_Our history is the story of an experiment in freedom_, in which according to some we have more and more suppressed the individual. Grabo says that the history of democracy here is the story of a dream rather than an accomplishment. Such views, however, do not appear to be true representations of the case. They assume that the independence of the individual is more real or more realizable than it can be in any society. Is it not rather true that _our apparent relinquishment of the idea of freedom is the reverse side, so to speak, of the persistence throughout our history of an impossible ideal of independence of the individual_? It is individualism, rather than control, that has increased. The original freedom was a freedom such as comes from the willing participation of the individual in an order in which the control was immediate and vested in the whole. Control has become more definite and precise as the individual has become further removed from the direct influence of the social environment. We have developed relatively too much our original idea of independence, and from time to time elements have been added to our national life that represent an ideal of radical individualism, as for example Jacksonian democracy. Willingness to participate freely in the functions of society, and desire on the part of the individual to perform all his functions, have been relatively too slight. Even in politics it is not so much by the desire to participate in government that we have shown our democratic spirit as by the desire not to be individually governed. The old colonial spirit of cooeperation and neighborliness with which we started has been (speaking relatively again) neglected. We have developed toward individualism and control rather than toward free association under leadership. We have lacked ability as individuals to see ourselves from the standpoint of the whole of society. Now, therefore, we are faced by the apparent still further decline of our principle of freedom, because we see that we may have _efficiency_ only by increasing _authority_. The question may fairly be asked whether we are not at a parting of the ways, when our democratic idea must be more clearly defined, and we must decide whether we shall change toward autocracy; or now, at the end of our stage of primitive democracy, enter upon a plane of higher democracy. Sumner says that always in a democracy it is a question what class shall rule, that the control in a democracy always tends to remain either in the hands of the upper class or the lower class, and that the great middle class, the seat of vast powers, is never organized to rule. Such conditions show, again, the effects of the individualism that prevails--national unity and the capacity for free organization without individual or special motives are wanting.