If the American people balk at the sacrifices demanded by their experiments, or if they attach finality to any particular experiment in the distribution of political, economic, and social power, they will remain morally and intellectually at the bottom of a well, out of which they will never be "uplifted" by the most extravagant subsidizing of good intentions and noble words.
The sort of institutional and economic reorganization suggested in the preceding chapters is not, consequently, to be conceived merely as a more or less dubious proposal to improve human nature by laws.

It is to be conceived as (possibly) the next step in the realization of a necessary collective purpose.

Its deeper significance does not consist in the results which it may accomplish by way of immediate improvement.
Such results may be worth having; but at best they will create almost as many difficulties as they remove.

Far more important than any practical benefits would be the indication it afforded of national good faith.

It would mean that the American nation was beginning to educate itself up to its own necessary standards.