historical cause and effect amounts to a reason why the Verein should not go ahead with its constructive program is almost certainly an incident of social transition. It is a case of partially thinking things through, of seeing part way through the connections of relations, and of jumping at conclusions instead of tracing out the rest of the relations. We should now say: Because German society is a historical product, the work of all the Germans, with such help and hindrance as they have had from the rest of mankind for centuries, therefore, it is not only permissible and desirable, but inevitable that the Germans, such as they have thus historically become, should exert their personality as their predecessors did in being themselves, that is, in exerting themselves, and thus in becoming more completely themselves, and so in continuing the process of creating their successors.

Treitschke's alternative was the opposite of all this-Because our generation is a historical product, therefore the institutions of our generation are finalities. In other words, this is a conception of the historical process which, if taken literally, would make the process a constant march up to our own time, but an eternal halt forever after.

Once more, just as Treitschke has made use of the ambiguous middle term "absolute" to support his plea for immutability of existing German institutions, so he constructs another argument on the same ground plan by the same sophistical use of the term "aristocratic." His primary proposition is: "The civic society of a wealthy people is always an aristocracy even under a democratic constitution." Again we may accept the generalization, but we must demand: what of it? Treitschke's effort is to deduce from the proposition the conclusion: "Therefore, the same sort of aristocracy, the same class structure with the same kind and degree of power over the rest of the community which now exists in Germany, must remain forever." There was nothing whatever in the program of the Verein, or in the argument of Schmoller, which might not have been expressed with complete accuracy in terms of aristocracy and mediocrity. We might paraphrase the reform arguments throughout in variations of the proposition: We must develop a higher type of aristocracy in Germany to serve better in discharge

of the tasks now in sight, including leadership of a higher grade of mediocrity. Schmoller's whole argument was to the effect that the Prussian monarchy, and the bureaucratic organization under the monarchy, must take the lead in the work of improvement next in order. This is farthest from a denial that aristocracy is a universal feature of economically prosperous societies. It is rather a proclamation that aristocracy, like every other normal human relationship, is itself in the process of evolution. Exchange of better functioning aristocracies for worse functioning aristocracies is one of the most familiar and effective steps in social improvement. This, by the way, is a commonplace in our American type of party government. We are merely not in the habit of expressing it in these terms. We are familiar with the proposition that political reform in the United States consists chiefly in exchanging one political machine for another, "turning the rascals out." The party machine is the American political aristocracy. Every organization of leadership is an aristocracy within its sphere of influence. Mr. Roosevelt's attempt to capture the government for a new party in 1912 might have been described, if successful, as the rise of a newer aristocracy to compete with the older aristocracies composing the Republican and Democratic party machines. The valid argument for or against the change in either the German or the American case was not that either change would be an attempted abolition of the aristocracy necessary to the relationship of leaders to led. The only pertinent argument was that the aristocracy involved in the older or the newer régime, in either case, was an aristocracy which seemed better adapted to the tasks of its time than the type of aristocracy which it opposed.

After exploiting as well as he could the assumed absoluteness of aristocracy, Treitschke returns to another of his negations, which we have already sufficiently noticed. He says: "It is by no means the task of history to introduce all men to the enjoyment of all the goods He continues: of civilization.

There is one way only to give all men all the goods of civilization. It is as simple as it is sure. Merely turn loose the beast in men, reduce the scale of general culture so low that the sage can know, enjoy, and possess no more than the fool, take the rule, since a community cannot exist without leadership,

out of the hands of the cultured and rich and transfer it to the fists of the rude and the poor, i.e. to King Mob, and the hideous égaliser les intelligences will be literally realized.

Without resorting to the explanation that Treitschke was intentionally misrepresenting the reformers, we have no way of accounting for his position except as an exhibit of paralyzed vision. In accordance with what we have said above, there is no difficulty whatever in writing specifications of conceivably long reaches of advance for the multitude in appropriating all the goods of civilization, without a semblance of communism, without a modification in present social structure, but simply in the course of operating our present social institutions with easily imaginable sublimation of social aims. Indeed, just this has been going on to a considerable degree during the last generation in all the civilized countries of the world. Our growing social purpose is that the minimum member of a civilized community shall start life with a sound body; and to insure this we are closing in on one another with demands that none but the fit shall propagate their kind. We are resolving that the units of coming generations shall start in communities equipped with all the known sanitary and hygienic appliances to assure physical conditions of living in accordance with our present knowledge of the laws of health. We are making up our minds that all children and youth shall have a chance to acquire the rudimentary technique of intelligent partnership in the world's work; the elementary knowledge which facilitates communication of ideas and some training for occupational efficiency, which shall make the individual able to supply some social demand. We are insisting upon a level of competition in all occupations which shall not permit work to exhaust the powers of workers, but shall leave a margin of time and strength for those human interests to which the bread-winning activities should be tributary. We are learning how to combine social resources so that those goods of life which only the favored few could command by their private resources may be within the reach of the many through wise use of common resources-playgrounds, parks, amusements, music, and the other arts, higher vocational and general education, the scientific output of museums, laboratories, institutes for research, the advantages

of publicity through all the services of printers' art and publishers' enterprise, the ministries of religion, through extension of religious activities so that they will find men everywhere and need not be sought far from the ordinary man's orbit. We are working out institutions for the insurance through life of every socially loyal man and woman; so that all may help to bear the burden of those incalculable accidents of life to which each is exposed, and none may be left to the sheer mercy of chance, provided he has faithfully tried to fill his place in the world's program.

This is an ideal which might conceivably have been carried out in Russia, if the Czar had been a sufficiently strong benevolent despot to control the Grand Ducal oligarchy in assent to the program. It would not, so far, necessarily have changed the external structure of Russia nor of a more civilized state.

There is one item in the schedule of typical human goods, to be sure, which the titles mentioned do not cover. High in the ranks of the goods of life is exercise of self-determination, expression of one's own valuation of one's own interests, both as a person and as a partner in society, without arbitrary suppression of one's individual initiative by any other person or interest; the function of selfgovernment in the individual, and of sharing in proportion to the functional value of the personal equation of each in the selfgovernment of the groups to which each belongs. This is a human good which must certainly change social structures in proportion as it is achieved by larger fractions of mankind, till no vestige is left in civilized communities of arbitrary superiority of one man or one class over another. Realization of this good is a growing aim of modern communities-growing not merely in reality, but growing also in definiteness of conscious purpose and program. Every interest existing among the members of communities must be recognized as having its proportional claims to unfettered suffrage in the community councils. Whether this, that, or the other device will be most useful in realizing this purpose is a subsidiary matter. The fundamental thing is that the process of admitting all men to a share in all the goods of life, as thus explained, is not, as it appeared to Treitschke, a choice between King Mob and an aristocracy with power to dictate to a majority. Human

interests themselves are a progressive hierarchy. Explain it how we will in philosophical theory, the higher in men is in constant campaign for supremacy over the lower. Few scientific generalizations have a wider basis of inductive proof than this. Civilization is a cumulative exhibit of the persistent forereaching of humanity for better things, after the more immediately necessary things have been secured. It is a very superficial interpretation of history to construe progress in the higher ranges of human achievement, as Treitschke does, as a gift which foreordained governors of the masses have handed down to the masses, and consequently a revelation that humanity can lead no higher life unless it perpetuates a dictating class. The higher achievements of men are not the product of an arbitrary type of human institutions. They are the realization of typical human interests, working hitherto mostly through arbitrary social institutions, but relatively eternal, while the institutions are relatively accidental and transitory. Human beings, not merely privileged castes, want all the goods realizable in life. Human beings have the latent capacity to learn discrimination among goods, and in the course of time to give merited preferment to those that deserve the higher place. If Americans were ever in doubt of this, our public and private educational system should be more than enough to banish the doubt. Our comparatively young civilization has developed a system of schools which is more astonishing than our economic achievements. These people who rank in the opinion of Europeans as greedy materialists have not only cheerfully but enthusiastically taxed themselves, and some of them doubly, to build and operate public schools from the lowest to the highest grades, and parallel denominational schools, which, considering the youth of our institutions in general, compare favorably with the cultural institutions of any country in the world. And this is the point—we have done it without the help of a governing caste. In short, with all the faults of democracy up to date, there is reliable scientific sanction for the democractic faith: Give humanity a chance, and humanity will demand for itself all the goods attainable by humanity, and these goods will be arranged in a juster hierarchy by free humanity than by any conceivable dictatorship by a part of humanity over the whole.