WE HAVE now made a reconnaissance in the public
philosophy in order to test the chances of its revival. Our
warrant for making this attempt rests on certain general
findings about the condition of the Western world.

The first is that free institutions and democracy were
conceived and established by men who adhered to a
public philosophy. Though there have been many schools
in this philosophy, there are fundamental principles com-
mon to all of them: that, in Cicero's words, "law is the
bond of civil society," and that all men, governors and
the governed, are always under, are never above, laws;
that these laws can be developed and refined by rational
discussion, and that the highest laws are those upon which
all rational men of good will, when fully informed, will
tend to agree.

The second finding from which we have proceeded, in
our inquiry, is that the modern democracies have aban-
doned the main concepts, principles, precepts, and the
general manner of thinking which I have been calling the
public philosophy. I hold that liberal democracy is not an
intelligible form of government and cannot be made to
work except by men who possess the philosophy in which

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