Democracy would raise government to the rank and dignity of a science by making it appeal to the reason instead of the fear and superstition of the people. The governments of the past, basing their claims upon divine right, bear about the same relation to democracy that astrology and alchemy do to the modern sciences of astronomy and chemistry. The old political order everywhere represented itself as superimposed on man from above, and, thus clothed with a sort of divine sanction, it was exalted above the reach of criticism. The growth of intelligence has dispelled one by one the crude political superstitions upon which the old governmental arrangements rested. More and more man is coming to look upon government as a purely human agency which he may freely modify and adapt to his purposes. The blind unthinking reverence with which he regarded it in the past is giving way to a critical scientific spirit. Nor has this change in our point of view in any way degraded government. In stripping it of the pretence of divine authority, it has in reality been placed upon a more enduring basis. In so far as it can no longer claim respect to which it is not entitled we have a guarantee that it can not persistently disregard the welfare of the people. Democracy owes much to modern scientific research. With the advance of knowledge we have gained a new view of the world. Physics, astronomy, and geology have shown us that the physical universe is undergoing a process of continual change. Biology, too, has revolutionized our notion of life. Nothing is fixed and immutable as was once supposed, but change is universal. The contraction of the earth's crust with its resultant changes in the distribution of land and water, and the continual modification of climate and physical conditions generally have throughout the past wrought changes in the form and character of all animal and vegetable life. Every individual organism and every species must change as the world around it changes, or death is the penalty. No form of life can long survive which does not possess in a considerable degree the power of adaptation. Innumerable species have disappeared because of their inability to adjust themselves to a constantly changing environment. It is from this point of view of continuous adjustment that modern science regards the whole problem of life individual and collective.