The most unambitious reform, recognizing the necessity for this consent,
makes for slow but sane and strenuous progress, while the most ambitious
of social plans and experiments, ignoring this, is prone to failure.

The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to
consult the "feasible right" as well as the absolute right. He is often
obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln's "best possible," and then has the
sickening sense of compromise with his best convictions. He has to move
along with those whom he leads toward a goal that neither he nor they
see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people
really want, and then "provide the channels in which the growing moral
force of their lives shall flow." What he does attain, however, is not
the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain-climber
beyond that of the valley multitude but it is sustained and upheld by
the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower
perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. He has not
taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the
villagers to move up a few feet higher; added to this, he has made
secure his progress. A few months after the death of the promoter of
this model town, a court decision made it obligatory upon the company to
divest itself of the management of the town as involving a function
beyond its corporate powers. The parks, flowers, and fountains of this
far-famed industrial centre were dismantled, with scarcely a protest
from the inhabitants themselves.

The man who disassociates his ambition, however disinterested, from the
coöperation of his fellows, always takes this risk of ultimate failure.
He does not take advantage of the great conserver and guarantee of his
own permanent success which associated efforts afford. Genuine
experiments toward higher social conditions must have a more democratic