492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Little as this truth is recognized and practiced, it lurks in the 

 current political discussions. If it is not openly proclaimed, it is 

 tacitly implied. Mr. Godkin defines democracy as " the partici- 

 pation of the whole community in the work of government/'* 

 Bringing out more distinctly the idea that it is something besides 

 the universal possession of political power, Sir Thomas Erskine 

 May defines it as " a principle or force, and not simply an institu- 

 tion." f More specific still, Mr. Lowell describes it as a " form of 

 society, no matter what its political classification, in which every 

 man had a chance and knew that he had it." J Mr. Morley also 

 holds that it means something more than political sovereignty 

 put into the hands of everybody. Showing that as such it has 

 shattered the old forms of despotism and enlarged the opportuni- 

 ties of life for all, high and low, rich and poor, he says : " It has 

 shaken the strength and altered the attitude of churches, has 

 affected the old subjection of women and modified the old concep- 

 tions of the family and of property, has exalted labor, has created 

 and dominated the huge enginery of the press, has penetrated in 

 a thousand subtle ways into the whole region of rights, duties, 

 human relations, and social opportunities." * It is Boudrillart, 

 however, that brings out the truth that democracy, properly 

 speaking, is a form of moral control as well as a condition of 

 freedom. After saying that modern democracy " permits a larger 

 and larger number to enjoy the moral, intellectual, and material 

 possessions of life," and " undertakes to substitute merit for favor 

 and right for injustice," he adds: "It takes shelter behind the 

 doctrine of perfectibility, which applies not only to the achieve- 

 ments of the human mind, to the discoveries of science, to the 

 inventions of industry, but to the social condition and to the po- 

 litical and economic conditions that favor it. ... To let each man 

 be more and more a man," he continues, emphasizing the need of 

 moral control to check the possible license of freedom "that is 

 to say, realize more perfectly the type of humanity, by the devel- 

 opment of all that constitutes it such is the end to which democ- 

 racy aspires. Development of power for the individual and for 

 the race that is its ideal." || 



II. 



Finding little cheer in the contemplation of the ideal toward 

 which the evanescence of political control and the growth of 

 moral control have been taking the human race, the students of 

 democracy are often weighted heavily with foreboding. It seems 

 to portend some disaster that no man can avert. " There is no 



* Atlantic Monthly, February, 1897, p. 157. f Democracy in Europe, preface, p. vii. 

 \ Collected Works, vol. vi, p. 33. * Littell's Living Age, June 13, 1896, p. 643. 



| Block. Dictionnaire de la Politique, vol. i, p. 635. 



