somehow he seems always to have evaded them—he would have recognized with dismay that Swift and the wits have coarsely libeled the mobile vulgus and have deceived him about its capacities and tendencies. He would have discovered in the average man—along with healthy self-interest, petty vices, and envy enough to keep him stirring—courage, fortitude, sobriety, kindness, honesty, and sound practical intelligence. If he could have pressed critically into the matter, he would have discovered something even more surprising. He would have learned that the average man is, like himself, at heart a mystic, vaguely hungering for a peace that diplomats cannot give, obscurely seeking the permanent amid the transitory; a poor swimmer struggling for a rock amid the flux of waters, a lonely pilgrim longing for the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land. And if "P. E. M." had a bit more of that natural sympathy of which he is so distrustful, he would have perceived that what more than anything else to-day keeps the average man from lapsing into Yahooism is the religion of democracy, consisting of a little bundle of general principles which make him respect himself and his neighbor; a bundle of principles kindled in crucial times by an intense emotion, in which his self-interest, his petty vices, and his envy are consumed as with fire; and he sees the common weal as the mighty rock in the shadow of which his little life and personality are to be sur-
