Flavour democracy calls for the fourth generation

It is argued with the help of an illustrative mode, that the inter species hierarchy among the fermion masses and the quark mixing angles can be accommodated naturally in the standard model with (approximate) flavour democracy provided there are four families of sequential quark-leptons with all members of the fourth family having roughly equal masses. The special problem of light neutrino masses (if any) and possible solutions are also discussed. (author). 15 refs