No tyranny was ever for long maintained by force. All tyrannies begin and end in the tyranny of ideas uncritically accepted. It is of just such ideas that the conscious thinking of the crowd consists, and it is ultimately from the crowd as a psychological mechanism that tyranny as such proceeds. Democracy in America fails of freedom, not because of our political constitution, though that would doubtless be modified by a people who were more free at heart; it fails because freedom of opinion, intellectual alertness, critical thinking about fundamentals, is not encouraged. There is, moreover, little promise of greater freedom in the various revolutionary crowds who to-day want freedom only to add to the number of crowds which pester us. And for this we have, whether we are radicals or reactionaries or simply indifferent, no one to blame but ourselves and our own crowd-thinking. X EDUCATION AS A POSSIBLE CURE FOR CROWD-THINKING We have seen that Democracy in and of itself is no more sure a guarantee of liberty than other forms of government. This does not necessarily mean that we have been forced by our psychological study into an argument against the idea of democracy as such. In fact, it cannot be denied that this form of human association may have decided advantages, both practical and spiritual, if we set about in the right way to realize them. It does not follow that, because the franchise is exercised by all, democracy must necessarily be an orgy of mob rule. If, under our modern political arrangements, it has been shown that the crowd presumes to regulate acts and thought processes hitherto considered purely personal matters, it is also true that the dominance of any particular crowd has, in the long run, been rendered less absolute and secure by the more openly expressed hostility of rival crowds. But crowd-behavior has been known in all historic periods. Democracy cannot be said to have caused it. It may be a mere accident of history that the present development of crowd-mindedness has come along with that of democratic institutions. Democracy has indeed given new kinds of crowds their hope of dominance. It has therefore been made into a cult for the self-justification of various modern crowds.