No formula, reconciling the individual and the popular interest, can be devised which will work automatically.

The reconciliation must always remain a matter of victorious individual or national contrivance.

But it is none the less true that the chance of fruitful reconciliation always exists, and in a democracy it should exist under peculiarly wholesome conditions.

The essential nature of a democracy compels it to insist that individual power of all kinds, political, economic, or intellectual, shall not be perversely and irresponsibly exercised.

The individual democrat is obliged no less to insist in his own interest that the responsible exercise of power shall not be considered equivalent to individual mediocrity and dependence.
These two demands will often conflict; but the vitality of a democracy hangs upon its ability to keep both of them vigorous and assertive.