fusion of the individual with the mass, this identification of himself with mankind in a joint activity, this reenforcement of himself by what is himself in others, that a man becomes a social being.  The process is the same, whether in clubs, societies of all kinds, sects, political parties, or the all-embracing body of the State.  It is by making himself one with human nature in America, its faith, its methods, and the controlling purposes in our life among nations, and not by birth merely, that a man becomes an American.

The life of society, however, includes various affairs, and man deals with them by different means; thus property is a mode of dealing with things.  Democracy is a mode of dealing with souls.  Men commonly speak as if the soul were something they expect to possess in another world; men are souls, and this is a fundamental conception of democracy.  This spiritual element is the substance of democracy, in the large sense; and the special governmental theory which it has developed and organized, and in which its ideas are partially included, is, like other such systems, a mode of administration under which it seeks to realize its ideal of what life ought to be, with most speed and certainty, and on the largest scale.  What characterizes that ideal is that it takes the soul into account in a way hitherto unknown; not that other governments have not had regard to the soul, but, in democracy, it is spirituality that gives the law and rules the issue.  Hence, a great preparation was needed before democracy could come into effective control of society.  Christianity mainly afforded this, in respect to the ideas of equality and fraternity, which were clarified and illustrated in the life of the Church for ages, before they entered practically into politics and the general secular arrangements of state organization; the nations of progress, of which freedom is a condition, developed more definitely the idea of liberty, and made it familiar to the thoughts of men.  Democracy belongs to a comparatively late age of the world, and to advanced nations, because such ideas could come into action only after the crude material necessities of human progress—­illustrated in the warfare of nations, in military organizations for the extension of a common rule and culture among mankind, and in despotic impositions of order, justice, and the general ideas of civilization—­had relaxed, and a free course, by comparison at least, was opened for the higher nature of man in both private and public action.  A conception of the soul and its destiny, not previously applicable in society, underlies democracy; this is why it is the most spiritual government known to man, and therefore the highest reach of man’s evolution; it is, in fact, the spiritual element in society expressing itself now in politics with an unsuspected and incalculable force.