But ethical teaching alone will not suffice. It must be admitted that a danger lurks in the idea of equality itself. The danger is that differences in refinement, in culture, in intellectual ability and attainments are apt to be insufficiently emphasized; that the untutored, the uncultivated, the intellectually undeveloped, are apt presumptuously to put themselves on a par with those of superior development; and hence that superiority, failing to meet with recognition, will be discouraged and democracy tend to level men downward instead of upward. This will not be true so much of such moral excellence as appears in an Emerson or a Lincoln,--for there is that in the lowliest which responds to the manifestations of transcendent moral beauty,--but it will hold good of those minor superiorities that fall short of the highest in art and science and conduct, yet upon the fostering of which depends the eventual appearance of culture’s richest fruits. In order to ward off this danger we must have a new and larger educational policy in our schools than has yet been put in practice. Vocational training in its broadest and deepest sense will be our greatest aid. Democracy, the American democracy, is the St. Christopher. St. Christopher bore the Christ child on his shoulders as he stepped into the river, and the child was as light as a feather. But it became heavier and heavier as he entered the stream, until he was well nigh borne down by it. So we, in the heyday of 1776, stepped into the stream with the infant Democracy on our shoulders, and it was light as a feather’s weight; but it is becoming heavier and heavier the deeper we are getting into the stream--heavier and heavier. When we began, there were four or five millions. Now there are ninety millions. Heavier and heavier! And there are other millions coming. When we began we were a homogeneous people; now there are those twenty-three languages spoken in a single school. And with this vast multitude, and this heterogeneous population, we are trying the most difficult experiment that has ever been attempted in the world,--trying to invest with sovereignty the common man. There has been the sovereignty of kings, and now and then a king has done well. There has been the sovereignty of aristocracies, and now and then an English aristocracy or a Venetian aristocracy has done well--though never wholly well. And now we are imposing this most difficult task of government, which depends on the recognition of excellence in others, so that the best may rule in our behalf, on the shoulders of the multitude. These are our difficulties. But our difficulties are also our opportunities. This land is the Promised Land. It is that not only in the sense in which the word is commonly taken--that is to say, a haven for the disadvantaged of other countries, a land whither the oppressed may come to repair their fortunes and breathe freely and achieve material independence. That is but one side of the promise.