Democracy is the rule of an interacting, interpermeating whole. The present advocates of democracy have, therefore, little kinship with those ardent writers of the past who when they said they believed in the people were thinking of workingmen only. A man said to me once, “I am very democratic, I thoroughly enjoy a good talk with a workingman.” What in the world has that to do with democracy? Democracy is faith in humanity, not faith in “poor” people or “ignorant” people, but faith in every living soul. Democracy does not enthrone the workingman, it has nothing to do with sympathy for the “lower classes”; the champions of democracy are not looking down to raise anyone up, they recognize that all men must face each other squarely with the knowledge that the give-and-take between them is to be equal.

The enthusiasts of democracy today are those who have caught sight of a great spiritual unity which is supported by the most vital trend in philosophical thought and by the latest biologists and social psychologists. It is, above all, what we have learnt of the psychical processes of association which makes us believe in democracy. Democracy is everyone building the single life, not my life and others, not the individual and the state, but my life bound up with others, the individual which is the state, the state which is the individual. “When a man’s eye shall be single”⁠—do we quite know yet what that means? Democracy is the fullest possible acceptance of the single life.

Thus democracy, although often considered a centrifugal tendency, is rather a centripetal force. Democracy is not a spreading out: it is not the extension of the suffrage⁠—its merely external aspect⁠—it is a drawing together; it is the imperative call for the lacking parts of self. It is the finding of the one will to which the will of every single man and woman must contribute. We want women to vote not that the suffrage may be extended to women but that women may be included in the suffrage: we want what they may have to add to the whole. Democracy is an infinitely including spirit. We have an instinct for democracy because we have an instinct for wholeness; we get wholeness only through reciprocal relations, through infinitely expanding reciprocal relations. Democracy is really neither extending nor including merely, but creating wholes.

This is the primitive urge of all life. This is the true nature of man. Democracy must find a form of government that is suited to the nature of man and which will express that nature in its manifold relations. Or rather democracy is the self-creating process of life appearing as the true nature of man, and through the activity of man projecting itself into the visible world in fitting form so that its essential oneness will declare itself. Democracy then is not an end, we must be weaving all the time the web of democracy.

The idea of democracy as representing the all-will gives us a new idea of aristocracy. We believe in the few but not as opposed to the many, only as included in all. This makes a tremendous change in political thought. We believe in the influence of the good and the wise, but they must exert their influence within the social process; it must be by action and reaction, it must be by a subtle permeation, it must be through the sporting instinct to take back the ball which one has thrown. The wise can never help us by standing on one side and trying to get their wisdom across to the unwise. The unwise can never help us (what has often been considered the most they could do for the world) by a passive willingness for the wise to impose their wisdom upon them. We need the intermingling of all in the social process. We need our imperfections as well as our perfections. So we offer what we have⁠—our unwisdom, our imperfections⁠—on the altar of the social process, and it is only by this social process that the wonderful transmutation can take place which makes of them the very stuff of which the Perfect Society is to be made. Imperfection meets imperfection, or imperfection meets perfection; it is the process which purifies, not the “influence” of the perfect on the imperfect. This is what faith in democracy means. Moreover, there is the ignorance of the ignorant and the ignorance of the wise; there is the wisdom of the wise and the wisdom of the ignorant. Both kinds of ignorance have to be overcome, one as much as the other; both kinds of wisdom have to prevail, one as much as the other.

In short, there is not a static world for the wise to influence. This truth is the blow to the old aristocracy. But we need the wise within this living, moving whole, this never-ceasing action and interaction, and this truth is the basis of our new conception of aristocracy. Democracy is not opposed to aristocracy⁠—it includes aristocracy.

As biology shows us nature evolving by the power within itself, so social psychology shows us society evolving by the power of its own inner forces, of all its inner forces. There is no passive material within it to be guided by a few. There is no dead material in a true democracy.

When people see the confusion of our present life, its formlessness and planlessness, the servile following of the crowd, the ignorance of the average man, his satisfaction in his ignorance, the insignificance of the collective life, its blindness and its hopelessness, they say they do not believe in democracy. But this is not democracy. The so-called evils of democracy⁠—favoritism, bribery, graft, bossism⁠—are the evils of our lack of democracy, of our party system and of the abuses which that system has brought into our representative government. It is not democracy which is “on trial,” as is so often said, but it is we ourselves who are on trial. We have been constantly trying to see what democracy meant from the point of view of institutions, we have never yet tried to see what it meant from the point of view of men.

If life could be made mechanical, our method would be correct, but as mechanics is creature and life its superabounding creator, such method is wholly wrong. When people say that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy, they usually mean that while we have some “popular” institutions, we have not enough, and that when we get enough “popular” institutions, our inadequacies will be met. But no form is going to fulfil our needs. This is important to remember just now, with all the agitation for “democratic control.” You cannot establish democratic control by legislation: it is not democratic control to allow the people to assent to or refuse a war decided on by diplomats; there is only one way to get democratic control⁠—by people learning how to evolve collective ideas. The essence of democracy is not in institutions, is not even in “brotherhood”; it is in that organizing of men which makes most sure, most perfect, the bringing forth of the common idea. Democracy has one task only⁠—to free the creative spirit of man. This is done through group organization. We are sometimes told that democracy is an attitude and must grow up in the hearts of men. But this is not enough. Democracy is a method, a scientific technique of evolving the will of the people. For this reason the study of group psychology is a necessary preliminary to the study of democracy. Neither party bosses nor unscrupulous capitalists are our undoing, but our own lack of knowing how to do things together.

The startling truth that the war is bringing home to many of us is that unity must be something more than a sentiment, it must be an actual system of organization. We are now beginning to see that if you want the fruits of unity, you must have unity, a real unity, a cooperative collectivism. Unity is neither a sentiment nor an intellectual conception, it is a psychological process produced by actual psychic interaction.

How shall we gain a practical understanding of this essential unity of man? By practising it with the first person we meet; by approaching every man with the consciousness of the complexity of his needs, of the vastness of his powers. Much is written of the power of history and tradition in giving unity to a community or nation. This has been overemphasized. If this were the only way of getting unity, there would be little hope for the future in America, where we have to make a unity of people with widely differing traditions, and little hope for the future in Europe where peace is unthinkable unless the past can be forgotten and new ties made on the basis of mutual understanding and mutual obligation. To have democracy we must live it day by day. Democracy is the actual commingling of men in order that each shall have continuous access to the needs and the wants of others. Democracy is not a form of government; the democratic soul is born within the group and then it develops its own forms.

Democracy then is a great spiritual force evolving itself from men, utilizing each, completing his incompleteness by weaving together all in the many-membered community life which is the true Theophany. The world today is growing more spiritual, and I say this not in spite of the Great War, but because of all this war has shown us of the inner forces bursting forth in fuller and fuller expression. The Great War has been the Great Call to humanity and humanity is answering. It is breaking down the ramparts to free the way for the entrance of a larger spirit which is to fill every single being by interflowing between them all. France, England, America⁠—how the beacon lights flash from one to the other⁠—the program of the British Labor Party, the speeches of our American President, the news of the indomitable courage of France⁠—these are like the fires in Europe on St. John’s Eve, which flash their signals from hilltop to hilltop. Even the school children of France and America write letters to each other. American men and women are working for the reconstruction of France as they would work for the reconstruction of their own homes⁠—and all this because we are all sharing the same hope. A new faith is in our hearts. The Great War is the herald of another world for men. The coming of democracy is the spiritual rebirth. We have been told that our physical birth and life are not all, that we are to be born again of water and the spirit. Not indeed of water and spirit, but of blood and spirit, are the warring children of men, a groaning, growing humanity, coming to the Great Rebirth.