U "LO! I OPEN A DOOR

Robert Browning has declared in "Paracelsus " :

To know Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without.

Edward Carpentér desires to corne to the place where a man stands and to open a door for ïàm. It is a great service ; it is a greater service than to " go out into the highways and byways and compel them to corne in," or to *' pluck them as Inrands from the buming " ; it is perhaps the greatest service that one man may render to his kind. To open a door, to make outlet at least possible, to widen the horizon, to reveal the vista, to breach the barrier, to unveil the bigger life — this is human service of the highest order.* You may be a prisoner, confined within a narrow and stnffy circumstance ; if you are ready and willing to move out, the open door is your chance of liberty ; if you are in a duU sort of way content with what and where you are, drugged by use and habit into the acceptance of a situation incompatible with highest manhood, the open door is a great allurement, quickening in your heart the spirit of venture. Carpentér does not try to frighten you out through the door, in the

1 ^<I am the Way." Cf. aiso the Persian Bâb (the Gatel.

TOWARDS DEMOCRACT** 18

feishion of a so-called evangeHstic preacher ; nor would he drag you tfarough it, in the fiiahion of a dogmatîc philosopher ; he opens the door, and lets you see through. Itself is the great persuasion, unless you are asieep or sick; and il asleep or sick, yet it gives entiance to corrents of fresh air whidi, short of any eneigetic response on your part, will tend to expand atrophied parts, awaken shimbering fonctions, and germinate the seeds of a new health.

The volume entitled Tawaris Democracy was, as we hâve seen, the immédiate product of the expérience through which Carpenter passed in the year 1881. The writing of it b^an in that year and continued till 1912 — a period of twentyone years — during whidi successivdy enlarged éditions were published. The volume bears ail the marks of inspiration and spontaneity. It remains his chief work. In 1883 he took a small property in the viUage of Millthorpe, lying equidistant from Sheffield and Chesterfidd, and eamed his living by market-gardening, publishing other volumes at intervais. The more important of thèse we shall examine in due course, but they are of secondary importance compared with Towards Democracy ; they are, for the most part, élucidations or more detailed expansions of some of the seed-thoughts of which his first book is a véritable storehouse. They are by no means unimportant, but are refiective rather than declaratory, argu-» mentative, scientific, constructive, rather than

16 "TOWARDS DEMOCRACY"

spontaneous. They attempt a reasoned and sj^tematic statement of some of the intuitive appréhensions of truth which are found in Jowards Democracy ; they relate the vision to the thought-content of the modem mind.