government does not touch his individual affairs. Even Mill claims
that the social feelings of man, his desire to be at unity with his
fellow-creatures, are the natural basis for morality, and he defines a
man of high moral culture as one who thinks of himself, not as an
isolated individual, but as a part in a social organism.

Upon this foundation it ought not to be difficult to build a structure
of civic virtue. It is only necessary to make it clear to the voter that
his individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs, and that
they can only be legitimately supplied for him when they are supplied
for all. If we believe that the individual struggle for life may widen
into a struggle for the lives of all, surely the demand of an individual
for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fulness of
life may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the
community, and rises into a sense of the common weal.

In order, however, to give him a sense of conviction that his individual
needs must be merged into the needs of the many, and are only important
as they are thus merged, the appeal cannot be made along the line of
self-interest. The demand should be universalized; in this process it
would also become clarified, and the basis of our political organization
become perforce social and ethical.

Would it be dangerous to conclude that the corrupt politician himself,
because he is democratic in method, is on a more ethical line of social
development than the reformer, who believes that the people must be made
over by "good citizens" and governed by "experts"? The former at least
are engaged in that great moral effort of getting the mass to express
itself, and of adding this mass energy and wisdom to the community as a
whole.

The wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good
citizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to
make it hard for him to act upon it. He is more or less a victim to that
curious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous
do not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient,
and that they can leave the arts and wiles of securing popular favor to
the self-seeking. This results in a certain repellent manner, commonly
regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for
the fatal mistake of making the surroundings of "good influences"
singularly unattractive; a mistake which