It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. Nor is it an administrative procedure, patriotic, a reflection of tribalism, a passive servant of either law or regulation, elegant or particularly charming.
Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance.
The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen. We have finally come to realize that the humanities were incapable of answering the questions of the meaning of life, values and the art of living. The Ancient Greeks worked on the idea of Good. Many dreamt of an ideal society, of ideal man. We, for our part, coming in the wake of Nazism and Stalinism, tend to have been confronted with the experience of evil and horror.