It rather belongs to us to win further victory over her,
if it may be, by our intelligence, and control her vital, as we are now
coming to control her material, powers and their operation.
This equality which democracy affirms--the identity of the soul, the
sameness of its capacities of energy, knowledge, and enjoyment--draws
after it as a consequence the soul's right to opportunity for
self-development by virtue of which it may possess itself of what shall
be its own fulness of life. In the inscrutable mystery of this world,
the soul at birth enters on an unequal struggle, made such both by
inherent conditions and by external limitations, in individuals,
classes, and races; but the determination of democracy is that, so far
as may be, it will secure equality of opportunity to every soul born
within its dominion, in the expectation that much in human conditions
which has hitherto fed and heightened inequality, in both heredity and
circumstance, may be lessened if not eradicated; and life after birth is
subject to great control. This is the meaning of the first axiom of
democracy, that all have a right to the pursuit of happiness, and its
early cries--"an open career," and "the tools to him who can use them.
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