The Ethical Bases of Democracy

Abstract

Making the world safe for democracy, we are discovering, means more than merely winning the war on the battlefields of Europe. If we are content to suffer events at this juncture of the world's history, rather than (following the advice of Marshal Foch) create them, our victory will be of little value; for the old impulses-greed, hate, rivalry, self-assertion, pugnacity-will continue their domination in the affairs of men and nations. The world will be safe for democracy only when love and sympathy, properly guided by intelligence, are the controlling motives of society; and for this reason the ethical bases of democracy cannot be overemphasized. They are the living principles which in recurring ages give life to the institution, though its outer form be crushed to earth. Like the ancient phoenix, democracy may burn itself on the altar; but as long as its spirit lives, it, like the sacred bird, will rise from its ashes. Democracy is in its essence a movement rather than an accomplished fact. We speak of the Athenian democracy not so much because a real democracy was actually achieved, as for the reason that in certain of its aspects the government was a movement in which the spirit of democracy was present. Actually, notwithstanding the political freedom of the twenty-five thousand Athenian citizens, three hundred thousand slaves lived in Attica, women were not enfranchised, and the relation of the central governments to the dependencies was imperialistic. In the instance of modern democratic governments also, the best claim they have to be called democratic is in the direction they are taking and in the spirit which pervades them. In one of her aspects England is a democracy; in another-specifically in certain of her colonial relationsshe is the vitalizing center of an empire. The United States of America is in a real sense a leader among democracies, having made