rtunities. At any particular time or in
any particular case, the improvement of the smaller classes may conflict
with that of the larger class, but the conflict becomes permanent and
irreconcilable only when it is intensified by the lack of a really
binding and edifying public policy, and by the consequent stimulation of
class and factional prejudices and purposes. A policy, intelligently
informed by the desire to maintain a joint process of individual and
social amelioration, should be able to keep a democracy sound and whole
both in sentiment and in idea. Such a democracy would not be dedicated
either to liberty or to equality in their abstract expressions, but to
liberty and equality, in so far as they made for human brotherhood. As
M. Faguet says in the introduction to his "Politiques et Moralistes du
Dix-Neuvieme Siecle," from which I have already quoted: "Liberte et
Egalite sont donc contradictoires et exclusives l'une et l'autre; mais
la Fraternite les concilierait. La Fraternite non seulement concilierait
la Liberte et l'Egalite, mais elle les ferait generatrices l'une et
l'autre." The two subordinate principles, that is, one representing the
individual and the other the social interest, can by their subordination
to the principle of human brotherhood, be made in the long run mutually
helpful.

The foregoing definition of the democratic purpose is the only one which
can entitle democracy to an essential superiority to other forms of
political organization. Democrats have always tended to claim some such
superiority for their methods and purposes, but in case democracy is to
be considered merely as a piece of political machinery, or a partial
political idea, the claim has no validity. Its superiority must be based
upon the fact that democracy is the best possible translation into
political and social terms of an authoritative and comprehensive moral
idea; and provided a democratic state honestly seeks to make its
organization and policy contribute to a better quality of individuality
and a higher level of associated life, it can within certain limits
claim the allegiance of mankind on rational moral grounds.

The proposed definition may seem to be both vague and commonplace; but
it none the less brings with it practical consequences of paramount
importance. The subordination of the machinery of democracy to its
purpose and the comprehension within that purpose of the higher
interests both of the individual and s