The Promise of their future may sometimes demand the partial renunciation of their past and the partial sacrifice of certain present interests; but the inevitable friction of all such sacrifices can be mitigated by mutual loyalty and good faith.

Sacrifices of tradition and interest can only be demanded in case they contribute to the national purpose--to the gradual creation of a higher type of individual and associated life.

Hence it is that an effective increase in national coherence looks in the direction of the democratic consummation--of the morally and intellectually authoritative expression of the Sovereign popular will.

Both the forging and the functioning of such a will are constructively related to the gradual achievement of the work of individual and social amelioration.
Undesirable and inadequate forms of democracy always seek to dispense in one way or another with this tedious process of achieving a morally authoritative Sovereign will.

We Americans have identified democracy with certain existing political and civil rights, and we have, consequently, tended to believe that the democratic consummation was merely a matter of exercising and preserving those rights.