The question may fairly be asked whether we are not at a parting of the ways, when our democratic idea must be 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 hitherto _democracy has been more interested in its rights than in its duties_. It is very true that the _subjective state of freedom_ has 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 of _freedom, 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 this democracy, the performance of these functions will be more or less under compulsion, whether the individual will voluntarily surrender certain _rights_ assumed to be inherent in the principle of _freedom_, 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 will _tend_ to disappear. Perfect identity of individual and social will we should not expect to be attained anywhere.