The Changing Order: A Study of Democracy (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Changing Order: A Study of Democracy

Of popular control was, however, acknowledged and in Lincoln, the peasant president, the man of common fibre, unlettered in the European sense of culture, yet the ac credited prophet of the new social order, truly called by Lowell the First American, the advent of the people was fully justified. But to describe democratic polity in the sphere of government is no part of my motive. I have in mind the more subtle effects of democracy, its radiation in art, industry, education, and religion. Now one of the new ideas is the doctrine of labor as distinguished from the aristocratic doctrine of leisure. Blessed is he who has found his work spoke out Carlyle. But what is the nature of that work from which the ancient curse has been removed - work which is a tangible blessing in itself, a pleasure even as sleep and food? In truth a new industrialism is forming. Moreover a new sense of life itself is shaping among those whose perceptions are not obscured by power and luxury and a Maeterlinck is born to become the prophet of the humble There are about us, says Maeterlinck, in one of his recent essays, thous ands of poor creatures who have nothing of beauty in their lives; they come and go in obscurity, and we believe all is dead within them; and no one pays any heed. And then one day a simple word, an unexpected silence, a little tear that springs from the source of beauty itself, tells us they have found the means of raising aloft, in the shadow of their soul, an ideal a thousand times more beautiful than the most beautiful things their ears have ever heard or their eyes ever seen. 0, noble and pallid ideals of silence and shadow! It is you, above all, who soar direct to God! Where this thing is true, where the speech inclines to silence, where life is esoteric, of.

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