See now, in summary, how modest a suggestion it is, grandiloquent though it may have seemed. We propose no _'ism_, we make no programme; we suggest, tentatively, a method. We propose a new start, a new tack, a new approach,--not to the exclusion of other approaches, but to their assistance. If this thing should be done, it would not mean that other gropers toward a better world would have to stand idle; it would but give light to them that walk in darkness. And it would make possible a more generous coöperation among the different currents in the stream of reconstructive thought.
We are a little discouraged to-day; we lovers of the new have become doubtful of the object of our love. Perhaps--we sometimes feel--all this effort is a vain circling in the mist; perhaps we do not advance, but only move. Our faith in progress is dimmed. We even tire of the "social problem"; we have tried so many ways, knocked at so many doors, and found so little of that which we sought. Sometimes, in the lassitude of mistaken effort and drear defeat, we almost think that the social problem is never to find even partial solution, that it is not a problem but a limitation, a limitation forever. We need a new beginning, a new impetus,--perhaps a new delusion?
See, too, how the thought of our five teachers lies concentrated and connected in this new approach: what have we done but renew concretely the Socratic plea for intelligence, the Platonic hope for philosopher-kings, Bacon's dream of knowledge organized and ruling the world, Spinoza's gentle insistence on democracy as the avenue of development, and Nietzsche's passionate defence of aristocracy and power? There was something in us that thrilled at Plato's conception of a philosophy that could guide as well as dissect our social life; but there was another something in us that hesitated before his plan of slavery as the basis of it all. We felt that we would rather be free and miserable than bound and filled. Why should a man feed himself if his feet are chained, and he must never move? And we were inspired, too, by the demand that the best should rule, that they should have power fitted to their worth; we should be glad to find some way whereby the best could have power, could rule, and yet with the consent of all,--we wanted an aristocracy sanctioned by democracy, a social order standing on the broad base of free citizenship and wide coöperation. Socrates shows us how to use Bacon to reconcile Plato and Nietzsche with Spinoza: intelligence will organize intelligence so that superior worth may have superior influence and yet work with and through the will of all.