It cannot be claimed, however, that the foregoing account of the
relation between the individual and a nationalized democracy is even yet
entirely satisfactory. No relation can be satisfactory which implies
such a vast amount of individual suffering and defeat and such a huge
waste of social and individual effort. The relation is only as
satisfactory as it can be made under the circumstances. The individual
cannot be immediately transformed by individual purpose and action into
a consummate social type, any more than society can be immediately
transformed by purposive national action into a consummate residence for
the individual. In both cases amelioration is a matter of intelligent
experimental contrivance based upon the nature of immediate conditions
and equipped with every available resource and weapon. In both cases
these experiments must be indefinitely continued, their lessons candidly
learned, and the succeeding experiments based upon past failures and
achievements. Throughout the whole task of experimental educational
advance the different processes of individual and social amelioration
will be partly opposed, partly supplementary, and partly parallel; but
in so far as any genuine advance is made, the opposition should be less
costly, and cooeperation, if not easier, at least more remunerative.
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