The Call of the Twentieth Century | Page 4

will attempt. The social condition which would give all
men equal reward, equal enjoyment, equal responsibility, may be a
condition to dream of. It may be Utopia; it is not democracy. Sir Henry
Maine describes the process of civilization as the "movement from
status to contract." This is the movement from mass to man, from
subservience to individualism, from tradition to democracy, from pomp
and circumstance of non-essentials to the method of achievement.
Owen Wister in "The Virginian" says: "All America is divided into two
classes,--the quality and the equality. The latter will always recognize
the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women
bear nothing but kings. It was through the Declaration of Independence
that we Americans acknowledged the eternal inequality of man. For by
it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men
artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down
in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence
to human nature. Therefore we decreed that every man should,
thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree
we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, 'Let the
best man win, whoever he is.' Let the best man win! That is America's
word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy
are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the
worse for his eyesight."
_Paucís vívat humanum genus_: "for the few the race should
live,"--this is the discarded motto of another age. The few live for the
many. The clean and strong enrich the life of all with their wisdom,
with their conquests. It is to bring about the larger equalities of
opportunity, or purpose, that we exalt the talents of the few.

This has not always been clear, even the history of the Republic. My
own great grandfather, John Elderkin Waldo, said at Tolland,
Connecticut, more than a century ago: "Times are hard with us in New
England. They will never be any better until each farm laborer in
Connecticut is willing to work all day for a sheep's head and pluck,"
just as they used to do before the red schoolhouses on the hills began to
preach their doctrines of sedition and equality. There could never be
good times again, so he thought, till the many again lived for the few.
It is in the saving of the few who serve the many that the progress of
civilization lies. In the march of the common man, and in the influence
of the man uncommon who rises freely from the ranks, we have all of
history that counts.
In a picture gallery at Brussels there is a painting by Wiertz, most
cynical of artists, representing the man of the Future and the things of
the Past. A naturalist holds in his right hand a magnifying glass, and in
the other a handful of Napoleon and his marshals, guns, and
battle-flags,--tiny objects swelling with meaningless glory. He
examines these intensely, while a child at his side looks on in
open-eyed wonder. She cannot understand what a grown man can find
in these curious trifles that he should take the trouble to study them.
This painting is a parable designed to show Napoleon's real place in
history. It was painted within a dozen miles of the field of Waterloo,
and not many years after the noise of its cannon had died away. It
shows the point of view of the man of the future. Save in the
degradation of France, through the impoverishment of its life-blood,
there is little in human civilization to recall the disastrous incident of
Napoleon's existence.
_Paucís vívat humanum genus_: "the many live for the few." This shall
be true no longer. The earth belongs to him who can use it and the only
force which lasts is that which is used to make men free.
"Triumphant America," says George Horace Lorimer, "certainly does
not mean each and every one of our seventy-eight millions. For
instance, it does not include the admitted idiots and lunatics, the
registered paupers and parasites, the caged criminals, the six million
illiterates. In a sense, it includes the twenty-five to thirty million
children, for they exert a tremendous influence upon the grown people.
But in no sense does it include the whittlers on dry-goods boxes, the

bar-room loafers, the fellows that listen all day long for the whistle to
blow, those who are the first to be mentioned whenever there is talk of
cutting down the force. It does not include those of our statesmen who
spend their time in promoting corrupt jobs, or in hunting places for lazy
heelers. It does not include the doctors who reach their high-water mark
for professional knowledge on the