Carlyle was no admirer of democracy, but in a lucid moment he said: “Invent the printing press and democracy is inevitable.” Add to this: Invent the railway, the telegraph, mass manufacture and concentration of population in urban centers, and some form of democratic government is, humanly speaking, inevitable.
Dewey quotes Carlyle to illustrate the inevitability of democracy with technological advancements.
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They persist as emotional cries rather than as reasoned ideas.
Extensive, enduring, intricate and serious indirect consequences of the conjoint activity of a comparatively few persons traverse the globe.
Personal loyalties to elders take the place of political obedience.
There is therefore no necessary connection between the private character of an act and its non-social or anti-social character.