Are then the multitudes infertile? Is genius rare? Has our traditional education and culture left us wholly blind? Have we forgotten the children—Egos at our elbow? The springtide of genius there! Shall we continue to destroy? What is our Choice? How have we exercised it? How shall we exercise it? Is our moral power asleep? Are we without faith in our own?
Whence, then, this story of a child’s dream of power?
What shall our dream be?
Our dream shall be of a civilization founded upon ideas thrillingly sane, a civilization, a social fabric squarely resting on man’s quality of virtue as a human being; created by man, the real, in the image of his fruitful powers of beneficence; created in the likeness of his aspirant emotions, in response to the power and glory of his true imagination, the power of his intelligence, his ability to inquire, to do, to make new situations befitting his needs. A civilization that shall reflect man sound to the core and kindly in the exercise of his will to choose aright. A civilization that shall be the living voice, the spring song, the saga of the power of his Ego to banish fear and fate, and in the courage of adventure and of mastership to shape his destiny.
Such dream is the vigorous daylight dream of man’s abounding power, that he may establish in beauty and in joy, on the earth, a dwelling place devoid of fear. That in the so doing he shall establish an anchorage within his universe, in courage, in the mighty spirit of adventure, of masterful craftsmanship, as he rises to the heights of the new art of all arts—the art of upbuilding for the race a new, a stable home.
Plainly the outworking of so sublime a conception as that of rearing the fabric of a worthwhile civilization upon the basic truth of man’s reality as a sure foundation, implies the inversion of a host of fixed ideas “consecrated by the wisdom of the ages.” The time has come to place the wisdom of the ages in the balance of inquiry; to ascertain, when weighed, wherein it may be found wanting in the human sense. One sure test is sanity, for to be unkind is to be dangerously unbalanced.
It is also time to test out the folly of the ages, the multifarious corruption involved in abstract and concrete irresponsibility, the abuse of power, the abuse of the useful, the successive collapses and ruin, the ever present sense of instability, the all-pervading fear, the lack of anchorage.
So testing, we shall find that alike the wisdom and folly of the ages rest in utter insecurity upon a false concept of the nature of man. For both “wisdom” and folly have committed and still commit the double folly of turning away from man in contempt.
Glancing at our modern civilization we find on the surface crust essentially the same idea at work that has prevailed throughout the past. Yet if we search beneath the surface we discern a new power of the multitudes everywhere at work. It is the power of a changing dream, of a changing choice; of Life urging upward to the open the free spirit of man—so long self-suppressed under the dead weight of the “consecrated wisdom of the ages” and its follies.
The fabricating of a virile, a proud and kindly civilization, rich in its faith in man, is surely to constitute the absorbing interest of the coming generations. It will begin to take on its functional form out of the resolve of choice, and the liberation of those instincts within us which are akin to the dreams of childhood, and which, continuing on through the children and the children of the children, shall be a guide evermore. For who shall say the child is not the unsullied wellspring of power!
The chief business now is to pave the way for the child, that it may grow wholesome, proud and stalwart in its native powers.
So doing we shall uncover to our view the amazing world of instinct in the child whence arises genius with its swift grasp of the real.
The great creative art of upbuilding a chosen and stable civilization with its unique culture, implies orderly concentration and organization of man’s powers toward this sole end, consciously applied in each and every one of his socially constructive activities in the clear light of his understanding that the actualities of good and evil are resident in man’s choice—and not elsewhere. Thus will arise a new Morale in its might!
And let it be well understood that such creative energy cannot arise from a welter of pallid abstractions as a soil, nor can it thrive within the tyranny of any cut and dried system of economics or politics. It must and will arise out of the heart, to be nurtured in common honesty by the intelligence, and by that sense of artistry which does not interfere with the growth of a living thing but encourages it to seek and find its own befitting form. Thus the living idea of man, the free spirit, master of his powers, shall find its form-image in a civilization which shall set forth the highest craftsmanship, the artistry of living joyously in stable equilibrium.
Thus widens the Democratic Vista!
The historic Feudal thought sought and found its form in a series of civilizations resting upon a denial of man by the multitudes themselves, who sought cohesion in mutual fear of life, and out of the culture of fear they created their tyrants. Their unsafe anchorage lay in the idea of force, in its convincing outward show of domination, splendor and glory.
In terror of the unknown, in appeal for mediation, the multitudes passed their immense unconscious power to those they raised aloft—gods or men, and as value received they created and accepted the status of servitude. Those thus raised aloft became enormously parasitic, capping and sapping the strength of the multitudes. As the latter grew in self-sacrifice and poverty, they became
