It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose.

These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.

I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses.

I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them.

In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves--the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state.