... 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 is based upon the assumption that every man
shall serve his fellow-men, the organization of democracy should be
gradually adapted to that assumption. The majority of men cannot be made
disinterested for life by exhortation, by religious services, by any
expenditure of subsidized words, or even by a grave and manifest public
need. They can be made permanently unselfish only by being helped to
become disinterested in their individual purposes, and how can they be
disinterested except in a few little spots as long as their daily
occupation consists of money seeking and spending in conformity with a
few written and unwritten rules? In the complete democracy a man must in
some way be made to serve the nation in the very act of contributing to
his own individual fulfillment.
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