Our once-honored blind forces are more and more losing their mastery over us. We are at this moment, however, in a difficult transition period. We are “freer” than ever before; the trouble is we do not know what to do with this freedom. It is easy to live the moral, the “social,” life when it consists in following a path carefully marked out for us, but the task given us today is to revalue all the world values, to steer straight on and on into the unknown—a gallant forth-faring indeed. But conscious evolution, the endless process of a perfect coordinating, demands vital people. War is the easy way: we take to war because we have not enough vitality for the far more difficult job of agreeing. So also that kind of religion which consists of contemplation of otherworldliness is the easy way, and we take to that when we have not enough vitality deliberately to direct our life and construct our world. It takes more spiritual energy to express the group spirit than the particularist spirit. This is its glory as well as its difficulty. We have to be higher order of beings to do it—we become higher order of beings by doing it. And so the progress goes on forever: it means life forever in the making, and the creative responsibility of every man.
Conscious evolution is the key to that larger view of democracy which we are embracing today. The key? Every man sharing in the creative process is democracy; this is our politics and our religion. People are always inquiring into their relation to God. God is the moving force of the world, the ever-continuing creating where men are the co-creators. “Chaque homme fait dieu, un peu, avec sa vie,” as one of the most illumined of the younger French poets says.34 Man and God are correlates of that mighty movement which is Humanity self-creating. God is the perpetual Call to our self-fulfilling. We, by sharing in the life-process which binds all together in an active, working unity are all the time sharing in the making of the Universe. This thought calls forth everything heroic that is in us; every power of which we are capable must be gathered to this glorious destiny. This is the True Democracy.35
XIV
The Group Principle at Work
Our rate of progress, then, and the degree in which we actualize the perfect democracy, depend upon our understanding that man has the power of creating, and that he gets this power through his capacity to join with others to form a real whole, a living group. Let us see, therefore, what signs are visible today of the group principle at work.
First, our whole idea of education is rapidly changing. The chief aim of education now is to fit the child into the life of the community; we do not think of his “individual” development except as contributing to that. Or it would be nearer the truth to say that we recognize that his individual development is essentially just that. The method of accomplishing this is chiefly through (1) the introduction of group classroom work in the place of individual recitations, (2) the addition of vocational subjects to the curriculum and the establishment of vocational schools, and (3) the organizing of vocational guidance departments and placement bureaus in connection with the public schools.
In many of the large cities of the United States the public schools have a vocational guidance department, and it is not considered that the schools have done their duty by the child until they have helped him to choose his life occupation, have trained him in some degree for it, and have actually found him a job, that is, fitted him into the community. It is becoming gradually accepted that this is a function of the state, and several of our states are considering the appropriation of funds for the carrying on of such departments.36
The further idea of education as a continuous process, that it stops neither at 14 nor 21 nor 60, that a man should be related to his community not only through services rendered and benefits received but by a steady process of preparation for his social and civic life, will be discussed later.37
The chief object of medical social service is to put people into harmonious and fruitful relation, not only because illness has temporarily withdrawn certain people from the community, but because it is often some lack of adaptation which has caused the illness.
Our different immigration theories show clearly the growth of the community idea. First came the idea of amalgamation: our primary duty to all people coming to America was to assimilate them as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. Then people reacted against the melting-pot theory and said, “No, we want all the Italians have to offer, all the Syrians can give us; the richness of these different civilizations must not be engulfed in ours.” So separate colonies were advocated, separate organizations were encouraged. Many articles were written and speeches made to spread this thought. But now a third idea is emerging—the community idea. We do not want Swedes and Poles to be lost in an undifferentiated whole, but equally we do not want all the evils of the
