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The Curve of the Rational Age 199to transform the human mind and driven them to condemn thedemocratic ideal as an exploded fiction.Democracy and its panacea of education and freedom havecertainly done something for the race. To begin with, the peopleare, for the first time in the historical period of history, erect,active and alive, and where there is life, there is always a hope ofbetter things. Again, some kind of knowledge and with it somekind of active intelligence based on knowledge and strengthenedby the habit of being called on to judge and decide betweenconflicting issues and opinions in all sorts of matters have beenmuch more generalised than was formerly possible. Men are beingprogressively trained to use their minds, to apply intelligenceto life, and that is a great gain. If they have not yet learned tothink for themselves or to think soundly, clearly and rightly, theyare at least more able now to choose with some kind of initialintelligence, however imperfect as yet it may be, the thought theyshall accept and the rule they shall follow. Equal educationalequipment and equal opportunity of life have by no means beenacquired; but there is a much greater equalisation than wasat all possible in former states of society. But here a new andenormous defect has revealed itself which is proving fatal to thesocial idea which engendered it. For given even perfect equalityof educational and other opportunity, — and that does not yetreally exist and cannot in the individualistic state of society, —to what purpose or in what manner is the opportunity likely tobe used? Man, the half infrarational being, demands three thingsfor his satisfaction, power, if he can have it, but at any rate theuse and reward of his faculties and the enjoyment of his desires.In the old societies the possibility of these could be secured byhim to a certain extent according to his birth, his fixed status andthe use of his capacity within the limits of his hereditary status.That basis once removed and no proper substitute provided, thesame ends can only be secured by success in a scramble for theone power left, the power of wealth. Accordingly, instead of aharmoniously ordered society there has been developed a hugeorganised competitive system, a frantically rapid and one-sideddevelopment of industrialism and, under the garb of democracy,