Yliaster (Paracelsus) (detail), by Marsden Hartley, 1932. Smithsonian American Art Museum, museum purchase made possible by the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program and by George Frederick Watts and Mrs. James Lowndes, 1988.
We are taught to pride ourselves on living in a democracy. At the same time, in a thousand subtle ways, we are taught that true democracy is probably impossible. Certainly, the history of democracy is always told in a manner that reminds us it is extraordinarily difficult to achieve. It is never taught, for example, as a history of habit (people collectively governing their own affairs) or of sensibility (the feeling everyone should have equal say in decisions that affect them), but rather as the history of a word: Greek δημοκρατία, Latin