XIV + 

Face to Face + 

If with open mind one reads and observes industriously and long; if in so doing one covers a wide field and so covering reflects in terms of realism, he is likely, soon or late, to be brought to a sudden consciousness that Man is an unknown quantity and his existence unsuspected. + 

One will be equally amazed to note that the philosophers, the theologians, of all times turned their backs upon Man; that, from the depths of introspection, fixing their gaze in all directions save the real one, they have uniformly evolved a phantasm, or a series of phantoms, and have declared such to be man in his reality⁠—and such reality to be depraved. A small feature, however, was overlooked by them in the neglect to observe that their man, in his depravity, had created the gods. Their insistent view of man⁠—a further product of their fantasy⁠—lay in the dogma, protean in form, that man is creature. + 

Meanwhile the real man was always at their elbow, or moving in groups or multitudes about them, or even looking them in the eyes and holding converse with them. But they did not see him; he was too near, too commonplace⁠—too transparent. The gods were far away and could be understood. + 

The mighty man of war also turned his back. Yet the wise man, the warrior and the priest differed in no valid sense from the multitude enfolding them as in a genesis; for man in his state of depravity as creature, created these also, as his demigods. + 

Thus man, not knowing himself, and none else knowing him, lived as a mirage, within a world of mirage which he fancied real. It was real for him; for such is the habit of man’s imagination in playing tricks with him in his credulity. + 

The careful reader and observer again may be astonished to note that to the multitudes imagination, as such, is unknown⁠—that the multitudes are unconscious of this power within themselves. Hence the reader, the observer, who is not so completely unconscious of himself, becomes aware of the imposing phenomenon that the huge and varied superstructures of the civilizations of all times have rested for support on so tenuous a foundation as the fabric of the radiant dream of the multitudes. That in such dream he will clearly see Imagination playing its clandestine role. The mass imagination of the multitudes is thus seen to be the prime impelling and sustaining power in the origins and growth of the civilizations. Let the mass imagination withdraw its consent, withhold its nourishing acquiescence and faith, then the civilization founded thereon begins to wither at the top, emaciates, atrophies and dies. One will further note that such changes in the mass imagination, in the mass dream, are of highly varied origins; but once under way, are beyond recall. + 

One also minutely notes that the tricks of imagination are universal and beyond numbering in variety, permeating all phases of the social fabric. Hence man’s vagaries and follies and cruelties are beyond computation; yet all these betrayals and cajolings and trickeries flow from the same single source, namely the individual, unconscious that his imagination is incessantly at work. Because he is not acquainted with its nature, and unaware that he is its puppet, his waking hours are a continuing dream of inverted Self. + 

It is the mass dream of inverted self, populous with fears overt and secret, that forms the continuous but gossamer thread upon which are strung as phantom beads all civilizations from the remotest past of record to that of the present day and hour. As we follow back upon this thread⁠—one end of which is delicately attached to our own inverted secret thoughts, we find it unchanging from end to end, regardless of environment; the civilizations it passes through and upholds on its way are but local manifestations and exhibits. + 

This intense and continuing preoccupation with inverted self makes it clear why man has turned his back on man, and why man is still unknown to himself⁠—and unsuspected. + 

So long as imagination slyly tricked him into self deprecation, self debasement and the slavery of the creature conviction, or into the opposite, megalomania, with its unquenchable thirst for blood, for plunder, and dominion; or with siren song beguiled him through the portals of a closed world of abstraction⁠—he could not know himself, and the neighbor must remain a stranger to be feared, despised, or placated. + 

Indeed, until we come as pioneers, to seek out and know imagination as such, to view it clearly defined as an erratic and dangerous power, to be controlled; until we have observed with realistic clarity its multifarious doings from black magic upward to mighty deeds of hand and head and heart, we shall remain remote from man’s reality, and from the splendor of his native powers. + 

One who has made the rough pilgrimage through the jungled infirmities of philosophy, of theology, and through the wilderness of turbid dream-words uttered by the practical man who deals in cold, hard facts; one who as pioneer worked his troubled way through the undergrowth of culture with its acceptances, its preconceptions and precious finalities; one who, led on by a faith unfaltering, at last arrives at the rendezvous with Life, here testifies the natural man as sound to the core and kindly, yet innocent of himself as the seat of genius, as container of limitless creative powers of beneficence. + 

Solely on the strength of this faith was begun the story of a child-dream of power. + 

Wherefore we may now inquire: What are these powers, and what is the reality we affirm to be man? + 

He is none other than ourselves divested of our wrappings. If we in imagination divest ourselves of our wrappings we may see that he is ourselves. If we remove our blinders we shall see more clearly. If we look out between the bars of our self-imprisonment, we may note him nearby, walking familiarly in the Garden of Life. Undoubtedly he is ourselves, he is our youth, he is our spirit, he is that within us which has yearned for frank utterance⁠—how long⁠—and still yearns. + 

It is appalling to think he is ourselves; to wake from our dreams and see him. Yet will it not be inspiriting to find him at our elbow⁠—no longer a stranger⁠—no longer to be feared? To know that he is like us all? To feel the widening sense, as we regard him, that he stands not only as our explanation, but as our self-revelation. True, he is not at all what we had supposed and what we have affirmed. Yet will he be grimly recognized as he comes into view⁠—to our amaze, for he is precisely that which we have denied. + 

We may be shocked at first, retreat, and disclaim; for denial of the power of life is our habit of old. We have other habits of old woven into weird grotesqueries. These are among our wrappings. + 

Inasmuch as man has been affirmed herein as sound and kindly, let us examine him. Rest assured we shall find naught in him that is not truly in ourselves and was not there in latency at birth. + 

To begin: He is a Worker and a Wanderer in varied ways. With his bodily powers he may go here and there, he may move objects about, he may change the order of things. Here at the onset we find a portentous power⁠—the power to change situations; he can make new situations. With his ten fingers he can do wonderful things, make things he needs, make accessory things to extend his muscular powers. Thus he manipulates⁠—he further changes situations. He changes his own situations, he creates an environment of his own. One sees here the Adventurer, the Craftsman, the Doer⁠—ever growing in power. Thus man’s first collective power within himself is the power to aspire, to work⁠—to wander⁠—to go from place to place near and far⁠—to return to his home. + 

Now comes into view that power we call Curiosity⁠—and coupled with it the power to inquire. Man’s power to inquire we call a mental power, to distinguish it from his somatic power. It may have had a beginning, it can have no end. The result of inquiry we call knowledge; its high objective we call science. The objective of science is more knowledge, more power; more inquiry, more power. + 

Now, if to the power to do we added the power to inquire, Man, the worker, grows visibly more compact in power, more potent to change situations and to make new situations for himself. The situation may be a deep gorge in a wilderness; the new situation shows a bridge spanning the chasm in one great leap. Thus it is that man himself, as it were, leaps the chasm, through the adventurous coordination of his power to inquire and his power to do. And thus the natural man ever enlarges his range of beneficence. His life experiences are real. He reverses the dictum “I think: Therefore I am.” It becomes in him, I am: Therefore I inquire and do! + 

It is this affirmative “I am” that is man’s reality. + 

Wherefore warrior, philosopher and priest turned their backs. This “I am” they could not see, could not suspect, even as it stood at their elbow regarding them with ordinary human eyes. For it had been settled long ago on abundant evidence that man is creature and depraved. + 

In the history of mankind there are recorded two great inversions. The first, set forth by the Nazarene to the effect that love is a greater power and more real than vengeance. The second, proclaimed the earth to be a sphere revolving in its course around the sun. These affirmations were made in the face of all evidence sacred to the contrary. Who could feel the earth revolving? Who could fail to see the sun rise and set? What but blood could satisfy, or an eye for an eye? + 

Hence man’s powers were not seen as himself, nor himself as his powers. Such recognition would involve a reversal and inversion both of sacred lore and common sense. + 

In reactive consequence of age-long self-repression and self-beguilement the world of mankind is now preparing its way for a Third Inversion. The world of heart and head is becoming dimly sentient that man in his power is Free spirit⁠—Creator. The long dream of inverted self is nearing its end. Emerging from the heritage of mystical unconsciousness and fantasy, the world of mankind is stirring. Man’s deeds are about to become conscious deeds in the open. The beauty, the passion, the glory of the past shall merge into a new beauty, a new passion, a new glory as man approaches man, and recognizing him, rejoices in him and with him, as born in power. + 

Never in man’s time has there been such sound warrant for an attitude of Optimism as in our own, the very present day. Yet to him who in myopic fear looks but at the troubled surface, there appears equal warrant in the fantasy of Pessimism. What a price man shall have paid for freedom! For freedom from the thrall of his parlous imagination! For freedom from the strangle hold of his own phantasmal self! + 

He who has lived, alive, during the past fifty years has viewed an extraordinary drama. He who starting young, shall live through the coming fifty years will move within the action and scene shifting of a greater drama. + 

The gravitation of world thought and dream is shifting. Out of the serial collapses of age-long feudalism is arising a new view of man. For man’s powers in certitude, approach the infinite. They are bewildering⁠—amazing in diversity. They unfold their intimate complexity to our view as an equally amazing solidarity, as we hold, steadfast, to the realistic concept of man as free spirit⁠—as creator⁠—even as the vast complexity in the outworking of the feudal thought simplifies into a basic concept of self-delusion and self-fear. + 

Our portrayal is not yet wholly clear. Let us go on. There lies another power in man. That power is moral: Its name is choice! Within this one word, Choice, lies the story of man’s world. It stands for the secret poise within him. It reveals as a flashlight all his imagings, his fantasies, his wilful thoughts, his deeds, from the greatest to the least, even in this gliding hour we call today. This one word, Choice, stands for the sole and single power; it is the name of the mystery that lies behind the veil of all human appearances. A word that dissolves the enigma of men’s deeds. A word, a light that not only illuminates all his obvious works, all the inner springs and motives of his civilizations, but a light whose rays reach within the sanctuary of the secret thought of each and all, thus revealing the man of the past and the man of today, starkly in personal status as a social factor of beneficence or woe. Need we know man’s thoughts? View his works, his deeds; they tell his choice. + 

Implicit in true freedom of spirit lies a proud and virile will. Such glorious power of free will to choose, envisages beneficent social responsibility as manifest and welcome. Here now stands in full light Man erect and conscious as a moral power. The will to choose aright lifts him to the peak of social vision whence he may forecast new and true situations. + 

The Free Spirit is the spirit of Joy. It delights to create in beauty. It is unafraid, it knows not fear. It declares the Earth to be its home, and the fragrance of Earth to be its inspiration. It is strong, it is mighty in beneficence. It views its powers with emotions of adventure. Humility it knows not. It dreams a civilization like unto itself. It would create such a world for mankind. It has the strength. It sees the strength of the fertile earth, the strength of the mountains, the valleys, the far spreading plains, the vast seas, the rivers and the rivulets, the great sky as a wondrous dome, the sun in its rising, its zenith, and its setting, and the night. It glories in these powers of earth and sky as in its own. It affirms itself integral with them all. It sees Life at work everywhere⁠—Life, the mysterious, the companionable, the ineffable, the immensest and gentlest of powers, clothing the earth in a pattern of radiant sublimity, of tenderness, of fairy delicacy⁠—ceaselessly at work. Thus the free spirit feels itself to be likewise clothed as with a flowing shoulder-garment, symbol of power akin to the fluent mystery and fecundity of Life. Thus it moves in the open with vision clear. Thus is man the wonder-worker bound up in friendship with the wonder-worker⁠—Life. + 

Now the real man begins to shape within our vision. Consider his primary powers: He, the worker, the inquirer, the chooser. Add to these the wealth of his emotions⁠—also powers. Think how manifold they are, how colorful; how with them he may dramatize his works, his thoughts, his choosings; how he may beautify his choice. Think of his power to receive; to receive through the channels of his senses, to receive through his mystic power of sympathy which brings understanding to illumine Knowledge. Think of what eyesight means as a power, the sense of touch, the power to hear, to listen; and the power of contemplation. Add these to his cumulating interblending power; then think again of his enlarging power to act. Deep down within him lies that power we call Imagination, the power instantly or slowly to picture forth, the power to act in advance of action; the power that knows no limitations, no boundaries, that renders vivid both giving and receiving; the inscrutable dynamic power that energizes all other powers. Think of man as Imagination! Then think of him as Will! Now enrich the story of his prior-mentioned powers with the flow of imagination and the steadiness of will. Think anew of his power to act; of the quantity and quality of this power. + 

Now think of the freedom such power brings! + 

Think of the power we call Vision; that inner sight which encompasses the larger meanings of its outer world, which sees humanity in the broad, which beholds the powers without itself, which unifies its inner and its outer world, which sees far beyond where the eye leaves off seeing, and as sympathetic insight finds its goal in the real. + 

Now see Man go forth to work, inspired by his vision of the outer world, himself made eager by the passion to live and worthily to do! + 

See him go forth in certitude as seer, as prophet, as evangelist, proclaiming his faith⁠—in certitude as worker, to build a new home. + 

See him, as poet, as troubadour, as he goes forth, singing the new song, the refreshing song⁠—calling in carols: Awake! ye dreamers all, lift up your heads, and be your hearts lifted up that Life in splendor may come in: Ye who dream in the shadows and are sore perplexed. + 

Thus the multitudes vibrate, as they dream⁠—at the sound of a song in their dream. + 

It is the richness of the soul-life of the multitudes that inspires and at times appalls the observer. For the multitudes are compact of human beings⁠—a vast ceaseless flow of individuals, each a dreamer, each latent in power, the mass moving noiselessly through time⁠—slowly changing in its constancy of renewal. + 

Thus though Man now appears before us in glamor as a maze of powers, we have not yet made his image clear in full, and in diversity. + 

While it is plain, when all wrappings are removed, we shall find all men to be alike in native possession of essential powers, we are at once confronted by this paradox: That all men obviously are different; that no two are alike. In plain words we find each human being unique. When we say unique, we mean the only one. Thus each one is the only one. If we have mused long upon the immense fecundity and industry of Life, the paradox vanishes: The only one and the all coalesce. The individual and the mass become one, in a new phase of power whose stupendous potency of creative art in civilization stuns the sense of possibility. + 

Now opens to our view the Democratic Vista! + 

Now see unfold the power of the only one in multiple, and the One become a vast complex of unique powers inspired of its free spirit and its power of beneficence⁠—its works now solidly founded on the full emergence of courage⁠—the evanishment of fear! + 

Alas, the world has never known a sound social fabric, a fabric sound and clean to the core and kindly. For it has ever turned its back on Man. Through time immemorial it has, in overt and secret fear of self, been impotent to recognize the only one, the unique. Hence wars and more wars, pestilence, famine and desolation; the rise and crumbling of immense fabrics. + 

The feudal concept of self-preservation is poisoned at the core by the virulent assumption of master and man, of potentate and slave, of external and internal suppression of the life urge of the only one⁠—of its faith in human sacrifice as a means of salvation. + 

The only one is Ego⁠—the “I am”⁠—the unique⁠—the most precious of man’s powers, their source and summation in diversity. Without Ego, which is Life, man vanishes. Ego signifies Identity. It is the free spirit. It is not a tenant, it is the all in all. It is present everywhere throughout man’s wondrous being. It is what we call the spiritual, a term now becoming interchangeable with the physical. It is the sign and symbol of man’s immense Integrity⁠—the “I am that I am.” To it the Earth, the world of humanity, the multitudes, the universe⁠—become an Egocosm. + 

Thus to the eye of the earnest watcher, the dual man of legend and of present mythical belief fades, incorporeal as a ghost. Departing it leads the ghostly feudal scapegoat with its burden of sin. + 

It is man’s manifest integrity that reveals him valid⁠—sound to the core. It is this spiritual integrity that defines him human, that points true to his high moral power⁠—the power of valid choice. + 

This new vision of man is the true vision of man. + 

Toward this new truth, this inversion, the world of mankind slowly turning, vaguely conscious, strives to articulate that which is as yet too deep, too remote, too new for its words. But it is not too deep, too remote or too new for its aspirations. + 

Thus in portrayal stands Man the Reality: Container of self-powers: A moving center of radiant energy: Awaiting his time to create anew in his proper image. + 

Are then the multitudes infertile? Is genius rare? Has our traditional education and culture left us wholly blind? Have we forgotten the children⁠—Egos at our elbow? The springtide of genius there! Shall we continue to destroy? What is our Choice? How have we exercised it? How shall we exercise it? Is our moral power asleep? Are we without faith in our own? + 

Whence, then, this story of a child’s dream of power? + 

What shall our dream be? + 

Our dream shall be of a civilization founded upon ideas thrillingly sane, a civilization, a social fabric squarely resting on man’s quality of virtue as a human being; created by man, the real, in the image of his fruitful powers of beneficence; created in the likeness of his aspirant emotions, in response to the power and glory of his true imagination, the power of his intelligence, his ability to inquire, to do, to make new situations befitting his needs. A civilization that shall reflect man sound to the core and kindly in the exercise of his will to choose aright. A civilization that shall be the living voice, the spring song, the saga of the power of his Ego to banish fear and fate, and in the courage of adventure and of mastership to shape his destiny. + 

Such dream is the vigorous daylight dream of man’s abounding power, that he may establish in beauty and in joy, on the earth, a dwelling place devoid of fear. That in the so doing he shall establish an anchorage within his universe, in courage, in the mighty spirit of adventure, of masterful craftsmanship, as he rises to the heights of the new art of all arts⁠—the art of upbuilding for the race a new, a stable home. + 

Plainly the outworking of so sublime a conception as that of rearing the fabric of a worthwhile civilization upon the basic truth of man’s reality as a sure foundation, implies the inversion of a host of fixed ideas “consecrated by the wisdom of the ages.” The time has come to place the wisdom of the ages in the balance of inquiry; to ascertain, when weighed, wherein it may be found wanting in the human sense. One sure test is sanity, for to be unkind is to be dangerously unbalanced. + 

It is also time to test out the folly of the ages, the multifarious corruption involved in abstract and concrete irresponsibility, the abuse of power, the abuse of the useful, the successive collapses and ruin, the ever present sense of instability, the all-pervading fear, the lack of anchorage. + 

So testing, we shall find that alike the wisdom and folly of the ages rest in utter insecurity upon a false concept of the nature of man. For both “wisdom” and folly have committed and still commit the double folly of turning away from man in contempt. + 

Glancing at our modern civilization we find on the surface crust essentially the same idea at work that has prevailed throughout the past. Yet if we search beneath the surface we discern a new power of the multitudes everywhere at work. It is the power of a changing dream, of a changing choice; of Life urging upward to the open the free spirit of man⁠—so long self-suppressed under the dead weight of the “consecrated wisdom of the ages” and its follies. + 

The fabricating of a virile, a proud and kindly civilization, rich in its faith in man, is surely to constitute the absorbing interest of the coming generations. It will begin to take on its functional form out of the resolve of choice, and the liberation of those instincts within us which are akin to the dreams of childhood, and which, continuing on through the children and the children of the children, shall be a guide evermore. For who shall say the child is not the unsullied wellspring of power! + 

The chief business now is to pave the way for the child, that it may grow wholesome, proud and stalwart in its native powers. + 

So doing we shall uncover to our view the amazing world of instinct in the child whence arises genius with its swift grasp of the real. + 

The great creative art of upbuilding a chosen and stable civilization with its unique culture, implies orderly concentration and organization of man’s powers toward this sole end, consciously applied in each and every one of his socially constructive activities in the clear light of his understanding that the actualities of good and evil are resident in man’s choice⁠—and not elsewhere. Thus will arise a new Morale in its might! + 

And let it be well understood that such creative energy cannot arise from a welter of pallid abstractions as a soil, nor can it thrive within the tyranny of any cut and dried system of economics or politics. It must and will arise out of the heart, to be nurtured in common honesty by the intelligence, and by that sense of artistry which does not interfere with the growth of a living thing but encourages it to seek and find its own befitting form. Thus the living idea of man, the free spirit, master of his powers, shall find its form-image in a civilization which shall set forth the highest craftsmanship, the artistry of living joyously in stable equilibrium. + 

Thus widens the Democratic Vista! + 

The historic Feudal thought sought and found its form in a series of civilizations resting upon a denial of man by the multitudes themselves, who sought cohesion in mutual fear of life, and out of the culture of fear they created their tyrants. Their unsafe anchorage lay in the idea of force, in its convincing outward show of domination, splendor and glory. + 

In terror of the unknown, in appeal for mediation, the multitudes passed their immense unconscious power to those they raised aloft⁠—gods or men, and as value received they created and accepted the status of servitude. Those thus raised aloft became enormously parasitic, capping and sapping the strength of the multitudes. As the latter grew in self-sacrifice and poverty, they became luxurious in that they gave their all in the name of glory that their children, the great, might flourish. They staggered beneath the weight of the mighty they upheld aloft and who came to know them not⁠—other than as beasts to toil or fight. Thus has the feudal super-power ever undermined its own foundation, ever, in recurring cycle, collapsing and renewing⁠—renewing and collapsing. Times, places, names, local colors, mechanisms, countenances, change. The idea, the thought, the fear, persists through the ages. + 

For us the chief impress of the self-revealing story of mankind lies in the perception that all sanctioning power comes from below. From the vast human plenum we have called the multitudes, it arises gently, massively, step by step, stage by stage, height upon height; all of which but signifies the peoples’ dreams of glory taking shape vicariously in their times and places. The spectacular and imposing groups and summits of the feudal superstructure have no other base, no other sanction. Like towering cumulus clouds they float upon thin air. + 

As there are truths that lie within truths, so are there dreams that lie within dreams. The most ancient of dreams lies indeed within the feudal dream. This dream is none other than the dream of the reality of man. + 

As truths one by one appear above the surface, ever more powerful, farther reaching as they come from greater depths of life, so the great deep dream of man’s free spirit has been moving upward through the feudal dream. The flair of his powers is now sensing in the thought of the man of today. + 

With the great inversion of the Earth and the Sun, brought definitely about by so small an object as a telescope which man in his curiosity invented⁠—created⁠—to extend his power of eyesight and the daring thought⁠—the dream⁠—it stood for; with this shock of inversion definitely began the greatest of man’s adventures upon his Earth. + 

We in present sense and in retrospect call it the modern. + 

The feudal flow poured on, the germ of the modern growing in embryo apace and inexterminable. Inquiry upon inquiry followed; invention upon invention, discovery upon discovery; and wars and more wars, tremors, and the downfall of mighty superstitions; cunning and betrayal raged in abuses of delegated power, institutions rocked, dogma came forth in the open, knife and torch in hand the feudal flow went on in stealth, the modern power grew and ramified; there was calm and there was turbulence; onward flowed the feudal stream with its new arrangements, its new collapses, its new horrors, its new deaths, its new resurrections, as the power of man’s self-determination, the assertion of his free spirit, none too articulate as yet, none too sane, clarified in growing strength, its inventions seized upon, its uses turned to abuse, yet goading the feudal power into titanic writhings, fears and dreads, desperations, ruses and stratagems, wars and more wars⁠—the dread phantom of awakening multitudes⁠—the resolve to foster hate. + 

Yet man the worker, the inquirer, ever pushed onward in hope. Came the printing press, the mariner’s compass, the power of steam, railroads, great ships, the discovery and development of new vast hidden riches of earth, the harnessing of the mystical power of electricity, the land telegraph, the ocean cable, the telephone, the growth of libraries, the daily papers, the public schools, the technical schools, the automobile, vast systems of transportation of all kinds, the radio, the aeroplane, the mastery of the air, the mastery of the seas, the mastery of the earth, the increasing mastery of ideas. The immense growth in power of constructive imagination and of the will to do. And all to what end? What may tomorrow and tomorrow bring forth out of bloodstained yesterday and the flowing yesterdays since History’s dawn? + 

The great drama we herein have called the Modern, unique in the story of mankind, beginning with a small telescope, advancing to the radio, to the measurement of the stars, to the searching out of the utterly minute in Life’s infinitude of variety, to enormous strides in developments of utility, we may say is in character so eye-opening as to constitute the first act in the drama of the universal education of mankind through a series of imposing object lessons, changing situations, shifting scenes. Also, in that act begins the lifting of veils revealing object lessons coming closer up, and closer, from beneath the surface of feudal repression, and of the savage inertia of superstitions born of the habit of fear, and of unawareness, of dread of the reality of man; object lessons⁠—ever object lessons⁠—crowding upon us. + 

Among the most startling of these object lessons we are coming to apperceive the significance of choice⁠—its dire or its joyous man-made results. Slowly in consequence comes forth from the hitherto invisible, and shapes before us, a presence no gesture can debar, no noise of words deter⁠—the sublime, the warning, the prophetic image of man as Moral Power. + 

Thus clarifies in the dawning light of our modern day the fuller meaning, the effulgence of the Democratic Vista; the super-power of Democratic Man. + 

Moral Power, in the intensity of its choice, in the full exercise of its purpose to create a world of sanity, of beauty and of joy, alone can cause to dissolve and fade into thin air as though it had never been, the baleful feudal superstition of dominion and blood-sacrifice. + 

This moral power residing in the multitudes and awakening to voice, is what Democracy means. + 

To envisage Democracy as a mechanical, political system merely, to place faith in it as such⁠—or in any abstraction, is to foster an hallucination, to join in the Dance of Death; to confuse the hand of Esau with the voice of Jacob. The lifting of the eyelids of the World is what Democracy means. + 

The implications of the Democratic Idea branch into endless ramification of science, of art, of all industrial and social activities of human well-being, through which shall flow the wholesome sap of its urge of self-preservation through beneficence, drawn up from roots running ever deeper and spreading ever finer within the rich soil of human kindness and intelligence. For kindness is the sanest of powers, and by its fruits shall Democracy be known. It is of the antitheses that Feudalism has prepared the way for kindness. Kindness, seemingly so weak, is in fact the name of a great adventure which mankind thus far has lacked the courage, the intelligence, the grit to undertake. Its manly, its heroic aspect has been unknown, by reasons of inverted notions of reality. This form of myopia is of the feudal view. + 

In place of myopic ideas, democratic modern thought uses clear vision. Clear vision leads to straight thinking, sound thinking to sane action, sane action to beneficent results that shall endure. + 

In this sense of sound thinking and clean action all sciences, all arts, all activities, become sentimentally, emotionally, dramatically and constructively imbued with the stirring, the self-propelling impulse of the democratic idea. Therefore they will all hold in common a thought whose inexhaustible power will shape a common end which shall signify in the solidity of its logic fruitful peace and joy on earth, as equally the romance of goodwill toward men. + 

Now that we have a clarifying idea of the nature of man and his powers; now that we behold in him that which lies deepest and surest in ourselves, we may suggest the nature of a democratic education. + 

These things it shall do: + 

It shall regard the child body, the child mind, the child heart, as a trust. + 

It shall watch for the first symptom of surviving feudal fear and dissolve it with gentle ridicule while it teaches prudence and the obvious consequences of acts. No child that can toddle bravely is too young to know what choice means, when presented objectively and humanly. Thus it shall teach the nature of choice at the beginning. + 

It shall allow the child to dream, to give vent to its wondrous imagination, its deep creative instinct, its romance. + 

It shall recognize that every child is the seat of genius; for genius is the highest form of play with Life’s forces. + 

It shall allow the precious being to grow in its wholesome atmosphere of activities, giving only that cultivation which a careful gardener gives⁠—the children shall be the garden. + 

It shall utilize the fact that the child mind, in its own way, can grasp an understanding of things and ideas, supposed now in our pride of feudal thought to be beyond its reach. + 

It shall recognize that the child, undisturbed, feels in its own way the sense of power within it, and about it. That by intuition the child is mystic⁠—close to nature’s heart, close to the strength of Earth. + 

The child thus warded will be a wholesome, happy child. It will forecast the pathway to its maturity. + 

As from tender age the child grows into robust demonstrative vigor, and ebullition of wanton spirits, the technic of warding will pass by degrees into the technic of training or discipline⁠—bodily, mentally, emotionally; the imagination, the intellect, organized to work together; the process of coordination stressed. The idea of the child’s natural powers will be suggested a little at a time and shown objectively. + 

The child by this time is passing out of its reveries; life is glowing, very real, very tangible. So shall its awakening powers be trained in the glowing real, the tangible, the three R’s, made glowing and real to it as a part of its world. It is here the difference between welcome work and a task comes into play; the difference between a manikin and a teacher. + 

Now arrives the stage of pre-adolescence⁠—unromantic urge of hastening vegetative growth; the period of the literal, the bovine, disturbed at times by prophetic reverie. This is the time for literal instruction. + 

Now comes the stage of adolescence, when the whole being tends to deliquesce into instability, vague idealisms, emotions hitherto unknown or despised, bashfulness, false pride, false courage, introspection, impulsiveness, inhibitions, awkward consciousness of self, yet with an eye clairvoyant to that beauty which it seeks, a stirring in the soul of glory, of adventure, of romance. The plastic age of impressionability, of enthusiasms. Also the Danger Age; the age of extreme susceptibility under cover of indifference in self-protection: The age when thoughts and musings are most secret. The age that makes or breaks. + 

This is the crisis where democratic education, recognizing it as such, shall attain to its first main objective in fixing sound character, in alert intensive training of the native power to feel straight, to think straight, to act straight, to encourage pride in well-doing, to make so clear the moral nature of choice that the individual may visualize the responsibilities involved in the consequences of choice. To train the imagination in constructive foresight, in the feeling for real things, in the uses of sentiment, of emotion, in the physical and the spiritual joy of living; to stabilize the gregarious into the social sense; to set forth the dignity of the ego and all egos. + 

This is the time to put on the heavy work, to utilize to the full this suddenly evolving power, the recrudescent power of instinct, to direct this power into worthwhile channels, to prepare adolescents to become worthwhile adults, free in spirit, clean in pride, with footing on the solid earth, with social vision clear and true. + 

The later technical trainings shall be imbued of the same spirit. The varied kinds shall all be set forth as Specialized yet Unified social activities. Science shall be thus understood and utilized, the fine arts shall be thus understood and utilized, the industrial arts, the arts of applied science, and most urgently the science and the art of education, all shall thus be understood and utilized as social functions, ministering to the all-inclusive art of creating out of the cruel feudal chaos of cross purposes, a civilization, in equilibrium, for freemen conscious of their powers, and with these powers under moral control. + 

Such civilization shall endure, and even grow in culture, for it shall have a valid moral foundation, understandable to all. It will possess a vigor hitherto undreamed of, a versatility, a virtuosity, a plasticity as yet unknown, for all work will be done with a living purpose, and the powers of mankind shall be utilized to the full, hence there shall be no waste. + 

No dream, no aspiration, no prophecy can be saner. + 

Man shall find his anchorage in self-recognition. + 

Thus broadens and deepens to our comprehension the power and the glory of the Democratic Vista! + 