It will be plain to those who have read what has elsewhere been said of
the ideal life, that democracy is for the nation a true embodiment of
that life, and wears its characteristics upon its sleeve. In it the
individual mingles with the mass, and becomes one with mankind, and
mankind itself sums the totality of individual good in a well-nigh
perfect way. In it there is the slow embodiment of a future nobly
conceived and brought into existence on an ideal basis of the best that
is, from age to age, in man's power. It includes the universal wisdom,
the reach of thought and aspiration, by virtue of which men climb, and
here manhood climbs. It knows no limit; it rejects no man who wears the
form Christ wore; it receives all into its benediction. Through
democracy, more readily and more plainly than through any other system
of government or conception of man's nature and destiny, the best of men
may blend with his race, and store in their common life the energies of
his own soul, looking for as much aid as he may give. Democracy, as
elsewhere has been said, is the earthly hope of men; and they who stand
apart, in fancied superiority to mankind, which is by creation equal in
destiny, and in fact equal in the larger part of human nature, however
obstructed by time and circumstance, are foolish withdrawers from the
ways of life.
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