Superiority is a sword. Hand it over to Septimus, and you'll get it back between your ribs.—The whole moral of democracy.
But there you are. Eve Effingham had pinned herself down on the Contrat Social, and she was prouder of that pin through her body than of any mortal thing else. Her IDEAL. Her IDEAL of DEMOCRACY.
When America set out to destroy Kings and Lords and Masters, and the whole paraphernalia of European superiority, it pushed a pin right through its own body, and on that pin it still flaps and buzzes and twists in misery. The pin of democratic equality. Freedom.
There'll never be any life in America till you pull the pin out and admit natural inequality. Natural superiority, natural inferiority. Till such time, Americans just buzz round like various sorts of propellers, pinned down by their freedom and equality.
That's why these white novels of Fenimore Cooper are only historically and sardonically interesting. The people are all pinned down by some social pin, and buzzing away in social importance or friction, round and round on the pin. Never real human beings. Always things pinned down, choosing to be pinned down, transfixed by the idea or ideal of equality and democracy, on which they turn loudly and importantly, like propellers propelling. These States. Humanly, it is boring. As a historic phenomenon, it is amazing ludicrous and irritating.
If you don't pull the pin out in time, you'll never be able to pull it out. You must turn on it for ever, or bleed to death.
"Naked to the waist was I
And deep within my breast did lie,
Though no man any blood could spy,
The truncheon of a spear—"
Is it already too late?
Oh God, the democratic pin!
Freedom, Equality, Equal Opportunity, Education, Rights of Man.