to men
and women of every class and character, for every kind of aim and
purpose, that the greatest peril of society lies in our day. A peril,
that is to say, so long as society has no assurance that the leagues and
confederacies formed within its bosom will be prevailingly well
instructed and intelligently controlled.

As a serious danger this is something quite new. It has come upon us
within recent years. I can remember a state of things in which it was
difficult for a man in common life to join himself with other men, much
beyond his own neighborhood, in any effectual way, excepting as he did
it on the lines of an old political party or an older church. But,
to-day, leagues, unions, federations, associations, orders, rings, form
themselves among the restless, unstable elements of the time as clouds
are formed in the atmosphere, and with kindred lightning flashes and
mutterings of thunder. Any boldly ignorant inventor of a new economical
theory or a new political doctrine, or a new cornerstone for the fabric
of society, can set on foot a movement from Maine to California, between
two equinoxes, if he handles his invention with dexterity. This is what
invests popular ignorance with terrors which never appeared in it
before, and it is this which has brought the real, responsible test of
democracy, social and political, on our time and on us.

Democracy, in fact, has remained considerably, hitherto, an unworked
theory of society, even in communities which have supposed themselves to
be democratically constituted. It has remained so through want of
conditions that would give a clear sound to the individual voice and
free play to the individual will. Those conditions are now arriving in
the world, and the democratic regime is consequently perfecting itself,
not politically alone, but economically, and in all the social relations
of mankind.

So it is not exaggeration to say that we have come to a situation in
which society must fight for its life against popular ignorance. The old
agencies of education are inadequate, when the best has been made of
them. The common school does not go far enough, and cannot. Its chief
function is to prepare a soil in the young mind for the after
seed-planting which will produce fruits of intelligence. Unsupplemented,
it is well-nigh barren of true educational results. The higher schools
and colleges reach too small a number to count for much in a problem
which concerns the teaching of t