In short, there is not a static world for the wise to influence. This truth is the blow to the old aristocracy. But we need the wise within this living, moving whole, this never-ceasing action and interaction, and this truth is the basis of our new conception of aristocracy. Democracy is not opposed to aristocracy—it includes aristocracy. As biology shows us nature evolving by the power within itself, so social psychology shows us society evolving by the power of its own inner forces, of _all_ its inner forces. There is no passive material within it to be guided by a few. There is no dead material in a true democracy. When people see the confusion of our present life, its formlessness and planlessness, the servile following of the crowd, the ignorance of the average man, his satisfaction in his ignorance, the insignificance of the collective life, its blindness and its hopelessness, they say they do not believe in democracy. But this is not democracy. The so-called evils of democracy—favoritism, bribery, graft, bossism—are the evils of our lack of democracy, of our party system and of the abuses which that system has brought into our representative government. It is not democracy which is “on trial,” as is so often said, but it is we ourselves who are on trial. We have been constantly trying to see what democracy meant from the point of view of institutions, we have never yet tried to see what it meant from the point of view of men. If life could be made mechanical, our method would be correct, but as mechanics is creature and life its superabounding creator, such method is wholly wrong. When people say that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy, they usually mean that while we have some “popular” institutions, we have not enough, and that when we get enough “popular” institutions, our inadequacies will be met. But no form is going to fulfil our needs. This is important to remember just now, with all the agitation for “democratic control.” You cannot establish democratic control by legislation: it is not democratic control to allow the people to assent to or refuse a war decided on by diplomats; there is only one way to get democratic control—by people learning how to evolve collective ideas. The essence of democracy is not in institutions, is not even in “brotherhood”; it is in that organizing of men which makes most sure, most perfect, the bringing forth of the common idea. Democracy has one task only—to free the creative spirit of man. This is done through group organization. We are sometimes told that democracy is an attitude and must grow up in the hearts of men. But this is not enough. Democracy is a method, a scientific technique of evolving the will of the people. For this reason the study of group psychology is a necessary preliminary to the study of democracy. Neither party bosses nor unscrupulous capitalists are our undoing, but our own lack of knowing how to do things together.