Democracy, however, is not a mere scheme for the redistribution of wealth. It is fundamentally a theory of social progress. In so far as it involves the distribution of wealth, it does so as a necessary condition or means of progress, and not as an end in itself.

Democracy would raise government to the rank and dignity of a science by making it appeal to the reason instead of the fear and superstition of the people. The governments of the past, basing their claims upon divine right, bear about the same relation to democracy that astrology and alchemy do to the modern sciences of astronomy and chemistry. The old political order everywhere represented itself as superimposed on man from above, and, thus clothed with a sort of divine sanction, it was exalted above the reach of criticism. The growth of intelligence has dispelled one by one the crude political superstitions upon which the old governmental arrangements rested. More and more man is coming to look upon government as a purely human agency which he may freely modify and adapt to his purposes. The blind unthinking reverence with which he regarded it in the past is giving way to a critical scientific spirit. Nor has this change in our point of view in any way degraded government. In stripping it of the pretence of divine authority, it has in reality been placed upon a more enduring basis. In so far as it can no longer

claim respect to which it is not entitled we have a guarantee that it can not persistently disregard the welfare of the people.

Democracy owes much to modern scientific research. With the advance of knowledge we have gained a new view of the world. Physics, astronomy, and geology have shown us that the physical universe is undergoing a process of continual change. Biology, too, has revolutionized our notion of life. Nothing is fixed and immutable as was once supposed, but change is universal. The contraction of the earth's crust with its resultant changes in the distribution of land and water, and the continual modification of climate and physical conditions generally have throughout the past wrought changes in the form and character of all animal and vegetable life. Every individual organism and every species must change as the world around it changes, or death is the penalty. No form of life can long survive which does not possess in a considerable degree the power of adaptation. Innumerable species have disappeared because of their inability to adjust themselves to a constantly changing environment. It is from this point of view of continuous adjustment that modern science regards the whole problem of life individual and collective.

We must not, however, assume that what is true of the lower forms of life is equally true of

the higher. In carrying the conceptions of biology over into the domain of social science we must be careful to observe that here the process of adapting life to its environment assumes a new and higher phase. In the lower animal world the life-sustaining activities are individual. Division of labor is either entirely absent or plays a part so unimportant that we may for purposes of comparison assume its absence. The individual animal has free access to surrounding nature, unrestrained by social institutions or private property in the environment. For the members of a given group there is what may be described as equality of opportunity. Hence it follows that the individuals which are best suited to the environment will thrive best and will tend to crowd out the others.

But when we come to human society this is not necessarily true. Here a social environment has been created-a complex fabric of laws, usages, and institutions which envelopes completely the life of the individual and intervenes everywhere between him and physical nature. To this all his industrial activities must conform. The material environment is no longer the common possession of the group. It has become private property and has passed under the control of individuals in whose interests the laws and customs of every community ancient and modern have been largely molded. This is a fact which

all history attests. Wherever the few acquire a monopoly of political power it always tends to develop into a monopoly of the means and agents of production. Not content with making the physical environment their own exclusive property, the few have often gone farther and by reducing the many to slavery have established and legalized property in human beings themselves. But even when all men are nominally free and legalized coercion does not exist, the fact nevertheless remains that those who control the means of production in reality control the rest. As Mr. W. H. Mallock, the uncompromising opponent of democracy and staunch defender of aristocracy, puts it: "The larger part of the progressive activities of peace, and the arts and products of civilization, result from and imply the influence of kings and leaders in essentially the same sense as do the successes of primitive war, the only difference being that the kings are here more numerous, and though they do not wear any arms or uniforms, are incomparably more autocratic than the kings and czars who do." "Slavery, feudalism, and capitalism," he tells us, "agree with one another in being systems under which the few" control the actions of the many.

This feature of modern capitalism—the control

1 Aristocracy and Evolution, p. 58.

Ibid p. 377.

of the many by the few-which constitutes its chief merit in the eyes of writers like Mr. Mallock is what all democratic thinkers consider its chief vice. Under such a system success or failure is no longer proof of natural fitness or unfitness. Where every advantage that wealth and influence afford is enjoyed by the few and denied to the many an essential condition of progress is lacking. Many of the ablest, best, and socially fittest are hopelessly handicapped by lack of opportunity, while their inferiors equipped with every artificial advantage easily defeat them in the competitive struggle.

This lack of a just distribution of opportunity under existing industrial arrangements, the defenders of the established social order persistently ignore. Taking no account of the unequal conditions under which the competitive struggle is carried on in human society, they would make success proof of fitness to survive and failure evidence of unfitness. This is treating the complex problem of social adjustment as if it were simply a question of mere animal struggle for existence. Writers of this class naturally accept the Malthusian doctrine of population, and ascribe misery and want to purely natural causes, viz., the pressure of population on the means of subsistence. Not only is this pressure with its attendant evils unavoidable, they tell us, but, regarded from the standpoint of the highest in