not the enemy of the human spirit, is indifferent to all the soul
has erected in man's own realm, peculiar to humanity. What has nature
contributed to the doctrine of freedom or of fraternity? Man's life to
her is all one, tyrant or slave, friend or foe, wise or foolish,
virtuous or vicious, holy or profane, so long as her imperative physical
conditions of life, the mortal thing, are conformed to; society itself
is not her care, nor civilization, nor anything that belongs to man
above the brute. Her word, consequently, need not disturb us; she is
not our oracle. It rather belongs to us to win further victory over her,
if it may be, by our intelligence, and control her vital, as we are now
coming to control her material, powers and their operation.

This equality which democracy affirms--the identity of the soul, the
sameness of its capacities of energy, knowledge, and enjoyment--draws
after it as a consequence the soul's right to opportunity for
self-development by virtue of which it may possess itself of what shall
be its own fulness of life. In the inscrutable mystery of this world,
the soul at birth enters on an unequal struggle, made such both by
inherent conditions and by external limitations, in individuals,
classes, and races; but the determination of democracy is that, so far
as may be, it will secure equality of opportunity to every soul born
within its dominion, in the expectation that much in human conditions
which has hitherto fed and heightened inequality, in both heredity and
circumstance, may be lessened if not eradicated; and life after birth is
subject to great control. This is the meaning of the first axiom of
democracy, that all have a right to the pursuit of happiness, and its
early cries--"an open career," and "the tools to him who can use them."
In this effort society seems almost as recalcitrant as nature; for in
human history the accumulation of the selfish advantage of inequality
has told with as much effect as ever it did in the original struggle of
reptile and beast; and in our present complex and extended civilization
a slight gain over the mass entails a telling mortgage of the future to
him who makes it and to his heirs, while efficiency is of such high
value in such a society that it must needs be favoured to the utmost; on
the other hand a complex civilization encourages a vast variety of
talent, and finds a special place for that individuation of capacity
which goes along with social evol