hope that democracy would create a "whole world of heroes," in Carlyle's memorable phrase. "A political theory based on the expectation of self‐ denial and sacrifice by the run of men in any community," Lippmann said, "would not be worth considering." The best argument for democracy—that the responsibilities of self-government would elicit unsuspected capacities in ordinary men and women—had to be abandoned as another relic of the preindustrial past. An earlier theory of democracy had considered ordinary citizens at least competent to manage their own affairs, if not consistently capable of self-denial and sacrifice. Their opinions were held to command respect, as Lippmann saw it, because the business of government did not greatly exceed their experience. But it was "not possible to assume that a world, carried on by division of labor and distribution of authority, can be governed by universal opinions in the whole population." Under the altered conditions of industrial life, popular participation in government would only lead to anarchy and mob rule. Participatory democracy had to give way to distributive democracy. Instead of "hanging human dignity" on self-government, Lippmann argued, democrats would do better to hang it on universal access to the good things of life. The test of democracy was not whether it produced self-reliant citizens but whether it produced essential goods and services. The question to ask about government was "whether it is producing a certain minimum of health, of decent housing, of material necessities, of education, of freedom, of pleasures, of beauty, not simply whether at the sacrifice of all these things it vibrates to the self-centered opinions that happen to be floating around in men's minds."

By the mid-twenties, hardly anyone cared to question Lippmann's passive conception of democracy or his explanation of the futility of public debate. Dewey was almost alone in attempting to work out a reply, but even Dewey admitted that his objections might have derived simply from a prejudice in favor of democracy—from a "subjectivism about democ

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