If the primary purpose of democracy is thus, not immediate results in government, but the education of the citizen, on the other hand, democracy rests, for its safety and progress, on the ever better education of the citizen.  Under the older forms of human society, laws may be passed and executed that are far in advance of public opinion.  That cannot be done in a democracy.  The law may be a slight step in advance, and so perhaps educate public opinion to its level; but if it goes beyond that step, after the first flurry of interest in the law is past, it remains a dead letter on the statute books—­worse than useless, because cultivating that dangerous disrespect for all law, which we have seen growing upon us as a people.

Thus from either side, the problem of democracy is a problem of education.  It rests upon education, its aim is education.  In a democracy, the supreme function of the state is, not to establish a military system for defense, or a police system for protection, it is not the enforcement of public and private contract:  it is to take the children and youth of each generation and develop them into men and women able to fulfill the responsibility and enjoy the opportunity of free citizenship in a free society.

XVI

MENACES OF DEMOCRACY

Since modern democracy is a new thing under the sun, so its menaces are new, or, if old, they take misleadingly new forms.  For instance, the greatest danger in the path of our democracy is the world-old evil of selfishness, but it does take surprisingly new form.  It is not aggressive selfishness that we have primarily to dread.  There are those, it is true, who believe we may soon be endangered by the ambitions of some arrogant leader in the nation.  The fear is unwarranted, for our people are still so devoted to the fundamental principles of democracy, that if any leader were to take one clear step toward over-riding the constitution and making himself despot, that step would be his political death-blow.  No, we are not yet endangered by the aggressive ambitions of those at the front, but we are in grave danger from the negative selfishness of indifference, shown in its worst form by just those people who imagine they are good because they are respectable, whereas they may be merely good—­for nothing.

Plato argued that society could never have patriotism in full measure until the family was abolished.  A singular notion that any school boy to-day can readily answer, yet here is the curious situation.  Family life, among ourselves, in its better aspects, has reached a higher plane than ever before in any people.  More marriages are made on the only decent basts of any marriage.  This is the woman’s land.  Children have their rights and privileges, even to their physical, mental and moral detriment.  It is here that men most willingly sacrifice for their families, slaving through the hot summer in the cities, to send wife and children to the seashore or the mountains; yet it is just here that men most readily unhinge their consciences when they turn from private to public life.