When he goes home, he goes home thinking.  And the family all go home thinking.

Then economy sets in.  The reason most people make a failure of their economy is that they are not artistic with it, they do not enjoy it.  They do not pick out anything to enjoy their economy with.

With some people an automobile would work better than a Steinway Grand and there are as many ways, of course, of practising the Steinway Grand principle in not being bad as there are people, but they all consist apparently in selecting some big, positive thing that one wants to do, which logically includes and bundles all together where they are attended to in a lump, all the things that one ought not to do.

Most sins (every one who has ever tried them knows this) most sins are not really worth bothering with, each in detail, even the not-doing them and the most practical, firm method of getting them out of the way (thousands of them at once, sometimes, with one hand) is to have something so big to live for that all the things that would like to get in the way, and would like to look important, look, when one thinks of it, suddenly small.

The distinctive, preeminent, official business for the next four years, of making small things in this country look small and of gently, quietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our people recently, to Mr. Woodrow Wilson.

Now it naturally seems to some of us, the best way for Mr. Wilson’s government to do in getting the Trusts to give up lying and stealing, is going to be to place before them quietly a few really big, interesting, equally exciting things that Trusts can do, and then dare them, as in some great game or tournament of skill—­all the people looking on—­dare them, challenge them like great men, to do them.

There are three ideas President Wilson may have of the government’s getting people to be good.

First, not letting people be bad. (Moses.)

Second, being good for them. (Karl Marx.)

Third, letting them be good themselves. (Any Democrat.)

The first of these ideas means government by Prison.  The second, means government by Usurpation, that is, the moment a man amounts to enough to choose to do right or do wrong of his own free will, the moment he is a man, in other words, being so afraid of him and of his being a man, that we all, in a kind of panic, shove into his life and live it for him—­this is Socialism, a scared machine that scared people have invented for not letting people choose to do right because they may choose to do wrong.

The third, letting people be good themselves, letting them be self-controlling, self-respecting, self-expressing or voluntarily good people, is democracy, a machine for letting men be men by trying it.

Moses was the inventor of a kind of national moral-brake system, a machine for stopping people nine times out of ten.  The question that faces President Wilson just now, while the world looks on is, “Is a government or is it not a moral-brake system—­a machine for stopping people nine times out of ten?”