THE ME A. \I.\G OF THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT 353
popular convictions about social tendencies, or until the ten- dencies themselves are changed.
But if there is solemnity about the social movement it has also traits of sublimity. If security is the primary end of the social movement today, it is also not less a means. Men want security of opportunity, so that they may then gain ampler results from the use of their powers than were ever before aimed at by men in great numbers. Say what we will about men's narrow conceptions of life, and their sordid ambitions ; popular concep- tion of what it is to be a man are larger and truer than they have ever been throughout great masses before. I do not find men philosophizing very analytically or comprehensively about spe- cifications that should be satisfied in right human life. By putting together what many men are saying, however, I get at traits of large common conceptions which no one person expresses completely. The men who are most sincerely struggling for security want it as the passport to more complete living. They feel, if they do not expressly say, that man's life is not realized when he is a well-greased cog in the industrial machine. He is not a man who is merely a well-fed drudge. Manhood is properly many- sided.
Cultivating man is as proper a pursuit as amassing riches. Therefore let us have security in order that we may become men. There is latent in every man, not merely power to toil, but to toil intelligently. Every man is a possible economist, i. e. t an organizer of effort upon rational principles. Every man has it in him to become in some degree a scientist, *'. e., one who knows reality. Every man is a potential statesman, i. e. t a maker of social life, if not of the highest rank, of some rank. Every man is of necessity at last his own priest. Men today instinctively assert the personal importance that belongs with partial con- sciousness of their latent powers. They want security in order that as workers and thinkers and citizens and worshipers tlu-y may realize their larger selves. The task which society today imposes upon its members is direct and conscious effort so to organize personal relations that the masses of men, with their
