"] that fundamentally "American democracy is the
outcome of the American people in dealing with the West," that is, the
people of this valley of the French pioneers.
The democratical man, as Socrates is made to define him in Plato's
"Republic," was one in whom the licentious and extravagant desires have
expelled the moderate appetites and love of decorum, which he inherited
from his oligarchical father. "Such a man," he adds, "lives a life of
enjoyment from day to day, guided by no regulating principle, but turning
from one pleasure to another, just as fancy takes him. All pleasures are
in his eyes equally good and equally deserving of cultivation. In short,
his motto is 'Liberty and Equality.'"
But the early "democratical man" of that valley, even if he came remotely
from such oligarchical sires as Socrates gives immediately to all
democratical men, reached his motto of "Liberty and Equality" through no
such sensual definition of life.
It is true that many of those first settlers migrated from places where
the opportunities seemed restricted or conventions irksome or privileges
unequal, but it was no "licentious or extravagant desire" or flitting from
pleasure to pleasure that filled that valley with sober, pale-faced, lean-
featured men and tired, gentle women who enjoyed the "liberty" not of a
choice of pleasurable indulgences but of interminable struggles, the
"equality" of being each on the same social, economic, and political
footing as his neighbor.
Pages:
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437