2>emocraq? ant> TReligton.

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common intellectual atmosphere to pervade thecommunity.

Privileges of property are as much opposed tothe democratic ideal as privileges of education.Indeed in the capitalist age equality is first of allan economic problem, within which the culturalproblem is included. There can be no inequalitymore glaring than the conception of labour as atool to serve the profit of the capitalistic class.It is not a case of equalising incomes and fortuneswith mathematical precision—-which would be afoolish proposal. The need is rather to build upnew middle classes with similar incomes andsimilar habits of consumption, a grading ineconomic relationship by gentle degrees from belowupwards that would offer facility to the competentman to rise in the scale. Without such inter-mediate strata, democracy remains a mere papertheory, however fine the paragraphs of its con-stitution may sound. In contradiction to thespirit of democracy, is the very existence of a classforced by destitution to sell its labour on terms thatdo no more than secure the minimum necessaryfor existence. The very existence of a proletariatfettered generation after generation to its particularclass is a blow in the face of the democratic ideal.The proletarian in claiming to be a " humanbeing " is protesting in the name of equalityagainst a merely formal democracy. He wantsa share in the social product sufficient to makecultural and political democracy a reality.

To sum up : since the days of the AmericanDeclaration of Independence and the French

5a