be adjusted to a general policy of national economic construction.  His individual interest would be left in his own charge; but he would have much more favorable opportunities of redeeming the charge by the excellence of his individual work than he has under the existing system.  His condition would doubtless still remain in certain respects unsatisfactory, for the purpose of a democratic nation must remain unfulfilled just in so far as the national organization of labor does not enable all men to compete on approximately equal terms for all careers.  But a substantial step would be made towards its improvement, and the road marked, perhaps, for still further advance.

Again, however, must the reader be warned that the important thing is the constructive purpose, and not the means proposed for its realization.  Whenever the attempt at its realization is made, it is probable that other and unforeseen measures will be found necessary; and even if a specific policy proposed were successfully tried, this would constitute merely an advance towards the ultimate end.  The ultimate end is the complete emancipation of the individual, and that result depends upon his complete disinterestedness.  He must become interested exclusively in the excellence of his work; and he can never become disinterestedly interested in his work as long as heavy responsibilities and high achievements are supposed to be rewarded by increased pay.  The effort equitably to adjust compensation to earnings is ultimately not only impossible, but undesirable, because it necessarily would foul the whole economic organization—­so far as its efficiency depended on a generous rivalry among individuals.  The only way in which work can be made entirely disinterested is to adjust its compensation to the needs of a normal and wholesome human life.

Any substantial progress towards the attainment of complete individual disinterestedness is far beyond the reach of contemporary collective effort, but such disinterestedness should be clearly recognized as the economic condition both of the highest fulfillment which democracy can bestow upon the individual and of a thoroughly wholesome democratic organization.  Says Mr. John Jay Chapman in the chapter on “Democracy,” in his “Causes and Consequences”:  “It is thought that the peculiar merit of democracy lies in this:  that it gives every man a chance to pursue his own ends.  The reverse is true.  The merit lies in the assumption imposed upon every man that he shall serve his fellow-men....  The concentration of every man on his own interests has been the danger and not the safety of democracy, for democracy contemplates that every man shall think first of the state and next of himself....  Democracy assumes perfection in human nature.”  But men will always continue chiefly to pursue their own private ends as long as those ends are recognized by the official national ideal as worthy of perpetuation and encouragement.  If it be true that democracy