also consistent when he washes the blood off his hands and turns his eyes toward the stars, seeking the blessing of heaven in his recent exploits on the field of battle. And man is also consistent when he seduces the girl; and he is consistent when, suddenly called on to avenge a wrong to a woman, he knocks a betrayer over the head with a club. And man is consistent when he forges a check, or when he hands a dole to a beggar. And man is consistent when he binds up the wounds of his enemy, and is equally consistent when in wild rage he seizes a chair and beats out the brains of his best friend. And man is consistent when he steals the widow's life insurance, and also is consistent when he gives Christmas presents to the orphans. And man is consistent when he goes into court and tries to show that a brother who demands a share of the father's estate is not a blood relation but a bastard, and therefore to be disbarred; yet this identical man who on one side enacts this peculiar role, will soon enough be found subscribing to a fund for fallen women, that they may be taken off the street. And man is consistent when he lies, tells the truth, fights, loves, hates, curses, preaches or reviles against his brother. Or, go as far as you please. The plain summary of man's dual nature should not meet with sour disapproval, even though it belies the theory that only the good survives. History has to do with all manner of madness in the blood, persisting from age to age. We must then in some sort take notice of the bad as well as the good, otherwise we cannot go very far to explain man's life on this earth. Buckle (Hist. Civilization, vol. I, p. 163) sets forth the idea in these words: "The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil together subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal; they contain those elemental truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay of successive religions. All these have their different measures and their different standards; one set of opinions for one age, another set for another. They pass away like a dream; they are the fabric of a vision, which leaves no rack behind. The discoveries of genius alone remain; it is to them that we owe all that we now have; they are for all ages and for all times; never young and never old, they bear the seeds of their own life; they flow on in a perennial and undying stream; they are essentially accumulative, giving birth to additions which they subsequently receive; they thus influence the most distant posterity and after the lapse of centuries produce more effect that they were able to do, even at the moment of promulgation." In the present book, the writer goes this much beyond Buckle's summary: We are not thinking of the State as a machine, but we shall endeavor to show that the eternal verities are far more a priceless inheritance than any summary of chemical or mechanical wonders come out of the Past. Otherwise, man's finer fraternal feelings, expressive of the larger hope for our race, would not be immortal; but would soon enough die and be known no more; for these elementary verities are kept alive only by incessant struggle, age after age. Whatever sufferings contributed to frater- Surveyed against a broad background of time and change, down through centuries, the multiplicity of vicissitudes that have accompanied the unfolding of Democracy, impress us with two profound conditions: The growth of Democracy not only has been unconscious, but also has been inevitable; and the very inevitability of Democracy assumes the power of a great moral principle (fraternity) often crushed to earth, but never wholly forgotten by our race. Likewise, Democracy is all the more inevitable, by reason of the very forces arrayed against the cause of the Common Man. For, as the essence of practical religion has been widened, not only by the exertions of earnest men engaged in supporting special phases of religious thought, but also by the very mockeries of men opposed to religion, likewise Democracy has been developed by constructive as well as destructive elements. Beneficent forces that make for the constructive side of social evolution are more or less obvious, but the bearing of destructive conditions as aids to progress (famine, floods, wars innumerable), though often difficult to appraise and apportion justly, are of co-operative importance in the rise of the Common Man. All the elements of our Civilization, good or less good, are part of our inheritance. Generation after generation, the survival of the "fittest" numbers also necessarily the fittest thieves, the fittest wolves; even as it includes likewise the fittest worthy people of all degree. "If" society did not inherit and pass on the black drop in the blood as well as the red drop, otherwise aspects of vice as well as of virtue, of weakness as well as of strength, numbering her athletes as well as her invalids, the high-minded as well as the debased-then, indeed, this would be a strange world. And any view of evolution of Democracy that does not make the circle large enough to include the contributions, good or less good, of the entire community, must necessarily be an incomplete record. Many of the vile deeds as well as brutal customs set forth in this book helped along the ultimate good, though at the immediate time were frightful evils. We offer here a few citations of the principle. At first thought it may sound unreasonable, but when Richard the Lion burnt out Jews' eyes to extort funds to rescue Christ's tomb from the Saracens (A. D. 1100's), Richard, the religious monomaniac, was aiding the cause of Democracy even as in wholly another field Socrates was likewise adding his quota in explaining that the virtuous man is the just man. For when Socrates demonstrated that virtue and justice are synonymous, the only trouble with his theory was that he was centuries ahead of his time; against which our conventional modern conception that virtue has to do principally with the sex-question is pitifully small. Broadly speaking, democratic institutional development could not have gone as far as it has had Socrates and Richard not played their parts, for good or for less good. Socrates' big mind on the one side and Richard's little mind on the other, balance each other; and while Socrates helps by constructive ideas, Richard assists with destructive forces; for Richard's conception of natural justice, when tried out, is found so hateful that by common consent men the more eagerly seek a way to end the ruin. Likewise we discern an evolutionary impulse toward Democracy issuing from the atrocities of Nero as from the humane exhortation of St. Paul; from Christ teaching little children as from Hammurabi branding slaves with a hot iron. Louis XI, the human spider, hanging enemies in his garden and inviting relatives of victims to a moonlight ball beneath the swinging corpses, was unconsciously hastening the cause of ultimate Democracy wholly as much as was Hadrian the Just, who, on one splendid occasion, closed the dungeons of Rome and told hundreds of miserable political prisoners, "You are free." Happily, there is also an optimistic side bearing directly on Democracy. We shall in the course of our analysis present very many illustrations of social ameliorations offered unselfishly by noble souls for the good of our race. Here, for example, we cite the glorious work of Bernard of Meuthon (d. 1008 A. D.). This Augustinian monk, filled with zeal for humanity, was idealist, disciplinarian and organizer. Above the snow-line in the Higher Alps, amidst scenes of desolation, Bernard built his hospice in the eternal winter. The refuge to save travelers lost in the storms has already stood the test of time for upwards of 1,000 years; during those ten centuries the monks of St. Bernard have freely offered humane services to all races, creeds and conditions of men. The ancient monastery, grim and foreboding in its shroud of ice and snow, the brothers, bronzed and weather-beaten like sailors, the trained dogs alert to catch the first warning of catastrophes going on all around: what a picture of fraternity on the practical as well as idealistic side, what a replica of ultimate Democracy! We, therefore, hold Bernard's experiment as a very early and significant example of true democratic tendencies, new and strange in that Medieval period of semi-barbarism; and present the monastery of Bernard as a type of Democracy on which the world in the last 1,000 years has not been able to improve. Or take this simple illustration: The commingling of peoples at carnivals, crusades, popes' jubilees, pilgrimages, eventually took on meanings for outside selfish individuality. When at the request of Emperor Maximilian I, the Holy Coat of Treves was exhibited by Archbishop Richard von Greifenklau (1500's), thousands of pilgrims visited Treves to look with wonder at Christ's seamless garment (St. John, xix, 23). These pious tours were continued at intervals for many decades, and in the aggregate millions of peasants, knights, squires, grandees, beggars, outcasts we know no limit to our human swarm-left their native valleys and journeyed over the mountains to view with religious veneration the Holy Coat of Trier. The impulse was religious in its initial aspect, but from the evolutionary view taken in this book, when several million men, women and children heretofore strangers became better acquainted, discussing the Holy Coat, or the thousand and one side-lights of the trip, each traveler returned wiser than he went away. This better understanding we today call Democracy. When later on we tell you in detail of that remarkable man known as Benedict of Nursia (d. 543 A. D.), whose Rule holds first place among monastic legislative codes, you will learn that he was the first monk who on a broad constructive plan tried to educate poor boys in practical work, such as draining swamps, making roads, mending shoes, or learning a trade. At that time (500's), all forms of manual labor were regarded as a curse by society and laborers were scorned as a servile class. Monte Casino, was, of course, a religious institution, and Benedict was a monk. However, we are not thinking of religion, at all. Instead, we are emphasizing something you will never find mentioned in any history of |