Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/255

Rh ; but in one way or another he wishes for the glow of intelligent life, and incidentally for a recognition of his human dignity.

By general elementary education we have begun to teach the art of manipulating ideas to those who in Ancient Society were slaves. The wholly unlettered man thinks only in concrete terms; therefore it was that the great religious teachers have spoken slowly in parables. The unlettered man is not open either to the pleasures or the dangers of idealism. Undoubtedly our Western communities are passing through a dangerous stage in this generation. Half-educated people are in a very susceptible condition, and the world to-day consists mainly of half-educated people. They are capable of seizing ideas, but they have not attained to the habit of testing them and of suspense of mind in the meantime. In other words, most people to-day are very open to 'suggestion,' a fact well known to the experienced in elections, who rarely stop to reason with their audiences. Suggestion is the method of the German propagandist.

Now the expression 'Equality of Opportunity' involves two things. In the first place control, because, given average human nature, there cannot be equality without