I AM

In tbe recluse, the thinker, the incurable and the drudge, I am. I am the giver of Life, I am Happiness.

I am in the good and evil, in the fortunate and the unfortunate, in the gifted and the incapable, alike; I am not one more than the other.

The lion roaring in its den, and the polyp on the floor of the deep, the great deep itself, know Mb,

The long advances of history, the lives of men and women — the men that sçratched the reindeer and mammoth on bits of bone, the Bushmen painting their rude rock-paintings, the mud-hovels clustering round médiéval castles, the wise and kindly Ârab -with his loving boyattendants, the Swiss mountain-herdsman, the Russian patriot, the English mechanic,

Know Mb. I am Happiness in them, in ail — underlying. I am the Master, showing myself from time to time as occasion serves.

SPIRITUAL PLASM 58

I am not nearer to cme iban tlie otiier : tiiey do not seek XDB so mnch as I advaaoe tiuou^ tfaem.^

This, then, is Democracy, according to Carpenter's use of the tenn ; a body within the body ; the slowly ascending love-kmgdom ; the ultimate truth of Sodety, — not waiting our arrivai at the end of a long history of social experiment and reform, but itself determining from within each révolution, each rearrangement of parts, each restatement of function. From the outside, we appear to be seeldng through antagonisms and f ailures to discover the perfect political and social organisation ; from the inside, which is the truth* side, that Perfect Thing is seeking to utter itself amid the intractableness of materiab, among which our human minds and wills are by no means the least difficult of handling. Democracy is like a spiritual plasm hidden deep within the secrets of human society; and as the human body is the ark of the germ-plasm, so is the status quo to Democracy, protecting it until time and opportunity serve for it to go forth in créative puises to the fashioning of another body. Democracy exists first as feeling, consciousness, potency, but contains within itself the inaliénable and irrésistible possibility of the destruction of ail estabUshed organization whatsoever, breaking this down and issuing to form new structure.

It is important to lay tenacious hold on this

* T. Z)., p. io8.