Professional socialists may cherish the notion that their battle is won as soon as they can secure a permanent popular majority in favor of a socialistic policy; but the constructive national democrat cannot logically accept such a comfortable illusion.  The action of a majority composed of the ordinary type of convinced socialists could and would in a few years do more to make socialism impossible than could be accomplished by the best and most prolonged efforts of a majority of malignant anti-socialists.  The first French republicans made by their behavior another republic out of the question in France for almost sixty years; and the second republican majority did not do so very much better.  When the republic came in France it was founded by men who were not theoretical democrats, but who understood that a republic was for the time being the kind of government best adapted to the national French interest.  These theoretical monarchists, but practical republicans, were for the most part more able, more patriotic, and higher-minded men than the convinced republicans; and in all probability a third republic, started without their cooeperation, would also have ended in a dictatorship.  Any substantial advance toward social reorganization will in the same way be forced by considerations of public welfare on a majority of theoretical anti-socialists, because it is among this class that the most competent and best disciplined individuals are usually to be found.  The intellectual and moral ability required, not merely to conceive, but to realize a policy of social reorganization, is far higher than the ability to carry on an ordinary democratic government.  When such a standard of individual competence has been attained by a sufficient number of individuals and is applied to economic and social questions, some attempt at social reorganization is bound to be the result,—­assuming, of course, the constructive relation already admitted between democracy and the social problem.

The strength and the weakness of the existing economic and social system consist, as we have observed, in the fact that it is based upon the realities of contemporary human nature.  It is the issue of a time-honored tradition, an intense personal interest, and a method of life so habitual that it has become almost instinctive.  It cannot be successfully attacked by any body of hostile opinion, unless such a body of opinion is based upon a more salient individual and social interest and a more intense and vital method of life.  The only alternative interest capable of putting up a sufficiently vigorous attack and pushing home an occasional victory is the interest of the individual in his own personal independence and fulfillment—­an interest which, as we have seen, can only issue from integrity and excellence of individual achievement.  An interest of this kind is bound in its social influence to make for social reorganization, because such reorganization is in some measure a condition and accompaniment of