These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy,
are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely
formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be
permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it
will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the
people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the
notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common
intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of
refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made
universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for
ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air,
until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common
life. It is easier to state these hopes than to formulate the
line of motives, which I believe to constitute the trend of the
subjective pressure toward the Settlement. There is something
primordial about these motives, but I am perhaps overbold in
designating them as a great desire to share the race life. We all
bear traces of the starvation struggle which for so long made up
the life of the race. Our very organism holds memories and
glimpses of that long life of our ancestors, which still goes on
among so many of our contemporaries.
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