resented in the Parliament that enacts the laws to which he is subject, is one question; and the question on what grounds he shall count among his fellows is another. There are marked inequalities of consequence and consideration in England, and here we get closer to the national ideal. How does England rate a man? Once more, the system of titles, differing in England from that which is in vogue in Germany, gives us a clue. There are dukes, marquises, earls; there is plain Sir Thomas or Sir John, the baronet. And there is a constant creation of new peers and baronets. Even Mr. Bryce, the great student and eulogist of democratic commonwealths, is finally transfigured into Lord Bryce. John Morley becomes Lord Morley. The French, on the famous night of the fourth of August, abolished their aristocracy at one stroke, a number of nobles themselves sacrificing their titles on the altar of country. But the English, with all their progress in democratic institutions, have never abolished their nobility. Who, in sensing the national ideal, can overlook the meaning of this outstanding fact, its tribute to the ideal of the noblesse? Here is a noblesse in the traditional sense, an ancient hereditary aristocracy as the nucleus, and around it, in far greater numbers, crystallized as about a core, a modern noblesse of distinction in statesmanship or statecraft, in war, in commerce, also in literature, science and art Lord Kelvin, Lord Tennyson, Lord Leighton- and this noblesse is looked up to as the culmination of English society, permeating all the people downward with its influence, and still possessing considerable power in the political sphere. It is as though the English were to say: "In the constitution of every human society there must be an irrational element; pure rationality is not feasible in human affairs, it exists only in the dreams of visionaries. Now grant us as our irrational element a small number of persons counted as of the highest rank from the mere accident of birth, without regard to their merit, and let us use this irrational element as a magnet in order to gather around it a real aristocracy of distinction in all the walks of life." The English nobility has been distinguished from that of the continent by the free passage it has kept open downward among the people and upward from the people; downward because the title, whatever it be, is vested only in a single heir; the younger sons of peers being thrust down among the commoners; and upward because the ranks of the nobility are open, or at least association with the nobility is open, to men of power from whatever class. John Burns, the leader of the London dock strike, became a cabinet minister, and if he had stayed long enough might have ended by becoming Lord Burns. The English idea, therefore, would seem to represent, subject to the inhibitions of political lib eralism, the social predominance and, to a large extent, the political influence of the masterful men, of men who have gained the ascendant, each in his own class, of those who in the competitive struggle have risen to the top. The wealthy brewer may be among the number, the successful merchant, Ramsay MacDonald, perhaps, the powerful laborite. England is in this sense governed from the top, governed from above downward, however controlled by the mass. The reason why titles do not extend in England as they do in Germany all the way through, but stop at the middle class, is now apparent. In Germany efficiency is the standard by which personal consideration is measured, and any man may be efficient in the performance of his task. In England, mastery, ascendancy is the test, and all those who have distinctly gained the ascendancy are decorated with titles and congregated at the top. But those who are below are not therefore despised. Their personal rights are safe. Their rights as electors are undisputed, their right to control and check every action of their leaders; but in point of social consequence, of value as individuals apart from rights, they are the ones who, if they have not failed in the struggle, at least have not conspicuously succeeded. The temper of this democratized English nobility -I refer to the more recent developments, and not to ancient times is on the whole generous. The - art of government is treated as a fine art. fine art. Men of large landed property or of independent wealth set the pace, and infuse their spirit into the ruling class. The watchword is, not government by the people, but government for the people, and in England and the colonies, subject to the control of the people, government in a large, disinterested fashion. In turning now to the national ideal of America, we discover that this defines the value of a man to consist, not in what he has achieved, nor in his ability to rise above others, but simply in his quality as a human being. America tends to appraise personality, not by what has appeared on the surface of a man's life, not by the apparent, but by the unapparent, not by the actualization, but by the spiritual possibilities, and in respect to the area of possibilities all human beings are alike. The American ideal is that of the uncommon quality latent in the common man. Necessarily it is an ethical ideal, a spiritual ideal; otherwise it would be nonsense. For, taking men as they are, they are assuredly not equal. The differences between them, on the contrary, are glaring. The common man is not uncommonly fine spiritually, but rather, seen from the outside, "uncommonly" common. It is therefore an ethical instinct that has turned the people toward this ethical conception. It is true that in Germany and in England, side by side with the efficiency and the mastery ideals, there has always existed this same spiritual or re ligious ideal; side by side with the stratification and entitulation of men, the labeling of them as lower and higher, as empirically better or worse, there has always been the recognition that men are equal equal, that is to say, in church, but not outside, equal in the hereafter but not in this life. If we would fathom the real depth and inner significance of the democratic ideal as it slumbers or dreams in the heart of America, rather than as yet explicit, we must say that it is an ideal which seeks to overcome this very dualism, seeks to take the spiritual conception of human equality out of the church and put it into the market place, to take it from faroff celestial realms for realization upon this earth. For men are not equal in the empirical sense; they are equal only in the spiritual sense, equal only in the sense that the margin of achievement of which any person is capable, be it wide or narrow, is infinitesimal compared with his infinite spiritual possibilities. It is because of this subconscious ethical motive that there is this generous air of expectation in America, that we are always wondering what will happen next, or who will happen next. Will another Emerson come along? Will another Lincoln come along? We do not know. But this we know, that the greatest lusters of our past already tend to fade in our memory, not because we are irreverent, but because nothing that the past has accomplished can content us; because we are looking for |