Democracy is not dying.

We know it because we have seen it revive—­and grow.

We know it cannot die—­because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise—­an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a free majority.

We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men’s enlightened will.

We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human life.

We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still spreading on every continent—­for it is the most humane, the most advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of human society.

A nation, like a person, has a body—­a body that must be fed and clothed and housed, invigorated and rested, in a manner that measures up to the objectives of our time.

A nation, like a person, has a mind—­a mind that must be kept informed and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and the needs of its neighbors—­all the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of the world.

And a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something more permanent, something larger than the sum of all its parts.  It is that something which matters most to its future—­which calls forth the most sacred guarding of its present.

It is a thing for which we find it difficult—­even impossible—­to hit upon a single, simple word.

And yet we all understand what it is—­the spirit—­the faith of America.  It is the product of centuries.  It was born in the multitudes of those who came from many lands—­some of high degree, but mostly plain people, who sought here, early and late, to find freedom more freely.

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history.  It is human history.  It permeated the ancient life of early peoples.  It blazed anew in the middle ages.  It was written in Magna Charta.

In the Americas its impact has been irresistible.  America has been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they could create upon this continent a new life—­a life that should be new in freedom.

Its vitality was written into our own Mayflower Compact, into the Declaration of Independence, into the Constitution of the United States, into the Gettysburg Address.

Those who first came here to carry out the longings of their spirit, and the millions who followed, and the stock that sprang from them—­all have moved forward constantly and consistently toward an ideal which in itself has gained stature and clarity with each generation.

The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.