Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m THE DEMOCRATIC RUSSIANS OF all the changes that have come over the thought of the world within the last few decades, none is so remarkable as that which has to do with democracy. For centuries the word was confined to the narrow circle of politics. A democracy was a kind of government; a people was democratic if it had won for itself the right to make its own laws. In the matter of religion they might have nothing to say; a few might own the land and enjoy the revenues of industry; there might be a dozen slaves to one free man: but if the citizens were free to meet and discuss public affairs and make laws, that country or city was a democracy, that people was a democratic people. It is undoubtedly true that among millions, even in enlightened lands, this old habit of thought still persists, but gradually all over the world the new idea is making way. Certainly the leaders of humanity everywhere are aware of this revolution that has taken place, and the unparalleled changes which to-day are shaking and recasting the world are due chiefly to this new vision that democracy means something more than government. Indeed, no word in the language has so enlarged its circle as has this word democracy. Faster than we have been able to follow it, the commotion has spread to the very bounds of life. State, church, school, industry, the relations of man to man—all these are being jostled by this new unifying force. It is this sudden crowding of institutions upon the soul of man and their demand for new interpretation and reshaping that has set the ground to trembling beneath our feet, and has startled us into consciousness that the hour for great things has come. Democracy, the power of the people—that is the tocsin of the new age. Never before in the history of the world was it ...