The Challenge to Democracy
assumed that the social classes and the pursuit of
private wealth were in the nature of things.
Need of a New Control
Now, however, the whole situation is changed. Partly
because of biological and other such fundamental
causes, partly because of disillusion following upon the
Great War and the Small Peace, it cannot any longer
be taken for granted that "there are things no fellow
can do." What our forefathers unconsciously assumed
is now generally questioned. The division of society
into "upper" and "lower" classes, the importance of
the private pursuit of wealth, the value of discussion
with an opponent in one's neighbourhood—all these
are under the eye of conscious criticism. But above all
our forefathers assumed that the life in society was a
sharing of certain powers and rights, already in
existence; and we tend to think of powers and rights
still to be created in a society which will be the result
of conscious effort. If there are moral standards which
will prevent conflicting interests from destroying the
common good, we feel that those standards are still
to be established. They cannot be accepted from the
past. Even the Conservative nowadays tends to look
forward rather than back. The days of acquiescence in
the unconscious control of traditional habit are gone.
The fundamental difference between that age and ours
is the difference between sharing what already exists
and creating what does not exist. It is the difference
34