and his achievement are so difficult
to bring together, is found on a large scale in society itself, when we
have the separation of the people who think from those who work. And
yet, since Ruskin ceased, no one has really formulated this in a
convincing form. And even Ruskin's famous dictum, that labor without art
brutalizes, has always been interpreted as if art could only be a sense
of beauty or joy in one's own work, and not a sense of companionship
with all other workers. The situation demands the consciousness of
participation and well-being which comes to the individual when he is
able to see himself "in connection and cooperation with the whole"; it
needs the solace of collective art inherent in collective labor.

As the poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling,
so the workman needs some one to bathe his surroundings with a human
significance--some one who shall teach him to find that which will give
a potency to his life. His education, however simple, should tend to
make him widely at home in the world, and to give him a sense of
simplicity and peace in the midst of the triviality and noise to which
he is constantly subjected. He, like other men, can learn to be content
to see but a part, although it must be a part of something.

It is because of a lack of democracy that we do not really incorporate
him in the hopes and advantages of society, and give him the place which
is his by simple right. We have learned to say that the good must be
extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one
person or any one class; but we have not yet learned to add to that
statement, that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we
cannot even be sure that it is worth having. In spite of many attempts
we do not really act upon either statement.

CHAPTER VII

POLITICAL REFORM

Throughout this volume we have assumed that much of our ethical
maladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting
upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to
the larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied. In
addition, however, to the consequent strain and difficulty, there is
often an honest lack of perception as to what the situation demands.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in our political life as it manifests
itself in certain quarters of every great city. It is most difficult to
hold to our political democracy and to m