Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/254

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DEMOCRATIC IDEALS AND REALITY

look at the matter from the point of view of the freedom of men or of nations we shall come to the same conclusion; that the one thing essential is to displace class organisation, with its battle-cries and merely palliative remedies, by substituting an organic ideal, that of the balanced life of provinces, and under the provinces of the lesser communities.

Let us approach the matter from the other end of the argument, that of the Freedom of Men. What does the ordinary man want? [[Author: John Stuart Mill|Mill] says that after food and home he wants liberty, but the more modern democrat lays stress not merely on freedom to take Opportunity, but on the equality of Opportunity itself. It is for Opportunity to realise what is in him, to live a life of ideas and of action for the realisation of those ideas, that the healthy man—in ever-increasing number—is asking. His ideas may be of love and of the noble upbringing of his children, or of his craft and delight in his dexterity, or of religion and the saving of souls, or of excellence in sport of some kind, or of the constitution of society and its improvement, or of the appreciation of beauty and of artistic expres-