This possible self-contradiction — I do not say it 

 is real ; on the contrary, I hope presently to show 

 it is illusory — is not the only difficulty with our 

 moral idealism. In another aspect, the scheme 

 may be charged with polylheism ; or again, on other 

 grounds, with atheism. All the members of this 

 required moral system, men or other spirits as well 

 as the supposed God, are unreservedly self-active ; 



