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 THE CULT OF INCOMPETENCE

 FIRST EDITION November, 1911. SECOND EDITION July, 1912. 

 THE CULT OF INCOMPETENCE

 By EMILE FAGUET

 _Of the French Academy_

 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY BEATRICE BARSTOW

 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THOMAS MACKAY

 NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 1912

 CONTENTS. 

 PAGE

 INTRODUCTION 1

 CHAPTER

 I. THE PRINCIPLES OF FORMS OF GOVERNMENT 12

 II. CONFUSION OF FUNCTIONS 37

 III. THE REFUGES OF EFFICIENCY 59

 IV. THE COMPETENT LEGISLATOR 66

 V. LAWS UNDER DEMOCRACY 82

 VI. THE INCOMPETENCE OF GOVERNMENT 92

 VII. JUDICIAL INCOMPETENCE 96

 VIII. EXAMPLES OF INCOMPETENCE 123

 IX. MANNERS 156

 X. PROFESSIONAL CUSTOMS 162

 XI. ATTEMPTED REMEDIES 172

 XII. THE DREAM 216

 INDEX 237

THE CULT OF INCOMPETENCE. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Though it may not have been possible in the following pages to reproducethe elegant and incisive style of a master of French prose, not even theinadequacies of a translation can obscure the force of his argument. Theonly introduction, therefore, that seems possible must take the form ofa request to the reader to study M. Faguet's criticism of moderndemocracy with the daily paper in his hand. He will then see, takingchapter by chapter, how in some aspects the phenomena of Englishdemocracy are identical with those described in the text, and how inothers our English worship of incompetence, moral and technical, differsconsiderably from that which prevails in France. It might have beenpossible, as a part of the scheme of this volume, to note on each page, by way of illustration, instances from contemporary English practice, but an adequate execution of this plan would have overloaded the text, or even required an additional volume. Such a volume, impartially workedout with instances drawn from the programme of all political parties, would be an interesting commentary on current political controversy, andit is to be hoped that M. Faguet's suggestive pages will inspire somecompetent hand to undertake the task. 

If M. Faguet had chosen to refer to England, he might, perhaps, havecited the constitution of this country, as it existed some seventy yearsago, as an example of a "demophil aristocracy, " raised to power by an"aristocracy-respecting democracy. " It is not perhaps wise in politicalcontroversy to compromise our liberty of action in respect of theproblems of the present time, by too deferential a reference to a goldenage which probably, like Lycurgus in the text, p. 73, never existed atall, but it has been often stated, and undoubtedly with a certain amountof truth, that the years between 1832 and 1866 were the only period inEnglish history during which philosophical principles were allowed animportant, we cannot say a paramount, authority over Englishlegislation. The characteristic features of the period were adetermination to abolish the privileges of the few, which, however, involved no desire to embark on the impossible and inequitable task ofcreating privileges for the many; a deliberate attempt to extirpate theservile dependence of the old poor law, and a definite abandonment ofthe plan of distributing economic advantages by eleemosynary stateaction. This policy was based on the conviction that personal libertyand freedom of private enterprise were the adequate, constructiveinfluences of a progressive civilisation. Too much importance hasperhaps been attached to the relatively unimportant question of thefreedom of international trade, for this was only part of a generalpolicy of emancipation which had a much more far-reaching scope. Rightlyunderstood the political philosophy of that time, put forward by thecompetent statesmen who were then trusted by the democracy, proclaimedthe principle of liberty and freedom of exchange as the true solvents ofthe economic problems of the day. This policy remained in force duringthe ministry of Sir R. Peel and lasted right down to the time of thegreat budgets of Mr. Gladstone. 

If we might venture, therefore, to add another to the definitions ofMontesquieu, we might say that the principle animating a liberalconstitutional government was liberty, and that this involved a definiteplan for enlarging the sphere of liberty as the organising principle ofcivil society. To what then are we to impute the decadence from thistype into which parliamentary government seems now to have fallen? Canwe attribute this to neglect or to exaggeration of its animatingprinciple, as suggested in the formula of Montesquieu? It is a questionwhich the reader may find leisure to investigate; we confine ourselvesto marking what seem to be some of the stages of decay. 

When the forces of destructive radicalism had done their legitimatework, it seemed a time for rest and patience, for administration ratherthan for fresh legislation and for a pause during which the principlesof liberty and free exchange might have been left to organise theequitable distribution of the inevitably increasing wealth of thecountry. The patience and the conviction which were needed to allow ofsuch a development, rightly or wrongly, were not forthcoming, andpoliticians and parties have not been wanting to give effect toremedies hastily suggested to and adopted by the people. Politicalleaders soon came to realise that recent enfranchisements had added anew electorate for whom philosophical principles had no charm. At alater date also, Mr. Gladstone, yielding to a powerful and notover-scrupulous political agitation, suddenly determined to attempt agreat constitutional change in the relations between the United Kingdomand Ireland. Whether the transference of the misgovernment of Irelandfrom London to Dublin would have had results as disastrous or asbeneficial as disputants have asserted, may be matter for doubt, but themanner in which the proposal was made certainly had one unfortunateconsequence. Mr. Gladstone's action struck a blow at the independenceand self-respect, or as M. Faguet terms it, the moral competence of ourparliamentary representation from which it has never recovered. Men werecalled on to abandon, in the course of a few hours, opinions which theyhad professed for a lifetime and this not as the result of convictionbut on the pressure of party discipline. Political feeling ran high. The "Caucus" was called into more active operation. Political partiesbegan to invent programmes to capture the groundlings. The conservativeparty, relinquishing its useful function of critic, revived the oldpolicy of eleemosynary doles, and, in an unlucky moment for its future, has encumbered itself with an advocacy of the policy of protection. Forstrangely enough the democracy, the bestower of power, though developingsymptoms of fiscal tyranny and a hatred of liberty in other directionsclings tenaciously to freedom of international trade--for the present atleast--and it would seem that the electioneering caucus has, in thisinstance, failed to understand its own business. The doles of the newState-charity were to be given to meet contributions from thebeneficiaries, but as the class which for one reason or another is everin a destitute condition, could not or would not contribute, the onlyway in which the benevolent purpose of the agitation could be carriedout was by bestowing the dole gratuitously. The flood gates, therefore, had to be opened wider, and we have been and still are exposed to a rushof philanthropic legislation which is gradually transferring all theresponsibilities of life from the individual to the state. Free tradefor the moment remains, and it is supposed to be strongly entrenched inthe convictions of the liberal party. Its position, however, isobviously very precarious in view of the demands made by the militanttrade unions. These, in their various spheres, claim a monopoly ofemployment for their members, to the exclusion of those who do notbelong to their associations. Logic has something, perhaps not much, todo with political action, and it is almost inconceivable that a partycan go on for long holding these two contradictory opinions. Which ofthem will be abandoned, the future only can tell. 

The result of all this is a growing disinclination on the part of thepeople to limit their responsibilities to their means of dischargingthem, the creation of a proletariate which in search of maintenancedrifts along the line of least resistance, dependence on the governmentdole. In the end too it must bring about the impoverishment of thestate, which is ever being called on to undertake new burdens; for theindividual, thus released from obligation to discharge, is still leftfree to create responsibilities, for which it is now the business of theState to make provision. Under such a system the ability to pay as wellas the number of the solvent citizens must continuously decline. 

The proper reply to this legislation which we describe as predatory inthe sense that we describe the benevolent habits of Robin Hood aspredatory, cannot be made by the official opposition which was itselfthe first to step on the down grade, and which only waits the chances ofparty warfare to take its turn in providing _panem et circenses_ at thecharge of the public exchequer. In this way, progress is brought to astandstill by the chronic unwillingness of the rate- and tax-payersto find the money. A truer policy, based on the voluntary action ofcitizens and capable of indefinite and continuous expansion, finds nosupport among politicians, for all political parties seem to be held inthe grip of the moral and technical incompetence which M. Faguet has sowittily described. The only reply to a government bent on such coursesis that which above has been imputed--perhaps without sufficientjustification--to the governments of the period 1832-1866; and thatreply democracy, as at present advised, will allow no political party tomake. 

There does not appear, therefore, to be much difference between thesituation here and in France, and it is very interesting to notice howin various details there is a very close parallelism between events inthis country and those which M. Faguet has described. The position ofour Lord Chancellor, who has been bitterly attacked by his own party, inrespect of his appointment of magistrates, is very similar to that of M. Barthou, quoted on p. 118. Our judicial system has hitherto beenconsidered free from political partisanship, but very recently and forthe first time a minister in his place in parliament, has rightly orwrongly seen fit to call in question the impartiality of our judicialbench, and the suspicion, if, as appears to be the case, it is widelyentertained by persons heated in political strife, will probably lead toappointments calculated to ensure reprisals. Astute politicians do notcommit themselves to an attack on a venerated institution, till theythink they know that that institution is becoming unpopular with thefollowers who direct their policy. Criminal verdicts also, especiallyon the eve of an election, are now made liable to revision by ministersscouring the gaols of the country in search of picturesque malefactorswhom, with an accompaniment of much philanthropic speech, they proceedto set at liberty. Even the first principles of equity, as ordinarilyunderstood, seem to have lost their authority, when weighed in thebalance against the vote of the majority. Very recently the members ofan honourable and useful profession represented to a minister that hisextension of a scheme of more or less gratuitous relief to a class whichhitherto had been able and willing to pay its way, was likely to deprivethem of their livelihood. His reply, _inter alia_, contained theargument that the class in question was very numerous and had manyvotes, and that he doubted whether any one would venture to propose itsexclusion except perhaps a member for a university; as a matter of factsome such proposal had been made by one of the university members whoseconstituents were affected by the proposal. The minister furtherdeclared that he did not think that such an amendment could obtain aseconder. The argument seems to impute to our national representatives acynical disregard of equity, and a blind worship of numbers, which iftrue, is an instance of moral incompetence quite as remarkable asanything contained in M. Faguet's narrative. 

If readers of this volume will take the trouble to annotate their copieswith a record of the relevant incidents which meet them every day oftheir lives, they cannot fail to acknowledge how terribly inevitable isthe rise of incompetence to political power. The tragedy is all the moredreadful, when we recognise, as we all must, the high character andability of the statesmen and politicians who lie under the thrall ofthis compelling necessity. 

This systematic corruption of the best threatens to assume theproportions of a national disaster. It is the system, not the actors init, which M. Faguet analyses and invites us to deplore. 

 T. MACKAY. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE PRINCIPLES OF FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 

The question has often been asked, what is the animating principle ofdifferent forms of government, for each, it is assumed, has its ownprinciple. In other words, what is the general idea which inspires eachpolitical system?

Montesquieu, for instance, proved that the _principle_ of monarchy is_honour_, the principle of despotism _fear_, the principle of a republic_virtue_ or patriotism, and he added with much justice that governmentsdecline and fall as often by carrying their principle to excess, as byneglecting it altogether. 

And this, though a paradox, is true. At first sight it may not beobvious how a despotism can fall by inspiring too much fear, or aconstitutional monarchy by developing too highly the sentiment ofhonour, or a republic by having too much virtue. It is neverthelesstrue. 

To make too common a use of fear is to destroy its efficacy. As EdgarQuinet happily puts it: "If we want to make use of fear we must becertain that we can use it always. " We cannot have too much honour, butwhen we can appeal to this sentiment only and when distinctions, decorations, orders, ribbons--in a word _honours_--are multiplied, inasmuch as we cannot increase such things indefinitely, those who havenone become as discontented as those who, having some, want more. 

Finally we cannot, of course, have too much virtue, and naturally heregovernments will fall not by exaggerating but by abandoning theirguiding principle. Yet is it not sometimes true that by demanding fromcitizens too great a devotion to their country, we end by exhaustinghuman powers of endurance and sacrifice? This is what happened in thecase of Napoleon, who, perhaps unwittingly, required too much fromFrance, for the building up of a 'Greater France. '

But that, some one will object, was not a republic!

From the point of view of the sacrifices required from the citizen, itwas a republic, similar to the Roman Republic and to the French Republicof 1792. All the talk was 'for the glory of our country, ' 'heroism, heroism, nothing but heroism'! If too much is required of it, civicvirtue can be exhausted. 

It is, then, very true that governments perish just as much from anexcess as from a neglect of their appropriate principle. Montesquieuwithout doubt borrowed his general idea from Aristotle, who remarks notwithout humour, "Those, who think that they have discovered the basis ofgood government, are apt to push the consequences of their new foundprinciple too far. They do not remember that disproportion in suchmatters is fatal. They forget that a nose which varies slightly from theideal line of beauty appropriate for noses, tending slightly towardsbecoming a hook or a snub, may still be of fair shape and notdisagreeable to the eye, but if the excess be very great, all symmetryis lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all. " This law ofproportion holds good with regard to every form of government. 

 * * * * *

Starting from these general ideas, I have often wondered what principledemocrats have adopted for the form of government which they favour, and it has not required a great effort on my part to arrive at theconclusion that the principle in question is the worship andcultivation, or, briefly 'the cult' of incompetence or inefficiency. 

Let us examine any well-managed and successful business firm or factory. Every employee does the work he knows and does best, the skilledworkman, the accountant, the manager and the secretary, each in hisplace. No one would dream of making the accountant change places with acommercial traveller or a mechanic. 

Look too at the animal world. The higher we go in the scale of organicexistence, the greater the division of labour, the more marked thespecialisation of physiological function. One organ thinks, anotheracts, one digests, another breathes. Now is there such a thing as ananimal with only one organ, or rather is there any animal, consisting ofonly one organ, which breathes and thinks and digests all at the sametime? Yes, there is. It is called the amoeba, and the amoeba is thevery lowest thing in the animal world, very inferior even to avegetable. 

In the same way, without doubt, in a well constituted society, eachorgan has its definite function, that is to say, administration iscarried on by those who have learnt how to administer, legislation andthe amendment of laws by those who have learnt how to legislate, justiceby those who have studied jurisprudence, and the functions of a countrypostman are not given to a paralytic. Society should model itself onnature, whose plan is specialisation. "For, " as Aristotle says, "she isnot niggardly, like the Delphian smiths whose knives have to serve formany purposes, she makes each thing for a single purpose, and the bestinstrument is that which serves one and not many uses. " Elsewhere hesays, "At Carthage it is thought an honour to hold many offices, but aman only does one thing well. The legislator should see to this, andprevent the same man from being set to make shoes and play the flute. " Awell-constituted society, we may sum up, is one where every function isnot confided to every one, where the crowd itself, the whole bodysocial, is not told: "It is your business to govern, to administer, tomake the laws, &c. " A society, where things are so arranged, is anamoebic society. 

That society, therefore, stands highest in the scale, where the divisionof labour is greatest, where specialisation is most definite, and wherethe distribution of functions according to efficiency is most thoroughlycarried out. 

 * * * * *

Now democracies, far from sharing this view, are inclined to take theopposite view. At Athens there was a great tribunal composed of menlearned in, and competent to interpret, the law. The people could nottolerate such an institution, so laboured to destroy it and to usurp itsfunctions. The crowd reasoned thus. "We can interpret and carry outlaws, because we make them. " The conclusion was right, but the minorpremise was disputable. The retort can be made: "True, you can interpretand carry out laws because you make them, but perhaps you have nobusiness to be making laws. " Be that as it may, the Athenian people notonly interpreted and applied its own laws, but it insisted on being paidfor so doing. The result was that the poorest citizens sat judging allday long, as all others were unwilling to sacrifice their whole time fora payment of six drachmas. This plebeian tribunal continued for manyyears. Its most celebrated feat was the judgment which condemnedSocrates to death. This was perhaps matter for regret, but the greatprinciple, the sovereignty of incompetence, was vindicated. 

Modern democracies seem to have adopted the same principle, in form theyare essentially amoebic. A democracy, well-known to us all, has beenevolved in the following manner. 

It began with this idea; king and people, democratic royalty, royaldemocracy. The people makes, the king carries out, the law; the peoplelegislates, the king governs, retaining, however, a certain control overthe law, for he can suspend the carrying out of a new law when heconsiders that it tends to obstruct the function of government. Herethen was a sort of specialisation of functions. The same person, orcollective body of persons, did not both legislate and govern. 

This did not last long. The king was suppressed. Democracy remained, buta certain amount of respect for efficiency remained too. The people, themasses, did not, every single man of them, claim the right to govern andto legislate directly. 

It did not even claim the right to nominate the legislature directly. Itadopted indirect election, _à deux degrés_, that is, it nominatedelectors who in turn nominated the legislature. It thus left twoaristocracies above itself, the first electors and the electedlegislature. This was still far removed from democracy on the Athenianmodel which did everything itself. 

This does not mean that much attention was paid to efficiency. Theelectors were not chosen because they were particularly fitted to electa legislature, nor was the legislature itself elected with any referenceto its legislative capacity. Still there was a certain pretence of adesire for efficiency, a double pseudo-efficiency. The crowd, or ratherthe constitution, assumed that legislators elected by the delegates ofthe crowd were more competent to make laws than the crowd itself. 

This somewhat curious form of efficiency I have called _compétence parcollation_, efficiency or competence conferred by this form ofselection. There is absolutely nothing to show that so-and-so has theslightest legislative or juridical faculty, so I confer on him acertificate of efficiency by the confidence I repose in him whennominating him for the office, or rather I show my confidence in theelectors and they confer a certificate of efficiency on those whom theynominate for the legislature. 

This, of course, is devoid of all common sense, but appearances, andeven something more, are in its favour. 

It is not common sense for it involves something being made out ofnothing, inefficiency producing efficiency and zero extracting 'one' outof itself. This form of selection, though it does not appeal to me underany circumstances, is legitimate enough when it is exercised by acompetent body. A university can confer a degree upon a distinguishedman because it can judge whether his degreeless condition is due toaccident or not. It would, however, be highly ridiculous and paradoxicalif the general public were to confer mathematical degrees. A degree ofefficiency conferred by an inefficient body is contrary to common sense. 

There is, however, some plausibility and indeed a little more thanplausibility in favour of this plan. Degrees in literature and indramatic art are conferred, given by 'collation, ' by incompetent people, that is by the public. We can say to the public: "You know nothing ofliterary and dramatic art. " It will retort: "True, I know nothing, butcertain things move me and I confer the degree on those who evoke myemotions. " In this it is not altogether wrong. In the same way thedegree of doctor of political science is conferred by the people onthose who stir its emotions and who express most forcibly its ownpassions. These doctors of political science are the empassionedrepresentatives of its own passions. 

--In other words, the worst legislators!--

Yes, very nearly so, but not quite. It is very useful that we shouldhave an exponent of popular passion at the crest of the social wave, totell us not indeed what the crowd is thinking, for the crowd neverthinks, but what the crowd is feeling, in order that we may not cross ittoo violently or obey it too obsequiously. An engineer would call it thescience of the strength of materials. 

A medium assures me that he had a conversation with Louis XIV, who saidto him: "Universal suffrage is an excellent thing in a monarchy. It is asource of information. When it recommends a certain course of action itshows us that this is a thing which we must not do. If I could haveconsulted it over the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, it would havegiven me a clear mandate for that Revocation and I should have knownwhat to do, and that Edict would not have been revoked. I acted as Idid, because I was advised by ministers whom I considered experiencedstatesmen. Had I been aware of the state of public opinion I should haveknown that France was tired of wars and new palaces and extravagance. But this was not an expression of passion and prejudice, but a cry ofsuffering. As far as passion and prejudice are concerned we must goright in the teeth of public opinion, and universal suffrage will tellyou what that is. On the other hand we must pay heed, serious heed toevery cry of pain, and here too universal suffrage will come to our aid. Universal suffrage is necessary to a monarchy as a source ofinformation. "

This, I am told, is Louis XIV's present opinion on the subject. 

As far as legislation therefore is concerned, the attempt to securecompetence by 'collation' is an absurdity. Yet it is an inverted sortof competence useful for indicating the state of a nation's temper. Fromthis it follows that this system is as mischievous in a republic as itwould be wholesome in a monarchy. It is not therefore altogether bad. 

The democracy which we have in view, after having been governed by therepresentatives of its representatives for ten years, submitted for thenext fifteen years to the rule of one representative and took noparticular advantage therefrom. 

Then for thirty years it adopted a scheme which aimed at a certainmeasure of efficiency. It assumed that the electors of the legislatureought not to be nominated, but marked out by their social position, thatis their fortune. Those who possessed so many drachmas were to beelectors. 

What sort of a basis for efficiency is this? It is a basis but certainlya somewhat narrow one. 

It is a basis, first, because a man who owns a certain fortune has agreater interest than others in a sound management of public business, and self-interest opens and quickens the eye; and again a man who hasmoney and does not lose it cannot be altogether a fool. 

On the other hand it is a narrow basis, because the possession of moneyis of itself no guarantee of political ability, and the system leads tothe very questionable proposition that every rich man is a competentsocial reformer. It is, however, a sort of competence, but a competencevery precariously established and on a very narrow basis. 

This system disappeared and our democracy, after a short interregnum, repeated its previous experiment and submitted for eighteen years to therule of one delegate with no great cause to congratulate itself on theresult. 

It then adopted democracy in a form almost pure and simple. I sayalmost, for the democratic system pure and simple involves the directgovernment of the people without any intervening representatives, bymeans of a continuous plebiscite. Our democracy then set up and stillmaintains a democratic system almost pure and simple, that is to say, itestablished government of the nation by delegates whom it itself electedand by these delegates strictly and exclusively. This time we havereached an apotheosis of incompetence that is well nigh absolute. 

This, our present system, purports to be the rule of efficiency chosenby the arbitrary form of selection which has been described. Just as thebishop in the story, addressing a haunch of venison, exclaimed: "Ibaptise thee carp, " so the people says to its representatives: "Ibaptise you masters of law, I baptise you statesmen, I baptise yousocial reformers. " We shall see later on that this baptism goes verymuch further than this. 

If the people were capable of judging of the legal and psychologicalknowledge possessed by those who present themselves for election, thisform of selection need not be prohibitive of efficiency and might evenbe satisfactory; but in the first place, the electors are not capable ofjudging, and secondly, even if they were, nothing would be gained. 

Nothing would be gained, because the people never places itself at thispoint of view. Emphatically never! It looks at the qualifications of thecandidate not from a scientific but from a moral point of view. 

--Well that surely is something, and, in a way, a guarantee ofefficiency. The legislators are not capable of making laws, it is true;but at least they are honest men. This guarantee of moral efficiency, some critic will say, gives me much satisfaction. 

Please be careful, I reply, we should never think of giving themanagement of a railway station to the most honest man, but to an honestman who, besides, understood thoroughly railway administration. So wemust put into our laws not only honest intentions, but just principlesof law, politics, and society. 

Secondly, if the candidates are considered from the point of view oftheir moral worth it is in a peculiar fashion. High morality is imputedto those who share the dominant passions of the people and who expressthemselves thereon more violently than others. Ah! these are our honestmen, it cries, and I do not say that the men of its choice aredishonest, I only say that by this criterion they are not infalliblymarked out even as honest. 

--Still, some one replies, they are probably disinterested, for theyfollow popular prejudices, and not their own particular, individualwishes. 

Yes, that is just what the masses believe, while they forget that thereis nothing easier than to simulate popular passion in order to winpopular confidence and become a political personage. Ifdisinterestedness is really so essential to the people, only thoseshould be elected who oppose the popular will and who show thereby thatthey do not want to be elected. Or better still only those who do notstand for election should be elected, since not to stand is theundeniable sign of disinterestedness. But this is never done. That whichshould always be done is never done. 

--But, some one will say, your public bodies which recruit their numbersby co-optation, Academies and learned societies, do not elect theirmembers in this way. --

Quite so, and they are right. Such bodies do not want their members tobe disinterested but scientific. They have no reason to prefer anunwilling member to one who is eager to be elected. Their point of viewis entirely different. The people, which pretends to set store by highmoral character, should exclude from power those who are ambitious ofpower, or at least those who covet it with a keenness that suggestsother than disinterested motives. 

These considerations show us what the crowd understands by the moralworth of a man. The moral worth of a man consists, as far as the crowdis concerned, in his entertaining or pretending to entertain the samesentiments as itself, and it is just for this reason that therepresentatives of the multitude are excellent as documents forinformation, but detestable, or at least, useless, and thereforedetestable, as legislators. 

Montesquieu, who is seldom wrong, errs in my opinion when he says, "Thepeople is well-fitted to choose its own magistrates. " He, it is true, did not live under a democracy. For consider, how could the people befitted to choose its own magistrates and legislators, when Montesquieuhimself, this time with ample justification, lays down as one of hisprinciples that morals should correct climate, and that law shouldcorrect morals, and the people, as we know, only thinks of choosing asits delegates men who share, in every particular, its own manner ofthinking? Climate can be partially resisted by the people; but if thelaw should correct morals, legislators should be chosen who have takenup an attitude of reaction against current morality. It would be verycurious if such a choice were ever made, and not only is it never madebut the contrary invariably happens. 

To sum it all up, it is intellectual incompetence, nay moralincompetence which is sought instinctively in the people's choice. 

 * * * * *

If possible, it is more than this. The people favours incompetence, notonly because it is no judge of intellectual competence and because itlooks on moral competence from a wrong point of view, but because itdesires before everything, as indeed is very natural, that itsrepresentatives should resemble itself. This it does for two reasons. 

First, as a matter of sentiment, the people desires, as we have seen, that its representatives should share its feelings and prejudices. Theserepresentatives can share its prejudices and yet not absolutely resembleit in morals, habits, manners and appearance; but naturally the peoplenever feels so certain that a man shares its prejudices and is notmerely pretending to do so, as when the man resembles it feature byfeature. It is a sign and a guarantee. The people is instinctivelyimpelled therefore to elect men of the same habits, manners and eveneducation as itself, or shall we say of an education slightly superior, the education of a man who can talk, but only superior in a very slightdegree. 

In addition to this sentimental reason, there is another, which isextremely important, for it goes to the very root of the democraticidea. What is the people's one desire, when once it has been stung bythe democratic tarantula? It is that all men should be equal, and inconsequence that all inequalities natural as well as artificial shoulddisappear. It will not have artificial inequalities, nobility of birth, royal favours, inherited wealth, and so it is ready to abolish nobility, royalty, and inheritance. Nor does it like natural inequalities, that isto say a man more intelligent, more active, more courageous, moreskilful than his neighbours. It cannot destroy these inequalities, forthey are natural, but it can neutralise them, strike them with impotenceby excluding them from the employments under its control. Democracy isthus led quite naturally, irresistibly one may say, to exclude thecompetent precisely because they are competent, or if the phrasepleases better and as the popular advocate would put it, not becausethey are competent but because they are unequal, or, as he wouldprobably go on to say, if he wished to excuse such action, not becausethey are unequal, but because being unequal they are suspected of beingopponents of equality. So it all comes to the same thing. This it isthat made Aristotle say that where merit is despised, there isdemocracy. He does not say so in so many words, but he wrote: "Wheremerit is not esteemed before everything else, it is not possible to havea firmly established aristocracy, " and that amounts to saying that wheremerit is not esteemed, we enter at once on a democratic regime and neverescape from it. 

The chance, then, of efficiency coming to the front in this state ofaffairs is indeed deplorable. 

First and last, democracy--and it is natural enough--_wishes to doeverything itself_, it is the enemy of all specialisation of functions, particularly it wishes to govern, without delegates or intermediaries. Its ideal is direct government as it existed at Athens, its ideal is"democracy, " in the terminology of Rousseau, who applied the word todirect government and to direct government only. 

Forced by historical events and perhaps by necessity to govern bydelegates, how could democracy still contrive to govern directly ornearly so, although continuing to govern through delegates?

Its first alternative is, perhaps, to impose on its delegates animperative mandate. Delegates under this condition become mere agents ofthe people. They attend the legislative assembly to register the will ofthe people just as they receive it, and the people in reality governsdirectly. This is what is meant by the imperative mandate. 

Democracy has often considered it, but never with persistence. Herein itshows good sense. It has a shrewd suspicion that the imperative mandateis never more than a snare and a delusion. Representatives of the peoplemeet and discuss, the interests of party become defined. Henceforwardthey are the prey of the goddess Opportunity, the Greek {Kairos}. Then it happens one day that to vote according to their mandate would bevery unfavourable to the interest of their party. They are thereforeobliged to be faithless to their party by reason of their fidelity totheir mandate, or disobedient to their mandate by reason of theirobedience to their party; and in any case to have betrayed their mandatewith this very praiseworthy and excellent intention is a thing for whichthey can take credit or at least obtain excuse with the electors--and onsuch a matter it will be very difficult to refute them. 

The imperative mandate is therefore a very clumsy instrument for work ofa very delicate character. The democracy, instinctively, knows this verywell, and sets no great store by the imperative mandate. 

What other alternative is there for it? Something very much finer, thesubstance instead of the shadow. It can elect men who resemble itclosely, who follow its sentiments closely, who are in fact so nearlyidentical with itself that they may be trusted to do surely, instinctively, almost mechanically that which it would itself do, if itwere itself an immense legislative assembly. They would vote, withoutdoubt, according to circumstances, but also as their electors would voteif they were governing directly. In this way democracy preserves itslegislative power. It makes the law, and this is the only way it canmake it. 

Democracy, therefore, has the greatest inducement to electrepresentatives who are representative, who, in the first place, resemble it as closely as possible, who, in the second place, have noindividuality of their own, who finally, having no fortune of their own, have no sort of independence. 

We deplore that democracy surrenders itself to politicians, but from itsown point of view, a point of view which it cannot avoid taking up, itis absolutely right. What is a politician? He is a man who, in respectof his personal opinions, is a nullity, in respect of education, amediocrity, he shares the general sentiments and passions of the crowd, his sole occupation is politics, and if that career were closed to him, he would die of starvation. 

He is precisely the thing of which the democracy has need. 

He will never be led away by his education to develop ideas of his own;and having no ideas of his own, he will not allow them to enter intoconflict with his prejudices. His prejudices will be, at first by afeeble sort of conviction, afterwards by reason of his own interest, identical with those of the crowd; and lastly, his poverty and theimpossibility of his getting a living outside of politics make itcertain that he will never break out of the narrow circle where hispolitical employers have confined him; his imperative mandate is thematerial necessity which obliges him to obey; his imperative mandate ishis inability to quarrel with his bread and butter. 

Democracy obviously has need of politicians, has need of nothing elsebut politicians, and has need indeed that there shall be in politicsnothing else but politicians. 

Its enemy, or rather the man whom democracy dreads because he means togovern and does not intend to allow the mob to govern through him, isthe man who succeeds in getting elected for some constituency or other, either by the influence of his wealth or by the prestige of his talentand notoriety. Such a man is not dependent on democracy. If alegislative assembly were entirely or by a majority composed of richmen, men of superior intelligence, men who had an interest in attendingto the trades or professions in which they had succeeded rather than inplaying at politics, they would vote according to their own ideas, andthen--what would happen? Why then democracy would be simply suppressed. It would no longer legislate and govern; there would be, to speakexactly, an aristocracy, not very permanently established perhaps, butstill an aristocracy which would eliminate the influence of the peoplefrom public affairs. 

Clearly it is almost impossible for the democracy, if it means tosurvive, to encourage efficiency, nay it is almost impossible for it torefrain from attempting to destroy efficiency. 

Thus, we may sum up, only those are elected as the representatives ofthe people, who are its exact counterparts and constant dependents. 

CHAPTER II. 

CONFUSION OF FUNCTIONS. 

And what is the result of all this? The result, which is very logical, very just from the democratic point of view, and precisely that whichthe democracy desires and cannot do otherwise than desire, is that thenational representatives do exactly what the people would wish them todo, and what the people would do itself if it undertook to governdirectly itself. _The representative government wishes to do everythingitself_, just as the people would like to do, if it were itselfexercising the functions of government directly, just as it did in oldentimes on the Pnyx at Athens. 

Montesquieu realised this fully, though naturally he had no experienceof how the theory worked under a representative and parliamentarysystem. The principle of it all is at bottom the same, and only thechange of a single phrase is needed to make the following quotationstrictly applicable. "The principle of democracy, " he says, "isperverted not only when it loses the spirit of equality, but still more_when it carries the spirit of equality to an extreme, and when everyone wishes to be the equal of those whom he chooses to govern him_. Forthen the people, not being able to tolerate the authority which it hascreated, _wishes to do everything itself_, to deliberate for the Senate, to act for the magistrates, and to usurp the functions of the judges. The people wishes to exclude the magistrates from their functions, andthe magistrates naturally are no longer respected. The deliberations ofthe Senate are allowed to have no weight, and senators naturally fallinto contempt. "

Let us translate the foregoing passage into the language of to-day. Under democratic parliamentary government the representatives of thepeople are determined to do everything themselves. They must be equal tothose whom they choose for their rulers. They cannot tolerate theauthority which they have entrusted to the Government. They mustthemselves govern in the place of the Government, administer in theplace of the executive staff, substitute their own authority for thatof all the bench of judges, perform the duties of magistrates, and, in aword, throw off all regard and respect for persons and things. 

This is the true inwardness of the popular spirit, the will of thepeople which wishes to do everything itself, or what is the same thing, through its representatives, its faithful and servile creatures. 

From this point onwards efficiency is hunted and exterminated in everydirection; just as it was excluded in the election of representatives, so the representatives laboriously and continuously exclude it fromevery sort of office and employment under the public service. 

The Government, to begin our analysis of functional confusion at thetop, ought to be watched and advised by the national representatives, but it ought to be independent of the national representatives, at leastit ought not to be inextricably mixed up with them, in other words thenational representatives ought not to govern. Under democracy this isprecisely what they want to do. They elect the Government, a privilegewhich need not be denied them; but, "not being able to tolerate theauthority which they have created, " as soon as they have set it up, theyput pressure on it and insist on governing continuously in its place. The assembly of national representatives is not a body which makes laws, but a body which, by a never ending string of questions andinterruptions, _dictates_ from day to day to the Government what itought to do, that is to say, it is a body which governs. 

The country is governed, literally, by the Chamber of Deputies. _This isabsolutely necessary_ if, as the true spirit of the system requires, thepeople is to be governed by no one but itself, if there is to be no willat work other than the will of the people, emanating from itself andbringing back a sort of harvest of executive acts. Again, I repeat, thisis absolutely necessary, in order that there shall be nothing, not evenoriginating with the people, which, for a single moment and within themost narrowly defined limits, shall exercise the functions ofsovereignty over the sovereign people. 

This is all very well, but government is an art and we assume that thereis a science of government, and here we have the people governed bypersons who have neither science nor art, and who are chosen preciselybecause they have not these qualifications and on the guarantee thatthey have none of them!

Again, in a democracy of this kind, if there exist, as a result oftradition or of some necessity arising out of foreign relations, anauthority, independent for a certain term of years of the legislativeassembly, which has no accounts to render to it and which cannot bequestioned or constitutionally overthrown, that authority is so strange, and, if the phrase may pass, so monstrous an anomaly, that it dares notexercise its power, and dreads the scandal which it would raise byacting on its rights, and seems as it were paralysed with terror at thevery thought of its own existence. 

And its attitude is right; for if it exercised its powers, or even lentitself to any appearance of so doing, there at once would be an act ofwill which was not an act of the popular will, a theory altogethercontrary to the spirit of this system. For in this system the chief ofthe state can only be the nominal chief of the state. A will of his ownwould be an abuse of power, an idea of his own would be anencroachment, and a word of his own would be an act of high treason. 

It follows that, if the constitution has formally conferred thesepowers, the constitution on these points is a dead letter, because itcontravenes an unwritten constitution of higher authority, viz. , theinner inspiration of the political institution. 

One of these honorary chiefs of the state has said: "During all my termas president, I was constitutionally silent. " This is not correct, forthe constitution gave him leave to speak and even to act. At bottom itwas true, for the constitution, in allowing him to act and speak, wasacting unconstitutionally. In speaking he would have beenconstitutional, in holding his tongue he was _institutional_. He hadbeen in fact _institutionally_ silent. He disobeyed the letter of theconstitution, but he had admirably extracted its meaning from it, andunderstood and respected its spirit. 

Under democracy, then, the national representatives govern as directlyand as really as possible, dictating a policy to the executive andneutralising the supreme chief of the executive to whom it is not ableto dictate. 

The national representatives are not content with governing, they wishto administer. Now consider how it would be if the permanent officialsof finance, justice and police, etc. , depended solely on theirparliamentary chiefs, who are ministers only because they are thecreatures of the popular assembly, liable to instant and frequentdismissal; surely then, these officials, more permanent than theirchiefs, would form an aristocracy, and would administer the stateindependently of the popular will and according to their own ideas. 

This, of course, must not be allowed to happen. There must not be anywill but the people's will, no other power, however limited, but itsown. 

This causes a dilemma which is sufficiently remarkable. Here we seem tohave contrary results from the same cause. Since the popular assemblygoverns ministers, and frequently dismisses them, they are not able togovern their subordinates as did Colbert and Louvois, and thesesubordinates accordingly are very independent; so it comes about thatthe greater the authority which the popular assembly wields overministers, the more it is likely to lose in its control over thesubordinates of ministers, and in destroying one rival power it createsanother. 

The dilemma, however, is avoided easily enough. No public official isappointed without receiving its _visa_, and it contrives even to electthe administrative officials. In the first place, the nationalrepresentatives, in their corporate capacity, and in the central officesof government, watch most attentively the appointment of the permanentstaff, and further each single member of the representative governmentin his province, in his department, in his _arrondissement_ picks andchooses the candidates and really appoints the permanent staff. This is, of course, necessary, if the national will is to be paramount here aswell as elsewhere, and if the people is to secure servants of its owntype, if it is "to choose its own magistrates, " as Montesquieu said. 

The people, then, chooses its servants through the intervention of itsrepresentatives; and consider, to return to our point, how absolutelynecessary it is for it to secure representatives who are intellectuallythe exact image and imitation of itself. Everything dovetails neatlytogether. 

Here then we have the people interfering influentially in theappointment of the civil service. It continues "to do everythingitself. " Complaints are raised on all sides of this confusion ofpolitics with the business of administration, and indeed we hearcontinually that politics pervade everything. But what is the reason ofthis? It is the principle of the national sovereignty asserting itself. Politics, political power, means the will of the majority of the nation, and is it not fitting that the will of the majority should make itselffelt--indeed need we be surprised that it insists on making itselffelt--in the details of public business, as administered by thepermanent staff, as well as elsewhere? The ideal of democracy is thatthe people should elect its own rulers, or, if this is not its ideal, itis its idea, and this is what it does under a parliamentary democracythrough the intervention of its representatives. 

This is all very well, but efficiency has been dealt another blow. Forhow is a candidate to recommend himself for an office to whichappointment is made by the people and its representatives? By his merit?His chiefs and his fellow civil servants might be good judges of that;but the people or its representatives are much less capable of judging. 

"The people is admirably fitted to choose those to whom it has toentrust some part of its authority"; so Montesquieu; we must now examinethis saying a little more closely. What reasons does the philosophergive? "The people can only be guided by things of which it cannot beignorant, and which fall, so to speak, within its own observation. Itknows very well that a man has experience in war, and that he has hadsuch and such successes; it is therefore quite capable of electing ageneral. It knows that a judge is industrious, that many of those whoare litigants in his court go away satisfied, and that he has never beenconvicted of bribery, and this is enough to warrant it in appointing toany judicial office. It has been impressed by the magnificence or richesof some citizen, and this fits it for appointing an ædile. All thesethings are matters of fact about which the man in the street has betterknowledge than the king in his palace. "

This passage, I confess, does not appear to be convincing. Why shouldnot a king in his palace know of the riches of a financier, thereputation of a judge or the success of a colonel just as well as theman in the street? There is no difficulty in getting information aboutsuch things. The people knows that such an one was always a good judgeand such another always an excellent officer. Therefore it is qualifiedto appoint a general or a high-court judge or other officer of the law. So be it, but for the selection of a young judge or a young and untriedofficer what special source of information has the people? I cannot findthat it has any. In this very argument, Montesquieu limits thecompetence of the people to the election of the great chiefs, and of themost exalted magistrates, and indeed further confines the popularprerogative in this matter to assigning an office and career to one whohas already given proof of his capacity. But for putting the competentman for the first time in the place where he is wanted, how has thepeople any special instinct or information? Montesquieu shows that thepeople can recognise ability when it has been proved, but he saysnothing to show that it recognises readily nascent, unproved talent. Theargument of Montesquieu is not here conclusive. 

He has been led astray, it seems to me, by his desire to present hisargument antithetically (using the term in its logical sense). What hereally wished to prove was not so much the truth of the proposition thathe was then advancing, but the falsity of quite another proposition. Thequestion for him, the question which he had in his mind, was as follows:Is the people capable of governing the state, of taking measuresbeforehand, and of understanding and solving the difficulties of homeand foreign affairs? By no means. Then is it fit to elect its ownmagistrates? Well, it might do that. Thus he had been led away by thisantithesis so far as to say: Able to govern?--Certainly not! Able toelect its own magistrates? Admirably! The explanation of the wholeparagraph which I have just quoted lies in the conclusion, which runs asfollows: "All these things are matters of fact about which the man inthe street has better knowledge than the king in his palace. _But_ canthe people pursue a policy and know how to avail itself of the places, occasions, and times when action will be profitable? No! certainlynot. "

The truth is that the people is a little better fitted to choose amagistrate than to undertake a policy for the gradual humbling of theHouse of Austria. But not very much so, as it is only a little moredifficult to humble the House of Austria, than it is to discover the manwho is able to do it. 

The masses are particularly incapable of making initial appointments andof giving promotion in the early stages of a career to those who deserveit. Yet in a democracy this is what they are constantly doing. 

Again, by what means has the candidate for civil service employment, whois favoured by the people and its representatives, earned theirapproval? By his merit, of which the people and its representatives arevery bad judges? No! By what then? By his conformity to the generalviews of the people; that is, by the subserviency of his politicalopinions. The political opinions of a candidate for civil serviceemployment are the only things which mark him out to the popular choicebecause they are the only subjects on which the people is a good judge. 

Yes, but the subserviency of his political opinions may be combinedwith real merit. True, but this is a mere matter of chance. The peopleis not, perhaps, in this particular matter consciously hostile toefficiency, rather it is indifferent, or ignores the qualificationaltogether. Indeed, there is no great compliment paid to efficiency insuch transactions. 

Here is what inevitably happens. The candidate for a permanentappointment who is not conscious of possessing any particular merit isnot slow to realise that it is by his political opinions that he willsucceed, and he naturally professes those which are wanted. Thecandidate who is conscious of merit, very often knowing very well whatless meritorious competitors are about, and not wishing to be beaten, also professes the same useful opinions. There we have that "infectionof evil, " which M. Renouvier has explained so admirably in his _Sciencede la Morale_. 

First, then, we see how most of the candidates chosen by the mandatoriesof the people are incapable; others who are chosen in spite of theircapacity are men of indifferent character; and character, we must admit, in all or nearly all public careers is a necessary part of efficiency. 

There remains a small number of meritorious persons who have neveridentified themselves with current political opinions, and who haveslipped into public employment, thanks to some brief moment ofinattention on the part of the politicians. These intruders sometimesget on by the mere force of circumstances, but they never reach thehighest posts which are always reserved, as indeed is proper andfitting, for those in whom the people has put its trust. 

This is how the people administers as well as governs through theintervention of the representative system, dictating to ministers thepolicy and the details of government. 

--I realise, some one here will object, that administrators arenominated by the people, but I do not see how the affairs of the countryare actually administered by the people. --

Well, I will tell you. In the first place, by nominating officials it isalready far on the road to controlling them, for it infuses into thebody of the permanent civil service the spirit of the people to theexclusion of every other source of inspiration, and effectually preventsthe civil service from becoming an aristocracy as otherwise it hasalways a tendency to do. Next, the people does not confine itself toelecting its administrators, it watches and spies on them, keeps them inleading strings, and just as the popular representatives dictate toministers the details of government, so also they dictate toadministrators the details of administration. 

A _préfet_, a _procureur-général_, an engineer-in-chief under democraticrule is a much harassed man. He has to play his own hand against hisministerial chief and the deputies of his district. He ought to obey theminister, but he has also to obey the deputies of the district which headministers. In this connection curious points arise and situations nota little complicated. The _préfet_ owes obedience to the deputies and tothe minister, and the minister obeys the deputies, and it mighttherefore have been supposed that there was only one will, the willwhich the _préfet_ obeyed. But what the minister has to obey is thegeneral will of the popular representatives, and it is this will that hetransmits for the allegiance of the _préfet_; but then the _préfet_finds himself colliding against the individual wills of the deputies ofhis district. The result is what we may call conflicts of obediencewhich have extraordinary interest for the psychologist, but which areless agreeable for the _préfet_, the engineer-in-chief, or the_procureur-général_. 

We note then, in the first place, how everything concurs to make therepresentative of the popular will as incompetent as he is omnipotent. Incompetent he undoubtedly is, as we have already seen, to start with, and _if he were not so already_, he would certainly become so by reasonof the trade or rather of the miscellaneous assortment of trades whichare thrust upon him. The surest way of making a man incompetent is tomake him Jack-of-all-trades, for then he will be master of none. In thenext place, the representative of the popular will and spirit, besideshis trade of legislator, has to cross-examine ministers and to dictateto them the details of their duty, that is to say, he has to busyhimself in all home and foreign politics. He has also to administer, bychoosing and watching administrators and by controlling and inspiringtheir actions. Without saying anything of the small individual serviceswhich it is his interest to render to his constituents and which hisconstituents are by no means backward in demanding, he looks on himselfas responsible for the conduct of things in general. He becomes a sortof universal foreman, not a man, but a man-orchestra, a busybody, sobusy that he can apply himself to nothing. He cannot study, or think, orinvestigate, or, to speak accurately, acquire any sense at all. 

If he be efficient in some particular subject, when he enters on hispublic career, he becomes hopelessly inefficient in all subjects after afew years of public life, and then, void of all individuality, heremains nothing but a public man, that is, a man representing thepopular will and never thinking, or able to think, of anything but howto make that will prevail. 

And, to press the point again, this is all that is wanted of him; forcan you conceive a representative of the popular will, who had somehowpreserved a measure of competence in financial or judicialadministration, who would prefer, before other candidates, not apolitical partisan but a man of merit, knowledge and aptitude, and whowould even approve in an administrator not acts of political partialitybut acts that are just and in conformity with the interests of thestate? Why! Such a man would be a detestable servant in the eyes ofdemocracy. 

Yes, and I have known such a man. He was not wanting in intelligence orwit and he was honest. A lawyer, he was naturally interested inpolitics. For local reasons he had failed to be elected as deputy or assenator. Tired of fighting, he obtained a judicial appointment by theinfluence of his political friends. He became president of court. A casewas brought before him where the accused, a person not perhaps ofaltogether blameless life, was clearly not guilty of any indictableoffence. The accused, however, a former _préfet_, appointed by agovernment now become very unpopular, and known as a reactionary and anaristocrat, was pursued by the animosity of the whole democraticpopulation of the town and province. The president, in the face ofopenly expressed hostility in court, acquitted him. In the evening thepresident remarked, not without a touch of humour: "There, that servesthem right for not making me a senator!" In other words: "If they hadaccepted me as a politician, they would have made me a fool, or atleast paralysed my efficiency. But they would not have it; so here I am, a man who knows the law and applies it. So much the worse for them!"

"By making a man a slave Zeus took from him half his soul. " So Homer. Bymaking a man a politician, Demos takes from him his whole soul, and inomitting to make him a politician, it is foolish enough to leave him hissoul. 

This is why Demos hates a permanent civil service. An irremovablemagistrate or functionary is a man whom the constitution sets free fromthe grip of the populace. An irremovable official is a man enfranchised, a free man. Demos does not love free men. 

This will explain why in every nation where it is paramount, democracysuspends from time to time the irremovable independent official elementwherever it is found. The object is nominally to clarify and filter the_personnel_ of the official world; but really it is intended to teachthe officials whom it spares, that their permanence is only veryrelative and that, like every one else, they have to reckon with thesovereignty of the people which will turn and rend them if theyventure to be too independent. 

According to the constitution of 1873 there were irremovable senators inFrance. In the interest of good government, this was perhaps a soundarrangement. The irremovable senators, in the scheme of theconstitution, were intended to be, and in fact were, political andadministrative veterans from whose knowledge, efficiency and experiencetheir colleagues were to profit. The plan, from this point of view, might have worked well if the irremovable senators had not been electedby their colleagues but had become so by right; for example every formerPresident of the Republic, every former president of the _Cour deCassation_, every former president of the Court of Appeal, everyadmiral, every archbishop might _ex officio_ have been raised to therank of senator for life. From the democratic point of view, however, itwas regarded as a positive outrage that there should exist arepresentative of the people who had not to render account to thepeople, a representative of the people who had nothing to fear from theaccidents of re-election, no risk of failing to secure re-election, inother words that a man should be elected for his supposed efficiency, in no sense representing the people but himself alone. 

Permanent senators were abolished. Obviously they constituted apolitical aristocracy, founded on the pretence of services rendered, andthe Senate which elected them also fell under the taint of aristocraticleanings since at that time it recruited its members by co-optation. This of course could not be tolerated. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE REFUGES OF EFFICIENCY. 

Will efficiency then, you may well ask, when driven out of all publicemployment, find refuge somewhere? Certainly it will. In privateemployments and in employments paid by public companies. Barristers, solicitors, doctors, business men, manufacturers and authors are notpaid by the state, nor are engineers, mechanics, railway employees; andso far from their efficiency being a bar to their employment, it istheir most valuable asset. When a man consults his lawyer or his medicaladviser he obviously has no interest in their politics, and when arailway company chooses an engineer, it enquires into his qualificationsand ability and is quite indifferent as to whether his political viewscoincide with the general mentality of the people. 

It is for this reason, or at least partly for this reason, thatdemocracy tries to nationalise all employment, as a step in thedirection of the nationalisation of everything. For instance it canpartly nationalise the medical profession by establishing appointmentsfor doctors, at relief offices, schools, and _lycées_. It can alsopartly nationalise the legal profession by appointing state-paidprofessors of law. 

Already the State has considerable control over this class of person, for most of them have relations in government employment, whom they donot wish to bring into bad odour by seeming hostile to the opinions ofthe majority. The State, however, wants to hold them in still tightercontrol by seizing every opportunity of nationalising and socialisingthem more completely. 

The State wants also to destroy all large associations, and to absorbtheir activities. The state purchase of a railway, for instance, is, inthe first place, a means of exploiting the company; for there is alwaysa hope that the State will be able to filch something out of thetransaction; but its chief recommendation lies in the fact that itsuppresses a whole army of the company's officials and employees, whowere under no obligation to please the Government, and who had no otherinterest but to do their work properly. The State will thus transformthis free population into government employees, whose primary duty is tobe docile and subservient. 

Under the extreme form and under the complete form of this regime, thatis to say under socialism, everyone will be a government official. 

Consequently, say the Socialist theorists, all the alleged drawbacksabove mentioned will disappear. The State, the democracy, the dominantparty, whatever you choose to call it, will no longer be obliged toselect its servants, as you say it does, by reason of their subservienceand their incompetence, because every citizen will be an official. Thustoo will disappear that dual social system, under which half thepopulation lives on the State, while the other half is independent, andprides itself on its superiority in character, in intelligence and inefficiency. Socialism solves the problem. 

I do not agree. Under socialism, the electoral system, and, therefore, the party system will still exist. The citizens will choose thelegislators, the legislators will choose the Government, and theGovernment will choose the directors of labour and the distributors ofthe means of subsistence. Parties, that is, combinations of interests, will still exist, and each party will want to capture the legislature inorder to secure the election, from its own number, of the directors oflabour and the distributors of the means of subsistence. These directorsand distributors will be the new aristocrats of socialism, and they willbe expected to arrange "soft jobs" and ampler rations for the members oftheir own group or party. 

Except that wealth and the last vestiges of liberty have beensuppressed, nothing has been changed, and all the objections abovementioned still hold. There is no solution here. 

If it were a solution, then the socialist government could not longremain elective. It would have to reign by divine right, like theJesuits in Paraguay. It would have to be a despotism, not only in itspolicy but in its origin, in fact a monarchy. No intelligent king hasany inducement to choose incompetent men as his officials. His interestwould lead him to do exactly the opposite. You will say that anintelligent king is a very rare, even an abnormal thing. I readilyagree. Except in a very few instances, which history records withamazement, a king has exactly the same reasons as the people forselecting as his favourites men who will not eclipse nor contradict him, and who consequently seldom turn out to be the best of citizens eitherin respect of intelligence or character. Elective socialism and despoticsocialism have the same faults as democracy as we understand the term. 

Besides, in truth, the drift of democracy towards socialism is nothingbut a reversion to despotism. If socialism were established, it wouldbegin by being elective, and as every elective system lives and breathesand has its being in the party system, the dominant party would electthe legislature, consequently it would constitute the Government andwould extort from that Government, simply because it has the power toextort it, every conceivable form of privilege. Exploitation of thecountry by the majority would result, as in every country where electivegovernment prevails. 

A socialist government therefore is primarily an oligarchy of directorsof labour and distributors of subsistence. It is a very close oligarchy, for those beneath it are quite defenceless, levelled down to anequality of poverty and misery. It is a form of government verydifficult to replace, for it holds in its hands the threads of such anintricate organisation that it must be protected against crude attemptsto change it, and so it tends to be a permanent oligarchy. It wouldtherefore concentrate very quickly round a leader, or at any rate, relegate to the second rank the national representatives and theelectorate. 

Such a course of events would be very similar to what occurred under theFirst Empire in France, when the military caste eclipsed and domineeredover everything. It became continuously necessary to the State, andthough that necessity passed away, it was soon recalled. The caste thenclosed its ranks round the leader who gave it unity, and the strength ofunity. 

 * * * * *

So under socialism, more slowly and perhaps after the lapse of ageneration, the directors of labour and the distributors of food, peaceful Janissaries of the new order, would form themselves into acaste, very close, very coherent, and (unlike legislators for whom anexecutive council can always be substituted), quite indispensable, andwould close their ranks round a chief who would give them unity and thestrength of unity. 

Before we knew socialism, we used to say that democracy tended naturallyto despotism. The situation seems somewhat changed, and we might now saythat it tends to socialism: really nothing has changed. For in tendingtowards socialism it is towards despotism that it tends. Socialism isnot conscious of this, for it imagines that it is journeying towardsequality, but out of these utopias of equality it is ever despotism thatemerges. 

But this is a digression which refers to the future; let us return tothe matter in hand. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE COMPETENT LEGISLATOR. 

Democracy, in its modern form, encroaches first upon the executive andthen upon the administrative authorities, and reduces them to subjectionby means of its delegates, the legislators, whom it chooses in its ownimage, that is to say, because they are incompetent and governed bypassion, just as in the words of Montesquieu, though he perhapscontradicts himself a little: "The people is moved only by itspassions. "

What ought then the character of the legislator to be? The veryopposite, it seems to me, of the democratic legislator, for he ought tobe well informed and entirely devoid of prejudice. 

He ought to be well informed, but his information should not consistonly of book learning, although an extensive legal knowledge is of thegreatest use, as it will prevent him from doing, as so often happens, the exact opposite of what he intends to do. He should also understandintimately the temperament and character of the people for whom helegislates. 

For a nation should only be given the laws and commandments that it cantolerate, as Solon said: "I have given them the best laws that theycould endure, " and the God of Israel said to the Jews: "I have given youprecepts which are not good, " that is to say, they have only thegoodness which your wickedness will tolerate. "This is the sponge, " saysMontesquieu, "which wipes out all the difficulties that can be raisedagainst the laws of Moses. "

The legislator, then, ought to understand the temperament and genius ofthe people because he has to frame its laws. As the Germans say, heought to be an expert on the psychology of races. Further, he ought tounderstand the temperament, peculiarities and character of the people, without sharing its temperament himself. For where the passions andinclinations are concerned, experience is not knowledge. On thecontrary, experience prevents us from really knowing; and indeed one ofthe conditions of knowledge is absence of an experience which may beanother word for bias. 

The ideal legislator, or indeed any legislator worthy of the name, oughtto understand the general tendencies of his people, but he ought to beable to view them from a position of detachment and to be able tocontrol them, because it is his business partly to satisfy and partly tocombat these tendencies. 

_He has partly to satisfy them_, or at least, to consider them, becausea law which outraged the national temperament would be like Roland'smare, which had every conceivable good quality with this one seriousdefect, that she was dead, and born dead. Suppose the Romans had beengiven an international law decreeing respect for conquered peoples, itwould have been a dead letter, and by a sort of contagion it would haveled to the neglect of other laws. Suppose the French were given aliberal law, a law prescribing respect for the individual rights of theman and the citizen. Liberty, the object of such a law, is for theFrench, as Baron Joannès has remarked: "The right of each man to do whathe likes and to prevent other men from doing what they like. " In Francesuch a law would never obtain any but a very grudging allegiance, and itwould certainly lead to the neglect of other laws. 

The legislator ought therefore to understand the natural idiosyncrasiesof his people in order to know how far he dare venture to oppose them. 

_Partly he must combat them_, because law should be to a nation, orotherwise it is merely a police regulation, what the moral law is to anindividual. Law should be a restraint imposed continuously in the hopeof future improvements. It should be a curb on dangerous passions andinjurious desires. It should aid the warfare of enlightened selfishnessagainst the selfishness of which all are ashamed. That is whatMontesquieu meant when he said that morals should correct climate, andlaws should correct morals. 

The law, therefore, to a certain extent should correct nationaltendencies, it should be loved a little because it is felt to be just, feared a little because it is severe, hated a little because it is to acertain degree out of sympathy with the prevalent temper of the day, andrespected because it is felt to be necessary. 

This is the law that the legislator has to frame, and therefore he oughtto have expert knowledge of the genius of the people for whom helegislates. He must understand both those tendencies which will resistand those which will welcome him. He must know how far he can gounopposed and how much he can venture without forfeiting his authority. 

This is the principal and essential qualification for the legislator. 

The second, as we said before, is that he must be impartial. The veryessence of the legislator is that he should have moderation, that virtueon which Cicero set so high a value, which is so rare, if we look to itsreal meaning, _the perfect balance of soul and mind_. "It seems to me, "said Montesquieu: "_and I have written this book solely to prove it_, that the spirit of moderation is essential in a legislator, forpolitical, as well as moral right, lies between two extremes. "

Nothing is more difficult for a man than to control his passions, ormore difficult for a legislator than to control the passions of thepeople of whom he forms a part, to say nothing of his own. "Aristotle, "says Montesquieu, "wanted to gratify, first, his jealousy of Plato andthen his love for Alexander. Plato was horrified at the tyranny of theAthenians. Machiavel was full of his idol, the Duke of Valentinois. Thomas More, who was wont to speak of what he had read rather than ofwhat he had thought, wanted to govern every state upon the model of aGreek city. Harrington could think of nothing but an English republic, while hosts of writers thought confusion must reign wherever there wasno monarchy. Laws are always in contact with the passions and prejudicesof the legislator, whether these are his alone, or common to him and tohis people. Sometimes they pass through and merely take colour from theprejudice of the day, sometimes they succumb to it and make it part ofthemselves. "

This is just the opposite of what should be. The legislator should be tothe people what conscience is to the heart of the individual. He shouldunderstand its besetting passions in all their bearings and not bedeceived by subterfuge or hypocrisy. Sometimes he must attack themboldly, sometimes play off one against another, or favour one at theexpense of another which is less influential, now yielding ground, nowrecovering it, but he must ever be skilful and impartial and never beintimidated, diverted from his purpose, nor deceived by his naturalenemies. 

He should be, so to speak, more conscientious than conscience itself, because he must never forget that he has to obey to-morrow the law whichhe makes to-day--_semel jussit semper paruit_. He must, therefore, beabsolutely disinterested, a thing most difficult for him, but for whichconscience requires no effort. 

Not only must he be without passion, but he must have trained himself tobe impervious to passion, which is much more. We must conceive of him asa conscience that has risen from the ashes of passion. 

As Rousseau said, "to discover the perfect ruler for human society wemust find a superior intelligence who has seen all the passions of manbut has experienced none of them, who has had no sort of relations withour nature but who knows it to the core, whose happiness is notdependent on us, but who wishes to promote our welfare, in a word, onewho aims at a distant renown, in a remote future, and who is content tolabour in one age and to enjoy in another. "

This is why the ingenious Greeks imagined certain legislators going intoexile to some remote and unknown retreat, as soon as they had made thepeople adopt and swear obedience to their laws until their return. Itmay have been to bind the citizens by this oath, but is it not equallyprobable that they wished to escape from the laws which they themselveshad made? Possibly they felt that they could make them all the stricterwith the prospect of being able to evade obedience of them by flight. 

Proudhon said: "I dream of a republic so liberal that in it I shall beguillotined as a reactionary. " Lycurgus was perhaps like Proudhon, inthat he founded so severe a republic that he knew he could not liveunder it and resolved to leave it as soon as it was established. Solonand Sylla remained in the states to which they had given laws; we musttherefore place them higher than Lycurgus who has perhaps this excusefor himself that in all probability he never existed at all. 

But the legend remains to show that the legislator should be sosuperior to his own passions and to the passions of his people, that, aslegislator, he should make laws before which, as a man, he should standin awe. 

This moderation, in the sense in which we use the term, has sometimesled the legislator to suggest or insinuate laws rather than impose them. This is not always possible, but it is so occasionally. Montesquieutells us the following of St. Louis: "Seeing the manifold abuses ofjustice in his time he endeavoured to make them unpopular. He made manyregulations for the courts in his own domain, and in those of hisbarons, and he was so successful, that only a short time after his deathhis methods were adopted in the courts by many of his nobles. Thus thisprince attained his object, although his regulations were notpromulgated as a general law for the whole kingdom, but merely as anexample which any one might follow in his own interest. He got rid of anevil by making patent the better way. When men saw in his courts and inthose of his nobles more reasonable and natural forms of procedure, moreconformable to religion and morality, more favourable to publictranquillity and to the security of persons and property, they adoptedthe substance and abandoned the shadow. _To suggest where you cannotcompel, to guide where you cannot demand, that is the supreme form ofskill. _"

Montesquieu adds with some optimism though no doubt the idea isencouraging: "Reason has a natural empire, we resist it, but it triumphsover our resistance; we persist in error for a time but we always haveto return to it. "

The instance above quoted is very remote, and can hardly be applied toanything in our day. But consider, for instance, the law of Sundayobservance which has been revived from the ecclesiastical law. It was amistake to include it in the Code because it was antagonistic to manyFrench customs, and, in many ways, to the national temperament. Theresult is what might have been expected, namely, that it has only beencarried out in rare instances, and with an infinity of trouble. It mighthave been made the subject of an edict without being included in theCode. The State might have given a holiday on Sunday to all itsofficials, employees and workmen. It might have been made quite clearsimply by a circular from the Minister of Justice that a workman wouldnot be punished for breach of contract by refusing to work on a Sunday. The law of a weekly day of rest would then have existed, without beingformally promulgated, and would have been limited precisely where itshould be, by agreement between masters and men who would submit toworking on Sundays when they saw that it was necessary and inevitable. Moreover this law would be strong enough to modify without destroyingthe ancient customs of the people. 

Here is another instance which occurs within the law laid down by theCode, where the legislator makes use of a method of suggestion andrecommendation. Early in the nineteenth century the legislatorconsidered that it was seemly for a husband who surprised his wife inadultery to kill both her and her accomplice. The sentiment is perhapsquestionable, but at all events, it was current. Was it given legalsanction? No, not precisely. It is inserted in the law in the form of aninsinuation, a discreet recommendation and affectionate encouragement. The legislator wrote these words: "In _flagrante delicto_ murder isexcusable. " I am not approving the sentiment, but only this manner ofindicating rather than enforcing the law and what is thought to be awholesome practice, and in other instances I should think it excellent. 

Finally, one of the essential qualities of the legislator is to showdiscretion in changing existing laws, and for this purpose he should beimmune from the passions of men or at all events complete master ofthose which beset him. For law has no real authority unless it isancient. Where a law is merely a custom which has become law, it isinvested with considerable authority from the first, because it gainsstrength by the antiquity of the original custom. When on the other handa law is not an old custom but runs counter to custom, then, before itcan have any authority, it must grow old and become a custom itself. 

In both cases it is on its antiquity that the law must depend for itsstrength. The law is like a tree, at first it is a tender sapling, thenit grows up, its bark hardens, and its roots go deep into the ground andcling to the rock. 

We ought to consider carefully before we venture to replace the foresttree by the young sapling. "Most legislators, " said Usbek to Rhédi, [A]"have been men of limited abilities, owing their position to a stroke offortune, and consulting nothing but their own whims and prejudices. Theyhave often abolished established laws quite unnecessarily, and plungednations into the chaos that is inseparable from change. It is true that, owing to some odd chance arising out of the nature rather than out ofthe intelligence of mankind, it is sometimes necessary to alter laws, but the case is very rare and when it does arise it should be handledwith a reverent touch. When it is a question of changing the law, muchceremony should be observed, and many precautions taken, in order thatthe people may be naturally persuaded that laws are sacred things, andthat many formalities must precede any attempt to alter them. "

In this passage, as so often elsewhere, Montesquieu is quiteAristotelian, for Aristotle wrote: "It is evident that at times certainlaws must be changed, but this requires great circumspection for, whenthere is little to be gained thereby, inasmuch as it is dangerous thatcitizens should be accustomed to find it easy to change the law, it isbetter to leave a few errors in our magisterial and legislativearrangements than to accustom the people to constant change. Thedisadvantage of having constant changes in the law is greater than anyrisk that we run of contracting a habit of disobedience to the law. " Forthe law assuredly will be disobeyed, if we regard it as ephemeral, unstable, and always on the point of being changed. 

Some knowledge of the laws of the most important nations, a profoundknowledge of the temperament, character, sentiments, passions, opinions, prejudices and customs of the nation to which he belongs, moderation ofheart and mind, judgment, impartiality, coolness, nay even a measure ofstolidity, these are the attributes of the ideal legislator. Rather theyare the necessary qualifications of every man who purposes to frame agood law; they are, indeed, the elementary attributes of a legislator. 

We have seen that it is the very opposite quality that democracy likesand expects of its legislators. It selects incompetent and almostinvariably ignorant men, I have explained why; and its nominees are of adouble distilled incompetence in that their passions would certainlyneutralise their efficiency if they possessed any. 

Further we have to observe this curious fact. So entirely does democracychoose its legislators, because they are dominated by passion, and notin spite of the fact, chooses them indeed precisely for the reasons forwhich it ought to reject them, that any moderate, clear-headed, practical man who wants to be elected and make use of his powers, has tostart by dissembling his moderation, and by making a noisy display offactious violence. If he wants to be nominated to a post where it willbe his business to defend and guarantee public security, he has to beginby advocating civil war: to become a peacemaker he must first pose as arebel. 

Every popular favourite passes through these two phases, and has tocomplete one stage before he starts on the next. Is it not better, youwill ask, that a man's whole career should be spent in defence of lawand order rather than the latter part of it? Not at all, because youcannot exercise any influence as a friend of law and order unless youhave begun as an anarchist. 

These changes of opinion occur so frequently that they merely raise asmile. They have, however, this drawback, that the friend of law andorder, with a seditious past, never has an undisputed authority, and hespends half his time explaining the reasons for his defection, and thisis a sore let and hindrance to his subsequent career. 

The people always elects men swayed by real or simulated passion. Thesewill either always remain in a state of frenzied excitement, and theyare the great majority, or they will become moderate men, largelydisqualified and handicapped, as we have above shown, for their newcareer. The vast majority of these sentimentalists rush into politicsinstead of studying them with deliberation, judgment and wisdom. Thecanons of good government as above set out are entirely subverted. Thelaw does not control and restrain the passions of the populace. Legislation becomes little more than an expression of their frenzy, aseries of party measures levelled by one faction against the other. Theintroduction of a bill is a challenge; the passing of an act is avictory; definitions which at once damn the legislator, and convict thesystem. 

[A] Characters in Montesquieu's _Lettres Persanes_. Lettercxxix. 

CHAPTER V. 

LAWS UNDER DEMOCRACY. 

The truth of my contention is proved by the fact that nowadays all ourlaws are emergency laws, a thing that no law should ever be. Montesquieuadvised people to be very chary and to think twice before they destroyedold laws or pulled down an old house to run up a tent, but his advice iscompletely ignored. New laws are made for every change in the weather, for every little daily incident in politics. We are getting used to thishand-to-mouth legislation. Like the barbarian warrior, of whomDemosthenes tells us, who always protected that portion of his personwhich had just received a blow, holding his shield up to his shoulder, when his shoulder had been struck, down again to his thigh when the blowfell there, the dominant faction only makes laws to protect itselfagainst an adversary who is, or is thought to be, already in the field, or it introduces a hurried, ill-digested reform under the pressure of analleged scandal. 

If an aspirant to the tyranny, as they used to say in Athens, isnominated deputy in too many constituencies, instantly a law is passedprohibiting multiple candidatures. For the same reason, for fear of thesame man, _scrutin de liste_ is hurriedly replaced by _scrutind'arrondissement_. [B]

If an accused woman is supposed to have been ill-treated at herexamination, taken too abruptly before the interrogatory of thepresident, or if the counts are ineptly set out by the publicprosecutor, instantly the whole of the criminal procedure is radicallyreformed. 

It is the same everywhere. The legislative workshops turn out only "thelatest novelties" of the season. Or perhaps a newspaper would be a stillbetter simile. First there is the 'interpellation, '[C] once at leastevery day; that corresponds to the leading article. Then there arequestions for ministers on this, that and the other trivial occurrence;that is the serial or short story. Then there is a bill brought in aboutsomething that happened the night before, that is the special article. Then some deputy assaults his neighbour, this is the general newscolumn. 

You could not have a more faithful representation of the country. Everything that happens in the morning is dealt with in the evening asit might be in the village pot-house. The legislative chamber is anexaggerated reflection of the gossiping public. Now it ought not to be acopy of the country, it ought to be its soul and brain. But when anational representative assembly represents only the passions of thepopulace it cannot be otherwise than what it is. 

In other words modern democracy _is not governed by laws_ but bydecrees, for emergency laws are no better than decrees. A law is anancient heritage, consecrated by long usage, which men obey withoutstopping to think whether it be law or custom. It forms part of acoherent, harmonious and logical whole. A law improvised for anemergency is merely a decree. This is one of the things that Aristotlesaw better than any one. He comments frequently upon the essential andfundamental distinction between the two, and explains how it is asdangerous to misunderstand as to ignore it. I quote the passage in whichhe brings this out most forcibly: "A fifth form of democracy is that inwhich not the law but the multitude has the supreme power, andsupersedes the law by its decrees. This is a state of affairs broughtabout by the demagogues. For in democracies which are subject to thelaw, the best citizens hold the first place and there are no demagogues;but where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up. For thepeople becomes a monarch and is many in one; and the many have the powerin their hands, not as individuals but collectively. .. . And the people, who is now a monarch, and no longer under the control of law, seeks toexercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot; the flatterer isheld in honour; this sort of democracy being relatively to otherdemocracies what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy. 

"The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic ruleover the better citizens. The decrees of the Demos correspond to theedicts of the tyrant, and the demagogue is to the one what the flattereris to the other. Both have great power--the flatterer with the tyrant, the demagogue with democracies of the kind which we are describing. Thedemagogues make the decrees of the people override the laws, and referall things to the popular assembly. And therefore they grow great, because the people has all things in its hands and they hold in theirhands the votes of the people, who is too ready to listen to them. Sucha democracy is fairly open to the objection that it is not aconstitution at all; for _where the laws have no authority there is noconstitution_. The law ought to be supreme over all. So that ifdemocracy be a real form of government, _the sort of constitution inwhich all things are regulated by decrees is clearly not a democracy inthe true sense of the word_, for decrees relate only to particulars. "

This distinction between true law, that is to say, venerable law, framedto endure, part of a co-ordinate scheme of legislation, and an emergencylaw which is merely a decree like the wishes of a tyrant, constitutesthe whole difference, if we could realise it, between the sociologistsof antiquity and those of to-day. By the term Law, the ancient and themodern sociologists mean two different things and this is the reason forso many misunderstandings. When he speaks of law, the modern sociologistmeans the expression of the general will at such and such a date, 1910for instance. The ancient sociologist would consider that the expressionof the general will in the second year of the 73rd Olympiad was not lawat all, but a decree. A law to him would be a paragraph of thelegislation of Solon, Lycurgus or Charondas. Whenever in a Greek orRoman political treatise we meet the expression--"a State governed bylaws, " the only way to translate it is--"a State governed by a veryancient and immutable legislation. " This gives the true meaning to thefamous personification of laws in the Phædo, which would be quitemeaningless if the Greeks had understood what we do by the term. Arelaws the expression of the general will of the people? If so why shouldSocrates have respected them, he who despised the people to the day hewas condemned? It would be absurd. These laws which Socrates respectedwere not the decrees of the people contemporary with Socrates; they werethe ancient gods of the city, which had protected it from the earliestdays. 

These laws may err in that they seemed to sanction the verdict thatcondemned Socrates to death, but they were honourable, venerable andinviolate, because they had been the guardians of the city forcenturies, and guardians of Socrates himself until the day when theywere misapplied against him. 

A "constitution, " therefore, to adopt Aristotle's terminology, is aState which obeys laws, that is to say, laws framed by its ancestors. 

It is, then, an aristocracy, for it is even more aristocratic to obeyour ancestors themselves by obeying the thoughts which they embedded inlegislation, five centuries ago, than to obey the inheritors of theirtradition, the aristocrats of to-day. For aristocrats of to-day belongonly partly to tradition, in that they live in the present. Whereas afifteenth century law belongs to the fifteenth century and to no otherperiod. To obey law as understood by the ancient sociologists, did notmean obeying Scipio who has just passed us on the _Via Sacra_. It meantto obey his grandfather's great grandfather! All this isultra-aristocratic. 

Precisely! _Law is an aristocratic thing;_ only _the emergency law_, the_decree_, is democratic. For this reason Montesquieu always speaks of amonarchy as being limited, and, at the same time, maintained by its law. What did this mean in his day, when there was no "expression of thegeneral will" to limit monarchy, and when royalty possessed legislativepower, and could at will make and remake laws? It could only mean onething, namely, that Montesquieu's conception of law was the same as thatof the ancient sociologists, --law far older than his time, "fundamentallaws" as he calls them, of the ancient monarchy, which still bind andought so to bind the monarch, whose rule without them would be despotismor anarchy. Law is essentially aristocratic. It ordains that rulersshould govern the people, and that the dead should govern the rulers. The very essence of aristocracy is the rule of those who have lived overthose who live, for the benefit of those who shall live hereafter. Aristocracy, properly so called, is an aristocracy in the flesh. Law isa spiritual aristocracy. Aristocracy, as represented by the aristocratsof to-day, only represents the dead by tradition, inheritance, education, physiological heredity of temperament and characteristics. Law does not represent the dead, it is the dead themselves, it is theirvery thought perpetuated in immutable script. 

A nation is aristocratic both in form and spirit which preserves its oldaristocracy and maintains its vitality by careful infusions of newblood. Still more is that nation aristocratic which maintains its oldlegislation inviolate, adding to it, reverently and discreetly, new lawswhich combine something of the modern spirit with the spirit of the old. _Homines novi, novæ res. Homo novus_ means the man without ancestors whois worthy to be added to the ranks of the nobly born. _Novæ res_ arethings without antecedents, nay revolution itself. _Novæ res_ shouldonly be introduced partially gradually, insensibly and progressivelyinto ancient things, as "new men" into the community of the oldnobility. Law is more aristocratic than aristocracy itself, hencedemocracy is the natural enemy of laws and can only tolerate decrees. 

Our examination of modern democracy has brought us to the followingconclusions. The representation of the country is reserved for theincompetent and also for those biassed by passion, who are doublyincompetent. The representatives of the people want to do everythingthemselves. They do everything badly and infect the government and theadministration with their passion and incompetence. 

[B] See _France_, by J. E. C. Bodley, 1899, pp. 334, 335. Under_Scrutin de liste_ "the department is the electoral unit, each havingits complement of deputies allotted to it in proportion to itspopulation, and each elector having as many votes as there are seatsascribed to his department, without, however, the power to cumulate. "_Scrutin d'arrondissement_ is election by single-member constituencies. The _arrondissement_ is the electoral unit. 

[C] This is a question put to a minister by a deputy. "Theeffect . .. Is somewhat similar to a motion to adjourn the house in theEnglish Parliament. " Bodley, p. 445. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE INCOMPETENCE OF GOVERNMENT. 

This is not all. The law of incompetence spreads still further, eitherby some process of logical necessity or by a sort of contagion. It hasoften been made the subject of merriment, for, like all tragedy, when weregard it with good humour the matter has its comic side, that it isvery rare for any high office to be given to a man who is competent forthe post. Generally the Minister of Education is a lawyer; the Ministerof Commerce, an author; the War Minister, a doctor; the Minister for theNavy, a journalist. Beaumarchais' epigram "The post required amathematician--it was given to a dancing master!" strikes the keynotemuch more of a democracy than of an absolute monarchy. 

The matter is so generally recognised that it has a sort of retroactiveeffect upon the historical ideas of the masses. Three Frenchmen out ofevery four are convinced that Carnot was a civilian, and the statementhas often appeared in print. Why? because it is inconceivable that undera democracy the War Minister could possibly be a soldier, or, that themembers of the Convention could possibly have given the War Office to asoldier. This appeared too paradoxical to be true. 

At first sight this extraordinary method of making incompetent men intoministers seems merely a joke, merely the subtle and entertainingvagaries of the goddess Incompetence. Partly it is so but not entirely. The man whose business it is to appoint ministers has to divide thechoicest plums of office among the various groups of the majority whichsupports him. As all of these groups do not contain specialists, thehighest offices are disposed of on political grounds, and not on groundsof professional aptitude. I have shown what the result is; the onlyministerial appointment which is made in a rational manner is that whichthe President of the Council reserves for himself, and even in this casein order to conciliate some important political personage he very oftengives it up and takes some post for which he is not so well suited. 

See what follows: each department is directed by an incompetent man, who, if he be conscientious, sets himself to learn the work in which heought to be a fully trained expert, or, if he be not conscientious, andbe pressed for time, as he always is, he directs his departmentaccording to his general political theories and not according topractical common sense--a double distillation of incompetence. 

We know the kind of speech a new Minister of Agriculture makes to hisstaff. He harangues them on the principles of the revolution of 1789. 

Moreover, in a highly centralised country, the minister does everythingin his own department. He has to do everything under the pressure, it istrue, of the national representatives; but still his is the supremeauthority. It is easy to see what sort of decisions he will make. Theyare often very little supported by law, and sometimes are even contraryto law, and then they remain a dead letter from the first. Ministerialcirculars often have a remarkable character for illegality. In that casethey fall and are forgotten, but not always before they have introduceda vast amount of trouble throughout the entire administration. 

As to appointments, they are made, as I have said, by politicalinfluence, and even when they are flagrantly improper and corrupt, thereis no chance of their being corrected by the competence of a minister, who, holding enlightened views on the business and subordinates of hisoffice, is able to put his foot down and say "No! this will not do, wemust draw the line somewhere. "

CHAPTER VII. 

JUDICIAL INCOMPETENCE. 

Here we find incompetence spreading its influence by the logicalnecessity of the case. There are other quarters in which it grows by asort of contagion. Have you ever noticed that the _ancien régime_, inspite of grievous shortcomings, by a sort of historical tradition, maintained a certain respect for efficiency in its different forms? Forinstance in matters of jurisdiction, there were seignorial, ecclesiastical and military courts. These were not founded as the resultof argument and profound consideration, but by the natural course ofevents, by history itself, and they were maintained and approved by amonarchy which was verging on despotism. 

Seignorial jurisdiction, without much rational justification, was nonethe less of considerable utility; it bound, or was capable of binding, the noble to his land, it prevented him from losing sight of hisvassals, and his vassals from losing sight of him, and was in fact aconservative force in the aristocratic constitution of the kingdom. Isubmit that if this jurisdiction had been properly defined, limited andmodified, which was never done, it would have been consonant with thelaw of competence. There are various local matters which come quiteproperly within the province of the noble, who in those days took theplace of the magistrate. All that was wanted was that such mattersshould have been defined with precision and that in every case appealshould have been allowed. 

Ecclesiastical jurisdiction was perfectly reasonable, as offencescommitted by ecclesiastics have a special character of whichecclesiastics alone can judge. This seems strange to modern ideas, although nowadays there are commercial courts and conciliation boards, because litigation between men of business, between workmen and womenworkers, and between employers and employed, can only be decided by menwho have technical knowledge of the subject in dispute. Appeal, moreover, to a higher court is always allowed. 

Finally, in the old days there used to be military jurisdiction forprecisely the same reason. 

All these exceptional jurisdictions are objects of the liveliestapprehension to democracy, because they infringe the rule of uniformity, which is the image and often the caricature of equality, and alsobecause they are a stronghold of efficiency. 

Democracy of course demolished aristocratic courts together with thearistocracy itself, and ecclesiastical courts together with the Churchwhen it ceased to be an estate of the realm. Any special jurisdictionswhich still remain are looked upon as instruments of aristocracy;courts-martial are held in abhorrence because they have ideas of theirown in respect of military honour and duty, and military offences. Therein lies their efficiency, a thing absolutely necessary, if we areto maintain military spirit and discipline in a strong army. The privatesoldier or officer, who is only judged and punished as a civilian, willnot be well judged nor adequately punished, considering the specialduties and services which are required of the army. This is a questionof moral as well as technical efficiency and to this the democracy paysno heed, because it is convinced that no special efficiency is necessaryand that common sense is all that is required. Common sense, however, islike wit; it is useful in every walk of life, but is not sufficient inany one of them. This is just what democracy cannot or will notunderstand. 

It makes just as great a mistake in its civil and criminal jurisdiction, though it has, up to now, so far departed from its principles as toappoint qualified jurists to civil judgeships. No one denies that thisbody of men is efficient. Those who act as judges know their law. Thereis, however, as I have often had occasion to point out, a moral as wellas a technical efficiency, and in limiting the independence that isessential to moral efficiency, democracy neutralises the technicalefficiency of its servants. Let me explain my meaning further. 

Formerly the magistracy was a recognised and autonomous branch of thepublic service, and as a result, save as it was affected by revolutionand in normal times by the fear of revolution, enjoyed an absoluteindependence. This gave, or rather preserved intact, its moralefficiency. For moral efficiency consists in an ability to actaccording to the dictates of conscience, and is equivalent to a sort ofmoral independence. 

Now, the magistrates form a department of the administration and are abody of officials. The State appoints, promotes or refuses to promoteand pays them. In short the State has them at its mercy, just asmilitary officers are controlled by the War Office, or tax-collectors bythe Treasury. Hence they are deprived of their independence and moralefficiency, for they are always tempted to give judgment as theGovernment would wish. 

There is, it is true, a guarantee for their independence in thepermanence of their appointments, but this only applies to those whohave reached the summit of their profession, or are on the point ofretiring, or have no further interest in promotion. The young magistratewho wants to get on, a perfectly legitimate ambition, is by no meansindependent, for if he does not give satisfaction, he may enjoy apeculiar kind of permanence, the permanence of standing still at thestarting point. The only independent judges, to whom justice is the soleinterest, are either those who have served for forty years or thePresident of the _Cour de Cassation_. I may add also the man ofindependent means who is indifferent to promotion and content to spendall his time at the place of his first appointment. He is exactly likethe magistrates in old days, but he and his kind get rarer every year. 

At best, moreover, this permanence, of which so much is thought, is anillusory guarantee, for it is often suspended by one Government oranother, and the magistrates are constantly at the mercy of politicalcrises. Their moral efficiency is indeed sorely tried. 

I affirm, therefore, that this diminution of moral efficiency affectstechnical efficiency, because magistrates dare not insist on technicalexactitude when cases arise between the State and individuals, orbetween those who are protected by Government and those who are not. Though cases in which the State is a party do not occur very often, those in which friends of the Government are involved are of dailyoccurrence in a country where Government is a faction waging incessantwarfare against all other factions. 

It has been said with much reason that parliamentary government on abasis of universal suffrage is legalised and continuous civil war. It isusually a bloodless civil war, but its weapons are insults, provocations, calumnies, personalities, libel actions. These go on fromone year's end to the other. In a country where such a state of affairsis prevalent, the magistracy ought to be absolutely independent in orderto be impartial. Yet it is precisely in a country like this that themagistracy, not being independent and autonomous, is obliged to avoidoffending the party in office which, moreover, is extremely exacting, for it lives in constant fear that it may be turned out of power. 

--Is there nothing to be done? Would you advocate a return to thepractice of purchasing judicial appointments?--

In the first place, this would not be anything so very terrible, andsecondly, it might be quite possible to secure all the advantages ofpurchase without its actual practice. 

I can show you that it is not so very terrible, for the case is parallelwith that of the exceptional jurisdictions, the mention of which filledyou with horror till you remembered the commercial courts and thecouncils of experts, all excellent institutions. We are appalled at theidea of a magistrate purchasing his office, and yet we employ advocatesand solicitors and other legal officials and trust them with our mostprecious interests, yet they have, many of them, either bought orinherited their practice. Under a system of purchase, we should bejudged by lawyers of whom we required more extensive legal knowledgethan is at present required of the profession. We should be judged infact by solicitors and advocates of a superior order. There is nothingvery alarming about that. 

Montesquieu was in favour of a system of purchase. Voltaire opposed itstrongly. They were both right and were indeed agreed on generalprinciples. Montesquieu says: "Venality, --the purchase system, --is agood thing under a monarchical form of government, because work whichwould not be done from mere civic virtue is then undertaken as a familybusiness. Each man's duty is laid down for him, and the orders of theState are given greater permanence. Suidas says very aptly of Anastasiusthat he turned the Empire into an aristocracy by selling magisterialoffices. "

Voltaire replies: "Is it as a matter of civic virtue that in England ajudge of the King's Bench accepts his appointment?" (It is either amatter of civic virtue or of profit and interest, and if it is notprofit, it certainly must require considerable civic virtue. ) "What! canwe not find men in France willing to judge if we bestow theirappointments upon them gratuitously?" (We certainly can: but they mightbe too grateful!) "Can the work of administering justice, disposing ofthe lives and fortunes of men, become a family business?" (Well, thebusiness of bearing arms and disposing of men's lives and fortunes incivil war was in 1760 a family business. So too the business of beingking, and you do not protest against that!) "It is a pity thatMontesquieu should dishonour his work by such paradoxes, but we mustforgive him; his uncle purchased a provincial magistrate's office andleft it to him. Human nature comes in everywhere. None of us is withoutweaknesses. "

Montesquieu thinks aristocratic bodies are good things. Voltaire is infavour of absolute power. Montesquieu would like the judicature to be afamily office, that is to say hereditary like the profession of asoldier; this would make the judicial profession permanent like otherprofessions. He demonstrates, as does Suidas, that the purchase systemcreates an aristocracy. Voltaire, like Napoleon I. , would make hissoldiers, his priests, and his judges, king's men. They should allbelong to the king, body and soul. 

Montesquieu had a greater antagonist than Voltaire in Plato. Plato wrotein his Republic, referring to all judicial offices: "It is as if onboard ship a man were made a pilot for his wealth. Can it be that such arule is bad in every other calling, and good only in respect of thegoverning of a republic?"

Montesquieu answers Plato (and in anticipation Voltaire) very wittily:"Plato is speaking of a virtuous republic and I of a mere monarchy. Under a monarchy if offices were not sold by rule, the poverty and greedof courtiers would sell them all the same, and chance after all willgive a better result than the choice of a prince. "

To sum up, Montesquieu wants the magistracy to be partly hereditary, andpartly recruited from the wealthy classes, an independent, aristocraticbody analogous to the army or the clergy, administering justice withthat technical efficiency which university standards can guarantee, andwith the moral efficiency which is founded on independence, dignity, public spirit and impartiality. 

I said above that venality, or the system of purchase, was not necessaryto obtain these results. The principle is this, that the magistracy mustbe independent, and to be independent it must have a proprietary rightin its duties. This can only be obtained if it hold its office byinheritance or purchase as was done under the _ancien régime_; or, if itwere somehow contrived that magistrates should not be chosen by theGovernment. The purchase or inheritance plan is not popular, then theonly alternative is that the magistrates should be chosen by some bodyother than the Government. By whom then? The people? Then the judgeswould be dependent upon the people and the electors. 

--That would be better, or less bad. --

Not at all. If the judges were chosen by the electors, they would beeven less impartial than if they were elected by the Government. Thejudge then would think of nothing but of being re-elected. He wouldalways give judgment in favour of the party which had elected him. Would you care to be judged before a court composed of the deputies ofyour department? Certainly not, if you belong to the weaker party. Yes, if you belong to the majority, but then only if you are certain thatyour adversary belongs to the minority, or, if he belong to your ownparty, that he is a less influential elector than yourself. To sum up, there is no guarantee of impartiality if the judges are elected. 

Further, if the system of electing judges by those liable to theirjurisdiction were adopted, there would be an extensive and, I might add, a most entertaining variety of justice. Judges, who were elected by a"blue" or republican majority, and who were anxious for re-election, would always deliver judgment in favour of the blues. The same thingwould happen in the "white" or royalists districts. "Justice has herepochs, " Pascal said ironically, and in this case justice would have herdistricts. It would not be the same in the _Alpes-Maritimes_ as in the_Côtes-du-Nord_. The Court of Appeal, if it attempted to be impartial, would spend its time sending cases back from a blue district to berevised in a white, and the decisions delivered in a white country tobe revised in a blue. There would be judicial and legal anarchy. 

--If the bench is not to be inherited, nor bought, nor chosen by theGovernment, nor elected by the people, by whom is it to be nominated?--

By itself; I see no other solution. 

For instance I can suggest one good method, though there may be several. All the doctors of law in France could choose the judges of appeal andthe judges of appeal could choose and promote all the judges. This is anaristocratic-democratic scheme on a very broad basis. 

Or else the judges alone might choose the judges of appeal, and thejudges of appeal might appoint and promote the judges. That is anoligarchical method. 

Or again, here is a plan for passing from the system that is, to thatwhich ought to be. For the first time the doctors of law might choosethe _Cour de Cassation_, and it could choose the judges. Afterwards thejudges could fill the vacancies in the _Cour de Cassation_, which wouldnominate and promote the judges. 

The Government would still go on, and continue to nominate the personseligible to serve as magistrates. 

Under all these systems the judges would form an autonomous, self-creative body, dependent upon and responsible to themselves alone, and by reason of their absolute independence, strictly impartial. 

--But they would form a caste!--

They would form a caste. I am sorry for it, but it is the case. You willnever be well judged until you have a judicial caste, which is neitherthe Government, nor the world at large. For the Government cannot judgeproperly when it is both judge and party to the suit. Further, if it belitigious; it will never be out of court. Again, the world at largecannot judge properly, because, in practice, the world at large meansthe majority, and the majority is a party, and by definition a party canhardly be impartial. 

But democracy does not want to be judged by a caste. In the first placebecause it abhors castes, and secondly because it does not care aboutimpartial justice. Do not exclaim at the paradox. Democracy does want tobe judged impartially in little every-day cases, but in all importantcases in which a political question is involved and in which one of themajority is opposed to one of the minority, the verdict then has to befor the stronger side. 

It says to the judicial bench what a simple-minded deputy said to thePresident of the Chamber: "It is your duty to protect the majority. "

This is why democracy clings to its official magistracy, which containssome good elements though its members cannot always be impartial. Theywere condemned by the mouth of one of their highest dignitaries whoanswered when questioned about some illegal proceeding: "There arereasons of high State policy, " thus throwing both the law and the judgesat the feet of the Government. On another occasion, with the very bestintentions, in order to put an end to an interminable affair, theyturned and twisted the law and set a bad example; for by not applyingthe law correctly, they laid themselves open to endless and justifiableattacks upon their decision; they did not procure the longed-forsettlement, and, instead, left the matter open to interminable dispute. They have knowledge, good sense and intelligence, but as their want ofindependence, in other words their moral inefficiency, neutralisestheir technical efficiency, they do not and cannot possess authority. 

Democracy will inevitably go further along the road towards its ideal, which is direct government. It will want to elect the judges. 

Already it chooses them remotely in the third degree; for it chooses thedeputies who choose the Government, which chooses the judges; and tosome extent, in the second degree, for it chooses the deputies who bringpressure to bear upon the nomination of the judges and interfere withtheir promotion and their decisions. This also is remote. 

And, as by this constitution, or, rather by this practice, recognitionis given to the principle that it is the people who really appoints thejudges through its intermediaries, democracy, always logical and matterof fact, would like to see the principle applied without concealment, and the people making the appointments directly. 

Then endless questions will arise about the best way of voting andelecting. If unipersonal ballot is adopted, the canton will nominate its_juge de paix_, the district its tribunal, the region its Court, and thewhole country the Court of Appeal. In this arrangement there will bethe double drawback mentioned above; that is, varying interpretations ofjustice according to districts, and no impartiality. 

If, on the other hand, _scrutin de liste_ is adopted, the whole countrywill choose all the magistrates and they will belong to the majority. Inthis case there would be uniformity of justice but no impartiality. Anyintermediate system would combine the disadvantage of both plans. Forinstance, if nominations are made in each division, all the magistratesin Brittany will be white partisans, while in Provence they will be bluepartisans. In both cases they will be biassed, and such diversity asthere is will be merely a diversity of partiality and bias. 

We are talking of the future, though not perhaps of a very distant one. Let us deal with the present. The jury is still with us. Now the jurycombines absolute moral competence with absolute technical incompetence. Democracy must always have incompetence in one form or another. A juryis independent of everybody, both of the Government and of the people, and in the best possible way, because it is the agent of the peoplewithout being elected. It does not seek re-election and is rather vexedthan otherwise at being summoned to perform a disagreeable duty. On theother hand it always vacillates between two emotions, between pity andself-preservation, between feelings of humanity and the necessity forsocial protection; it is equally sensitive to the eloquence of thedefending advocate, and the summing up of the prosecutor, and as thesetwo influences balance each other it is in a perfect moral condition fordelivering an equitable verdict. 

For this reason the jury is of ancient origin, and has always been aninstitution in the land. At Athens the tribunal of the Heliasts formed akind of jury, too numerous indeed and more like a public meeting, butstill a sort of jury. 

At Rome, a better regulated republic, there were certain citizens chosenby the prætor who settled questions of fact, that is to say, decidedwhether an act had or had not been committed, whether a sum of money hador had not been paid; and the question of law was reserved for thecentumvirs. 

In England the jury still exists and has existed for centuries. 

These various peoples have considered very properly that juries areexcellently adapted for forming equitable decisions, since they possessa greater moral competence for this particular function, than is to befound elsewhere. 

This is true; but on the other hand a jury has no intelligence. InNovember 1909, a jury in the Côte d'Or before whom a murderer was beingtried, declared (1) that this man did not strike the blows, (2) that theblows which he struck resulted in death. Thereupon the man wasacquitted, although his violence, which never took place, had amurderous result. 

In the Steinheil case in the same month and year, the jury's verdictinvolved (1) that no one had been assassinated in the Steinheils' house, and (2) that Mme Steinheil was not the daughter of Mme Japy. If averdict were a judgment this would have put an end to all attempts todiscover the assassins of M. Steinheil and Mme Japy, and on the otherhand there would have been terrible social complications. 

But the verdict of a jury is not a judgment. Why? Because the legislatorforesaw the alarming absurdity of verdicts. It is presumed in law thatall juries' verdicts are absurd, and experience proves that this isoften the case. Juries' verdicts always seem to have been decided by lotlike those of the famous judge in Rabelais, and it is proverbial at thelaw courts that it is impossible to foresee the issue of any case thatcomes before a jury. It looks as if the jury reasoned thus: "I am achance judge, and it is only right that my judgment should be dictatedby chance. "

Voltaire was in favour of the jury system, principally because he hadsuch a very low opinion of the magistrates of his day, whom he used tocompare to Busiris. But, with his usual inconsequence, he takes no painsto conceal the fact that the populations of Abbeville and itsneighbourhood were unanimously exasperated against La Barre andD'Etalonde, and the people of Toulouse against Calas, and all of themwould have been condemned by juries summoned from those districts assurely as they were by the magisterial Busiris. 

The jury system is nothing but a refined example of the cult ofincompetence. Society, having to defend itself against thieves andmurderers, lays the duty of defending it on some of its citizens, andarms them with the weapon of the law. Unfortunately it chooses for thepurpose citizens who do not know how to use the weapon. It then fondlyimagines that it is adequately protected. The jury is like an unskilledgladiator entangled in the meshes of his own net. 

I need hardly say that democracy with its usual pertinacity is nowtrying to reduce the jury a step lower, and draw it from the lowerinstead of the lower middle classes. I see no harm in this myself, forin the matter of law the ignorance and inexperience of the lower middleclass and the ignorance of the working class are much the same. I haveonly mentioned it to show the tendency of democracy towards what ispresumably greater incompetence. 

Now comes the turn of the _juges de paix_. At present we still have_juges de paix_. Here we have a most interesting example of the waydemocracy strives after incompetence in matters judicial. 

Owing to the expense entailed by an appeal the jurisdiction of a _jugede paix_ is very often final. He ought to be an instructed person withsome knowledge of law and jurisprudence. He is therefore usually chosenfrom men who have a degree in law or from lawyers' clerks who have acertificate of ability. To be quite honest this is but a feebleguarantee. 

By the law of July 12th, 1905, the French Senate, anxious to find men ofstill grosser incompetence, decided that _juges de paix_ might benominated from those, who, not having the required degree orcertificate, had occupied the posts of mayor, deputy-mayor or councillorfor ten years. 

The object of this decision was the very honest and legitimate one ofgiving senators and deputies the opportunity of rewarding the electoralservices of the village mayors and their assistants. And remembersenators especially are nominated by these officials. Further it was anopportunity not to be missed for applying our principle--and ourprinciple is this: we ask, where is absolute incompetence to be found, for to him who can lay indisputable claim to it we must confideauthority. 

Now mayors and their assistants answer this description exactly. Theymust be able to sign their names, but they are not obliged to know howto read, and eighty per cent. Of them are totally illiterate. Their workis done for them very usually by the local schoolmaster. The Senate, therefore, was quite sure of finding among them men absolutelyincompetent for the post of _juge de paix_, and it has found what itwanted. Incompetence so colossal deserved an appointment, and anappointment has been given to it. 

The magistrature and the powers that be, seem to have been somewhatdisturbed by certain consequences of this highly democratic institution. M. Barthou, the Minister of Justice, complained bitterly of the workwhich this new institution caused him. He made the following speech inthe Chamber of Deputies: "We are here to tell each other the truth, and, with all the due moderation and prudence that is fitting, I feel it myduty to warn the chamber against the results of the law of 1905. At thepresent moment I am besieged with applications for the post of _juge depaix_. I need hardly mention that there are some 9, 000 of them in myoffice, because a certain number are not eligible for consideration, butthere are in round numbers 5, 500 applications which are recommended andexamined. " (What he means to say is, that these are examined becausethey have been recommended, for, as is only right, those that are notbacked by some political personage are not looked at. ) "As the averageannual number of vacancies is a hundred and eighty, you will readily seewhat a quandary I am in. Some of these applications are made with themost extraordinary persistency, I might even call it ferocity, and theseinvariably come from men who have held the office of mayor ordeputy-mayor for ten years, often in the most insignificant places. "

The Minister of Justice then read a report made on the subject by a_procureur-général_. 

"In this department there are forty-seven _juges de paix_, twenty ofwhom, as I learn from an enquiry, were mayors at the time of theirappointment. It is not to be wondered at that the number of provincialmagnates who aspire to the post is on the increase, for it seems to begenerally recognised in this department that elective officeirrespective of all professional aptitude is the normal means of accessto a paid appointment, more especially to that of _juge de paix_. Oncethey are appointed, the mayors combine both their municipal and judicialduties, and their interests lie far more in the commune which theyadminister than in the district in which they dispense justice andwhich, without permission, they should never leave. Sometimes thesedistrict magistrates will go to any length to obtain moral support fromthe politicians of the neighbourhood. They extort this as a sort ofblackmail given in exchange for the electoral influence which they canbring to bear in their municipal capacity. They attach far lessimportance to being quashed by the bench, than to the eventual supportof the deputy. Those who come into their courts are the unfortunatevictims of these compromising arrangements which are giving theRepublican system a bad name. "

I think the Minister of Justice and his _procureur-général_ have verylittle ground for these lamentations. After all the minister onlycomplains of having 9, 000 applications for office. It would surely bequite easy for him, in compliance with the generally recognisedprinciple, to choose those whose incompetence seems to be most thorough, or those who are most influentially supported, according to theprevailing custom. 

As for the _procureur-général's_ sarcasms, which he thinks so witty, they are quite delightfully diverting and ingenuous. "It seems to begenerally recognised that elective office, irrespective of allprofessional aptitude, is the normal means of access to a paidappointment. " What else does he expect? It is eminently democratic thatthe marked absence of professional capacity should single a man out foremployment. That is the very spirit of democracy. He surely does notthink that a man is an elector by reason of his legislative andadministrative capacity?

It is likewise essentially democratic that elective office should leadto paid appointments, for the democratic theory is that all office, paidand unpaid, should be elective. Why, this _procureur-général_ must be anaristocrat!

As for the mutual services rendered by the justice, as mayor, to thedeputy, and by the deputy to the justice, this is democracy pure andsimple. The deputies distribute favours that they may be returned topower; the influential electors put all their interest, both personaland official, at the service of the deputies in order to obtain thosefavours. They are hand in glove with each other, and form a solidunion of interests. 

What more does the _procureur-général_ want? Does he want a differentsystem? If he wants another system, whatever else it may be, it will notbe democracy, or at least it will not be a democratic democracy. Norhave I any idea what he means when he says the Republican system willget a bad name. The good name of the Republic depends upon its puttinginto practice every democratic principle; and democratic principles havecertainly never been more precisely realised than in the precedingexample, which I have had great pleasure in rescuing from oblivion andpresenting to the notice of sociologists. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

EXAMPLES OF INCOMPETENCE. 

I have already compared this, our desire to worship incompetence, to aninfectious disease. It has attacked the State at the very core, in itsconstitution, and it is not surprising that it is spreading rapidly tothe customs and to the morals of the country. 

The stage, we know, is an imitation of life. Life also, to perhaps aneven greater extent, is an imitation of the stage. Similarly laws springfrom morals, and morals spring from law. "Men are governed by manythings, " said Montesquieu, "by climate, religion, laws, precept, example, morals and manners, which act and react upon each other and allcombine to form a general temperament. "

Morals, more often than not, determine the nature of our laws, particularly in a democracy, which is deplorable, but Montesquieu wasright in saying: "Morals take their colour from laws, and manners frommorals, " for laws certainly "help to form morals, manners" and even"national character. " For instance in Rome under the Empire the code ofmorals was to some extent the result of arbitrary power, as to-day themoral character of the English is to some extent due to the laws andconstitution of their country. 

We know that by his laws Peter the Great changed if not the character atleast the manners and customs of his people. 

Custom is the offspring of law, and morals are the offspring of custom. National character is not really changed, for character, I believe, is athing incapable of change, but it appears to be changed, and itcertainly undergoes some modifications; one set of tendencies ischecked, while others are encouraged. 

The law abolishing the right of primogeniture has obviously affectednational morals, though it has not otherwise altered national character. For a peculiar mental attitude is evolved by the constant domination ofan elder brother, whose birthright gives him precedence and authoritysecond only to that of the father. In countries where the right ofunrestricted testamentary bequests is still maintained, family moralsare very different from those which obtain where the child isconsidered a joint proprietor of the patrimony. 

Since the passing of the law permitting divorce, a sad but necessaryevil, there have been far more applications for divorce than there everwere for separation. Can this be accounted for solely by the fact thatformerly it seemed hardly worth while to take steps to obtain thequalified freedom of separation? I think not. For when a yoke isunbearable, efforts to relax it would naturally be quite as strenuousand as unremitting as efforts to get rid of it altogether. 

The truth is, I think, that when both civil and ecclesiastical lawagreed in prohibiting divorce, people held a different view of marriage;it was looked upon as something sacred, as a tie that it was shameful tobreak, and that could not be broken except as a last resource and thenalmost under pain of death. The law permitting divorce was what ourforefathers would have called a "legal indiscretion. " It has abolishedthe feeling of shame. Except where there is strong religious feeling, there is now no scruple nor shame in seeking divorce. The old order haspassed away; modesty has been superseded by a desire for liberty, or foranother union. This change has been brought about by a law which was theresult of a new moral code; but the law itself has helped to enlarge andexpand the code. 

Thus democracy extends that love of incompetence which is its mostimperious characteristic. Greek philosophers used to delight inimagining what morals, especially domestic morals, would be like under ademocracy. They all vied with Aristophanes. One of Xenophon's characterssays: "I am pleased with myself, because I am poor. When I was rich Ihad to pay court to my calumniators, who knew full well that they couldharm me more than I could them. Then the Republic was always imposingfresh taxes and I could not escape. Now that I am poor, I am investedwith authority; no one threatens me. I threaten others. I am free tocome and go as I choose. The rich rise at my approach and give me place. I was a slave, now I am a king; I used to pay tribute, now the Statefeeds me. I no longer fear misfortunes, and I hope to acquire wealth. "

Plato too is quietly humorous at democracy's expense. "This form ofgovernment certainly seems the most beautiful of all, and the greatvariety of types has an excellent effect. At first sight does it notappear a privilege most delightful and convenient that we cannot beforced to accept any public office however eligible we may be, that weneed not submit to authority and that every one of us can become a judgeor magistrate as our fancy dictates? Is there not something delightfulin the benevolence shown to criminals? Have you ever noticed how, insuch a State as this, men condemned to death or exile remain in thecountry and walk abroad with the demeanour of heroes? See with whatcondescension and tolerance democrats despise the maxims which we havebeen brought up from childhood to revere and associate with the welfareof the Republic. We believe that unless a man is born virtuous, he willnever acquire virtue, unless he has always lived in an environment ofhonesty and probity and given it his earnest attention. See with whatcontempt democrats trample these doctrines under foot and never stop toask what training a man has had for public office. On the contrary, anyone who merely professes zeal in the public interests is welcomedwith open arms. It is instantly assumed that he is quite disinterested. 

"These are only a few of the many advantages of democracy. It is apleasant form of government _in which equality reigns among unequal aswell as among equal things_. Moreover, when a democratic State, athirstfor liberty, is controlled by unprincipled cupbearers, who give it todrink of the pure wine of liberty and allow it to drink till it isdrunken, then if its rulers do not show themselves complaisant and allowit to drink its fill, they are accused and overthrown under the pretextthat they are traitors aspiring to an oligarchy; for the people pridesitself on and loves the equality that confuses and will not distinguishbetween those who should rule and those who should obey. Is it anywonder that the spirit of licence, insubordination, and anarchy shouldinvade everything, even the institution of the family? Fathers learn totreat their children as equals and are half afraid of them, whilechildren neither fear nor respect their parents. All the citizens andresidents and even strangers aspire to equal rights of citizenship. 

"Masters stand in awe of their disciples and treat them with thegreatest consideration and are jeered at for their pains. Young men wantto be on the same terms as their elders and betters, and old men ape themanners of the young, for fear of being thought morose and dictatorial. Observe too to what lengths of liberty and equality the relationsbetween the sexes are carried. You would hardly believe how much freerdomestic animals are there than elsewhere. It is proverbial that littlelap-dogs are on the same footing as their mistresses, or as horses andasses; they walk about with their noses in the air and get out ofnobody's way. "

Aristotle, faithless at this point to his favourite method of alwayscontradicting Plato, has no particular liking, as we have said, fordemocracy. He does not spare it though he does not imitate Plato'sscathing sarcasm. 

In the first place, Aristotle is frankly in favour of slavery, as wasevery ancient philosopher except perhaps Seneca; but he is moreinsistent on this point than anyone else, for he looks upon slavery, notas one of many foundations, but as the very foundation of society. 

He considers artisans as belonging to a higher estate but still as aclass of "half-slaves. " He asserts as an historical fact that onlyextreme and decadent democracies gave them rights of citizenship, andtheoretically he maintains that no sound government would give them thefranchise of the city. "Hence in ancient times, and among some nations, the working classes had no share in the government--a privilege whichthey only acquired under the extreme democracy. .. . Doubtless in ancienttimes and among some nations the artisan class were slaves orforeigners, and therefore the majority of them are so now. The best formof State will not admit them to citizenship. .. . "

He admits that democracy may be considered as a form of government (". .. If democracy be a real form of government. .. . "), and he admits toothat ". .. Multitudes, of which each individual is but an ordinaryperson, when they meet together, may very likely be better than the fewgood, if regarded not individually but collectively. .. . Hence the manyare better judges than a single man of music and poetry; for someunderstand one part, and some another, and among them they understandthe whole. [Observe that he is still speaking of a democracy in whichslaves and artisans are not citizens. ] Doubtless too democracy is themost tolerable of perverted governments, and Plato has already madethese distinctions, but his point of view is not the same as mine. Forhe lays down the principle that of all good constitutions democracy isthe worst, but the best of bad ones. " But still Aristotle cannot helpthinking that democracy is a sociological mistake ". .. It must beadmitted that we cannot raise to the rank of citizens all those, eventhe most useful, who are necessary to the existence of the State. "

Democracy has this drawback that it cannot constitutionally retainwithin itself and encourage eminent men. In a democracy "if there besome one person or more than one, although not enough to make up thewhole complement of a State, whose virtue is so pre-eminent that thevirtues or the capacity of all the rest admit of no comparison with hisor theirs, he or they can be no longer regarded as part of a State; forjustice will not be done to the superior, if he is reckoned only as theequal of those who are so far inferior to him in virtue and in politicalcapacity. Such an one may truly be deemed a God among men. Hence we seethat legislation is necessarily concerned only with those who are equalin birth and in power; and that for men of pre-eminent virtue there isno law--they are themselves a law. Anyone would be ridiculous whoattempted to make laws for them: they would probably retort what, in thefable of Antisthenes, the lions said to the hares--'where are yourclaws?'--when in the council of the beasts the latter began haranguingand claiming equality for all. And for this reason democratic Stateshave instituted ostracism; equality is above all things their aim, andtherefore they ostracise and banish from the city for a time those whoseem to predominate too much through their wealth, or the number oftheir friends, or through any other political influence. Mythology tellsus that the Argonauts left Heracles behind for a similar reason; theship Argo would not take him because she feared that he would have beentoo much for the rest of the crew. "

Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, asked Periander, the tyrant ofCorinth, one of the seven sages of Greece, for advice on the art ofgovernment. Periander made no reply but proceeded to bring a field ofcorn to a level by cutting off the tallest ears. "This is a policy notonly expedient for tyrants or in practice confined to them, but equallynecessary in oligarchies and democracies. Ostracism is a measure of thesame kind, which acts by disabling and banishing the most prominentcitizens. "

This is what we may call a constitutional necessity for the democracy. 

To be quite honest, it is not always obliged to cut off the ears ofcorn. It has a simpler method. It can systematically prevent any man whobetrays any superiority whatsoever, either of birth, fortune, virtue ortalent, from obtaining any authority or social responsibility. It can"send to Coventry. " I have often pointed out that under the firstdemocracy Louis XVI was guillotined for having wished to leave thecountry, while under the third democracy his great-nephews were exiledfor wishing to remain in it. Ostracism is, in these instances, stillfeeling its way, and its action is contradictory because it has not madeup its mind. This will continue till it has been reduced to a science, when it will contrive to level, by one method or another, everyindividual eminence, great and small, that dares to vary by the merestfraction from the regulation standards. This is ostracism, andostracism, so to speak, is a physiological organ of democracy. Democracyby using it mutilates the nation, without it democracy would mutilateitself. 

Aristotle often tries to solve the problem of the eminent man. "Goodmen, " he says, "differ from any individual of the many, as the beautifulare said to differ from those who are not beautiful, and works of artfrom realities, because in them the scattered elements are combined. .. . Whether this principle can apply to every democracy and to all bodies ofmen is not clear. .. . But there may be bodies of men about whom ourstatement is nevertheless true. And if so, the difficulty which has beenalready raised--viz. , what power should be assigned to the mass offreemen and citizens--is solved. There is still a danger in allowingthem to share the great offices of State, for their folly will lead theminto error and their dishonesty into crime. But there is a danger alsoin not letting them share, for a State in which many poor men areexcluded from office will necessarily be full of enemies. The only wayof escape is to assign to them some deliberative and judicialfunctions. .. . But each individual left to himself, forms an imperfectjudgment. "

It is not only the eminent man that is the thorn in the flesh ofdemocracies, but every form of superiority, whether individual orcollective, which exists outside the State and the Government. 

If we recollect that Aristotle coupled extreme democracy with tyranny, it will be interesting to recall his summary of the "ancientprescriptions for the preservation of a tyranny. .. . " "The tyrant shouldlop off those who are too high; he must put to death men of spirit: hemust not allow common meals, clubs, education and the like; he must beupon his guard against anything which is likely to inspire eithercourage or confidence among his subjects; he must prohibit literaryassemblies or other meetings for discussion, and he must take everymeans to prevent people from knowing one another (for acquaintancebegets mutual confidence). " Aristotle's conclusions are subjectivelyaristocratic: "In the perfect State there would be great doubts aboutthe use of ostracism, not when applied to excess in strength, wealth, popularity or the like, but when used against some one who ispre-eminent in virtue. What is to be done with him? Mankind will not saythat such an one is to be expelled and exiled; on the other hand heought not to be a subject, that would be as if men should claim to ruleover Zeus on the principle of rotation of office. The only alternativeis that all should joyfully obey such a rule, according to what seems tobe the order of nature, and that men like him should be kings in theirState for life. " But when he speaks objectively, Aristotle comes toanother conclusion, which we shall have occasion to mention later on. 

Among moderns, Rousseau declared that he was not a democrat, and he wasright, because by democracy he meant the Athenian system of directgovernment, of which he did not for an instant approve. In the "SocialContract" he has drawn up a most detailed scheme, which, in spite ofsome contradictions and obscure passages, is an exact description ofdemocracy as we understand the word; but still we cannot tell if he isactually a democrat, because we do not know what he means by "citizens, "whether he means everybody or only one class, though that a numerousone. Rousseau has written more fully than anyone else, not so much ofthe influence of democracy on morals, as of the _coincidence_ betweendemocracy and good morals. Equality, frugality and simplicity can all befound, according to Rousseau, in States where there is neither royaltynor aristocracy nor plutocracy. As I understand it, his meaning is thatthe same virtue which makes certain nations love equality, frugality andsimplicity is also productive of a form of government which excludesaristocracy, plutocracy and royalty. If you have simplicity, frugalityand equality, you will probably live in a republic that is democratic orvirtually democratic. This is, I think, the clearest and most impartialsummary that we can make of Rousseau's doctrine, which, though set forthin rigid formulæ, is still extremely vague. 

In this he is a far more faithful follower of Montesquieu than he willallow. All that I have quoted is to be found literally in Montesquieu'schapters on democracy. Even his famous saying, "the ruling principle ofdemocracy is virtue, " means, when he uses it in one sense, no more thanthat it is the synthesis of these three perfections, equality, simplicity and frugality. For Montesquieu sometimes uses "virtue" in anarrow, and sometimes in a broad sense, sometimes in the sense ofpolitical and civic virtue or patriotism, sometimes in the sense ofvirtue properly speaking (simplicity, frugality, thrift, equality). Inthis latter case he and Rousseau are absolutely agreed. 

Montesquieu only considers democracy in decadence, as his custom is inrespect of other forms of government, and though he does not actuallycite Plato, he really gives the substance of what we have alreadyquoted. "When the people wishes to do the work of the magistrates, thedignity of the office disappears and when the deliberations of theSenate carry no weight, neither senators nor old men are treated withrespect. When old men do not receive respect, fathers cannot expect itfrom their children, husbands from their wives, nor masters from theirmen. At length everyone will learn to rejoice in this untrammelledliberty, and will grow as weary of commanding as of obeying. Women, children and slaves will submit to no authority. There will be an end ofmorals, no more love of order, no more virtue. "

Now as to this transition, this passage from the public morals of ademocracy to the private, domestic, personal morals which exist underthat form of government, have you observed what is the common root ofour failings both public and private? The common root of both ismisunderstanding, forgetfulness and contempt of competence. If pupilsdespise their masters, young men despise old men, if wives do notrespect their husbands and the unenfranchised do not respect thecitizens, if the condemned do not stand in awe of their judges, nor sonsin awe of their parents, the principle of efficiency has vanished. Pupils no longer admit the scientific superiority of their teachers, young men have no regard for the experience of the old, women will notrecognise the supremacy of their husbands in practical matters, theunenfranchised have no sense of the superiority of the citizens from thepoint of view of national tradition, the condemned do not feel the moralsupremacy of their judges, and sons do not realise the scientific, practical, civic and moral superiority of their fathers. 

Indeed, why should they? How could we expect these feelings to be ofanything but the most transient description since the State itself isorganised on a basis of contempt for competence, or of what is evenworse, a reverence for incompetence, and an insatiable craving for theguidance and government of the incompetent?

Thus public morals have a great influence on private morals; andgradually into family and social life there comes that laxity in thedaily relations of the citizens which Plato has wittily termed, "equality between things that are equal and those that are not. "

The first innovation which democracy brings into family life is theequality of the sexes, and this is followed by woman's disrespect forman. This idea, be it admitted, is substantially correct, it only ceasesto be true when it is viewed relatively to the varying competences ofthe two sexes. Woman is man's equal in cerebral capacity, and incivilised societies, where intellect is the only thing that matters, thewoman is the equal of the man. She should be admitted to the sameemployments as men in society, and under the same conditions of capacityand education, but in family life the same rules should apply as inevery other enterprise; (1) division of labour according to thecompetence of each; (2) recognition of a leader according to thecompetence of each. This is the law which women are constantly led tomisunderstand in a democracy. They will not admit the principle of thedivision of labour either in the world at large or in the domesticcircle. They try to encroach upon men's work, which perhaps they mightdo very successfully, if they were obliged to do it and had nothing elseat all to do; but which they really spoil by undertaking when they haveother obvious duties to perform. They will not admit that men should beat the head of affairs; they aspire to be not only partners but managingdirectors. This implies a contemptuous rejection of that form of socialcompetence which comes from the acceptance of convention or contract. Nodoubt a woman would be just as good a tax-collector as her husband, butsince they have entered into partnership, the one to administer thecollection of taxes, the other to look after the house, it is just asbad for the one whose business it is to keep house to begin collectingtaxes, as it is for the tax-collector to interfere with thehousekeeping. It is necessary to respect the efficiency that arises outof the observance of convention and contract. This, with practice andexperience, will quickly become a very real and a very valuableefficiency, but if thwarted from outside will lead to friction, insecurity and disorganisation. 

It is particularly by their contempt, which they are at no pains todisguise, for the competence that comes from contract and later fromhabit, by their refusal to recognise the position of the head of thefamily, that women every day and in every minute particular are trainingtheir children to despise their father. Democracy seems bent on bringingup its children to despise their parents. No other construction can beput upon the facts, however good and innocent the motives. Just sum upthe facts. In the first place democracy denies that the living can beguided by the dead; it is one of its fundamental axioms that nogeneration should be tied and bound by its predecessor. What inferencecan children be expected to draw from this except that they owe noobedience to their father and mother?

Children have naturally only too great a tendency to look down on theirparents. They are proud of their physical superiority; they know thattheir star is rising while that of their parents is setting. They areimbued with the universal prejudice of modern humanity that _progress isconstant_ and that therefore whatever is of yesterday is _ex hypothesi_inferior to that which is of to-day. They are driven also, as I amconstrained to believe, by a sort of Nemesis inspired by fear lest humanscience and power should hurry forward too fast if the children werecontent to pick up the burden of life where their parents left it, andsimply followed their fathers and did not insist on effacing all thattheir fathers had done and beginning again--with the result that theedifice never rises far above its foundations, and that children forthis and other reasons have a natural inclination to treat their parentsas Cassandras. Then, as it were to clench the argument, democracy isready with its teaching that each generation is independent of theother, and that the dead have no lesson to impart to the living. 

In the second place, democracy, applying the principle still further andproclaiming the doctrine that the State is master of all, withdraws thechild from the family, as often and as completely as it can. "Democracy, " said Socrates, in one of his humorous dialogues, "is amountebank, a kidnapper of children. It snatches the child from itsfamily while he is playing, takes him far away, allows him no more tosee his family, teaches him many strange languages, drills him till hisjoints are supple, paints his face and dresses him in ridiculousclothes, and imparts to him all the mysteries of the acrobat's tradeuntil he is sufficiently dexterous to appear in public and amuse thecompany by his tricks. "

At all events democracy is determined to take the child away from hisfamily, to give him the education which it has chosen and not that whichthe parents have chosen, and to teach him that he must not believe whathis parents teach him. It denies the competence of parents to rear theirchildren and puts forward its own competence, asserting that it is onlyits own that has any value. 

This is one of the principal causes of the divisions between fathersand children in a democracy. 

You may retort that democracy does not always succeed in its efforts toseparate children from their parents, because there is nothing toprevent the children extending the contempt, which for such excellentreasons they have been taught to entertain for their parents, to theirState-appointed teachers. 

This is a most pertinent observation, for the general maxims ofdemocracy are just as likely to make pupils despise their masters as tomake sons despise their fathers. The master, too, represents in the eyesof his pupil that past which has no connection with the present andwhich by the law of progress is very inferior to the present. This istrue; but the end of all is that between the school which counteractsthe influence of the parents and the home which counteracts theinfluence of the school, the child becomes a personage who is nevereducated at all. He is in like case with a child who in the familyitself receives lessons, and what is more important, example, from amother who is religious and from a father who is an atheist. He is noteducated, he has had no sort of education. The only real education, that is to say, the only transmission to the children of the ideas oftheir parents consists of an education at home which is reinforced bythe instruction of masters chosen by the parents in accordance withtheir own views. This is precisely the form of education to whichdemocracy refuses to be reconciled. 

 * * * * *

There is a still more cogent reason why old men are neither respectednor honoured in a democracy. Here is yet another efficiency formallydenied and formally set aside. An interesting treatise might be writtenon the rise and fall of old men. Civilization has not been kind to them. In primitive times, as among savage races to-day, old men were kings. Gerontocracy, that is, government by the aged, is the most ancient formof government. It is easy to understand why this should be. In primitiveages, all knowledge was experience and the old men possessed all thehistorical, social and political experience of the State. They were heldin great honour and listened to with the profoundest respect andveneration, in fact with an almost superstitious reverence. Nietzschewas thinking of those days when he said: "Respect for the aged is thesymbol of aristocracy, " and when he added: "Respect for the aged isrespect for tradition, " he was thinking of the reason for thisassumption. That the dead should rule the living was acceptedinstinctively, and it was their nearness to death which evoked honourfor the aged. 

At a later stage the old man shared in the civil government withmonarchy, aristocracy or oligarchy, and retained an almost completecontrol of judicial affairs. His moral and technical efficiency werestill appreciated. His moral efficiency to his contemporaries consistedin the fact that his passions were deadened and his judgment asdisinterested as was humanly possible. Even his obstinacy is rather anadvantage than otherwise. He is not liable to whims and fancies andsudden gusts of temper or to external influence. His technicalefficiency is considerable, because he has seen and remembered much andhis mind has unconsciously drawn up a reference book of cases. Ashistory repeats itself with very slight alterations, every fresh casewhich arises is already well known to him; it does not take him bysurprise and he has a solution at hand which only requires very slightmodification. 

All this, however, is very ancient history. That which undermined theauthority of old men was the book. Books contain all science, equity, jurisprudence and history better, it must be confessed, than thememories of old men. One fine day the young men said: "The old men wereour books; now that we have books we have no further need for old men. "

This was a mistake; the knowledge which is accumulated in books cannever be anything but the handmaiden of living science, the sciencewhich is being constantly remodelled and corrected by living thought. Abook is a wise man paralysed; the wise man is a book which still thinksand writes. 

These ideas did not hold; the book superseded the old man, and the oldman no longer was a library to the nation. 

Later still, for various reasons, the old men drifted from a position ofrespect to one of ridicule. Undoubtedly they lend themselves to this;they are obstinate, foolish, prosy, boring, crotchety and unpleasant tolook upon. Comic writers poked fun at these failings which are only tooself-evident and showered ridicule upon them. Then as the majority ofaudiences is composed of young men, first of all because there are moreyoung men than old, and secondly because old men do not often go to thetheatre, authors of comic plays were certain of raising a laugh byturning old men into ridicule, or rather by exposing only theirridiculous characteristics. 

At Athens and at Rome and probably elsewhere, the old man was one of theprincipal grotesque characters. These things, as Rousseau pointed out, have a great effect upon morals. Once the old man became a recognisedtraditional stage-butt, his social authority had come to an end. In the_de Senectute_ it is obvious that Cicero is running counter to thestream in seeking to restore to favour a character about whom the publicis indifferent and for whom all he can do is to plead extenuatingcircumstances. 

It is a remarkable fact that even in mediæval epics, Charlemagnehimself, the emperor of the flowing beard, often plays a comic part. Theepic is invaded by the atmosphere of the fable. 

During the Renaissance, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, theold man is generally, though not invariably, held up to ridicule. 

Molière takes his lead from Aristophanes and Plautus rather than fromTerence and is the scourge of old age as well as "the scourge of theridiculous"; he pursues the old as a hound his prey and never leavesthem in peace either in his poetry or his prose. 

We must do this much justice to Rousseau that both he and his child, theRevolution, tried to restore the old man to his former glory; he makeshonourable mention of him in his writings, and she gives him importantposts in public ceremonies and national fêtes. Therein were received theancient memories of Lacedæmon and of early Rome, combined with a form ofreaction against the days of Louis XIV and Louis XV. 

But with the triumph of democracy the old man was finally banished tothe limbo of discredited things. Montesquieu's advice was quiteforgotten (see the context Laws, v, 8). He said that _in a democracy_"nothing kept the standard of morals so high as that young men shouldvenerate the old. Both profit by it, the young because they respect theold, and the old because they are confirmed in their respect forthemselves" (for the respect of the young is an assistance to theself-respect of the aged). 

Democracy has forgotten this advice, because it no longer believes intradition and believes too much in progress. Old men are the naturalupholders of tradition, and we must confess that an enthusiastic faithin the value of what we call progress is not commonly their failing. Forthis very reason their influence would be a most wholesome corrective tothe system, or rather to the attitude of mind, which despises the pastand sees in every change a step in the path of progress. But democracywill not allow that it needs a corrective, and the old man, to it, isonly an enemy. The old man upholds tradition and has no enthusiasm forprogress, but beyond this he appeals for respect, first for himself, then for religion, for glory, for his country and for the history of hisnation. Democracy is indifferent to the sentiment of respect, or ratherit lives in constant fear that the sentiment may be applied elsewhere. 

Then what does democracy want for itself?

Not respect, but adoration, passion, devotion. We all like to see ourown sentiments as to ourselves repeated in the minds of others. Thecrowd never respects, it loves, it yields to passion, enthusiasm, fanaticism. It never respects even that which it loves. 

It is quite natural that the masses should not care for old men. Themasses are young. How aptly does Horace's description of the young manapply to the people!

 _Imberbis juvenis, tandem custode remoto Gaudet equis, canibusque et aprici gramine campi; Cereus in vitium flecti, monitoribus asper, Utilium tardus provisor, prodigus æris, Sublimis, cupidusque et amata relinquere pernix. _

"Once free from the control of his tutors, the young man thinks ofnothing but horses, dogs and the Campus Martius, impressionable as waxto every temptation, impatient of correction, unthrifty, extravagant, presumptuous and light of love. "

At all events respect has no meaning for the crowd, and when it rules, we cannot from its example learn the lessons of respect. Democracy hasno love for the old; and it is interesting to note that the wordgerontocracy to which the ancients attached the most honourable meaningis now only a term of ridicule, and is applied only to a governmentwhich, because it is in the hands of old men, is therefore grotesque. 

 * * * * *

This disappearance of respect, noted as we have seen by Plato, Aristotleand Montesquieu as a morbid system, is, regard it how we will, a fact ofthe gravest import. Kant has asked the question, what must we obey? Whatcriterion is there to tell us what to obey? What is there within uswhich commands respect, which does not ask for love or fear, but forrespect alone? He has given us the answer. The feeling of respect is theonly thing that we can trust, and that will never fail us. 

In society the only feelings we obey are those which win our respect, and the men to whom we listen, and whom we honour, are those who inspirerespect. This is the only criterion which enables us to gauge correctlythe men and things to whom we owe, if not absolute obedience, at leastattention and deference. Old men are the nation's conscience, and it isa conscience at times severe, morose, tiresome, obstinate, over-scrupulous, dictatorial, and it repeats for ever the same old saws;in other words a conscience; but conscience it is. 

The comparison might be carried further with results that would beadvantageous as well as curious. We degrade and finally vitiate ourconscience if we do not respect its behests. Conscience then itselfbecomes small and timid and humble, shamefaced, and at length a merewhisper. Absolutely silent it can never be made. 

It becomes sophisticated, it begins to employ the language of passion, not of the vilest passions of our nature, but still the voice ofpassion; it ceases to use the categoric imperative and tries to bepersuasive. It no longer raises the finger of command, but it seeks tocajole with caressing hand. 

Then it falls still lower, it affects indifference and scepticism and itputs on the air of the trifler in order to insinuate a word of wisdominto the seductive talk that is heard around it, and it holds languagesomewhat as follows: "Probably everything has its good points and thereis something to be said for both vice and virtue, crime and honesty, sinand innocence, rudeness and politeness, licence and purity. These areall simply different forms of an activity which cannot be wholly wrongin any of its manifestations; and it is precisely because every one ofthese has its value that there may be nothing to lose in being honest, nay, perhaps something to gain. "

Nevertheless, a nation that does not respect its old men changes theirnature and despoils them of their beauty and integrity. How true isMontesquieu's saying that the respect paid them by the young helps oldmen to respect themselves! Old men who are not respected take nointerest in their natural duties; they cease to advise, or else theyonly venture to advise indirectly, as though they were apologising fortheir wisdom, or they affect a laxity of morals to enable them toinsinuate a surreptitious dose of worldly wisdom;--and worst of all inview of the insignificant part assigned to them in society, old men willnowadays decline to be old. 

CHAPTER IX. 

MANNERS. 

If the worship of incompetence reverberates with a jarring note throughour domestic morals, it has an effect hardly less harmful on the socialrelations of men in the wider theatre of public life. We often ask whypoliteness is out of date, and everyone replies with a smile: "This isdemocratic. " So it is, but why should it be? Montesquieu remarks that"to cast off the conventions of civility is to seek a method for puttingour faults at their ease. " He adds the rather subtle distinction that"politeness flatters the vices of others, and civility prevents us fromdisplaying our own. It is a barrier raised by men to prevent them fromcorrupting each other. " That which flatters vice can hardly be calledpoliteness, but is rather adulation. Civility and politeness are onlyslightly different in degree; civility is cold and very respectful, politeness has a suggestion of flattery. It graciously draws intoevidence the good qualities of our neighbour, not his failings, muchless his vices. 

There is no doubt that civility and politeness are a delicate means ofshowing respect to our fellow-men, and of communicating a wish to berespected in turn. These things then are barriers, but barriers fromwhich we derive support, which separate and strengthen us, but which, though holding us apart, do not keep us estranged from our neighbours. 

It is also very true that if we release ourselves from these rules, whether they are civility or politeness, we set our faults at liberty. The basis of civility and politeness is respect for others and respectfor ourselves. As Abbé Barthélemy has very justly remarked: "In thefirst class of citizens is to be found a spirit of decorum which makesit evident that men respect themselves, and a spirit of politeness whichmakes it evident that they also respect others. " This is what Pascalmeant by saying that respect is our own inconvenience, and he explainsit thus, that to stand when our neighbour is seated, to remove our hatwhen he is covered, though trifling acts of courtesy, are tokens of theefforts we would willingly make on his behalf if an opportunity of beingreally serviceable to him presented itself. 

Politeness is a mark of respect and a promise of devotion. 

All this is anti-democratic, because democracy does not recognise anysuperiority, and therefore has no sympathy with respect and personaldevotion. Respect to others involves a recognition from us that we areof less importance than they, and politeness to an equal requires fromus a courteous affectation that we consider him as our superior. This isentirely contrary to the democratic ideal, which asserts that there isno superiority anywhere. As for pretending to treat your equal as thoughhe were your superior, that involves a double hypocrisy, because itrequires a reciprocal hypocrisy on the part of your neighbour. Youpraise his wit, only in order that he may return the compliment. 

Without, however, insisting on this point, democracy will argue thatpoliteness is to be deprecated, because it not only recognises butactually creates superiority. It treats an equal as a superior, asthough there were not enough discrepancies already without inventingany more. It seems to imply that if inequality did not exist, it wouldbe necessary to invent it. It is tantamount to proclaiming that therecannot be too much aristocracy. That is an opinion which democracycannot endure. 

Considered as a promise of future devotion, politeness is equallyanti-democratic. The citizen owes no devotion to any person, he owes itonly to the community. It is no small matter to style yourself "yourmost humble servant"; it means that you single out one man from amongmany others and promise to serve him; it means that you acknowledge inhim some natural or social superiority, and according to democracy thereare no superiorities, social or natural, and if there were such a thingas natural superiority, nature has no business to allow it. This istantamount to proclaiming a form of vassalage--a thing which is not tobe tolerated. 

As to the absence of politeness considered as "a means of giving freeplay to one's feelings, " we recognise that in one sense this also isessentially democratic. The democrat is not proud of or pleased with hisfaults; not at all; only _ex hypothesi_ he does not believe in theirexistence. A failing is an inferiority of one man in relation toanother; the word itself implies it; it means that something is lacking, that one man has a thing which another has not. But all men are equal, therefore, argues the democrat, I have no failing; therefore I need nottry to conceal and control my alleged failings, as they are at worstmerely mannerisms, and are possibly virtues. 

The democrat, in fact, like young men, like most women, and like allhuman beings who have begun to think but do not think very profoundly, knows his failings and assumes that they are virtues. This is verynatural, for our faults are the most conspicuous parts of our character, and when we are still at the self-satisfied stage it is our faults thatwe cherish and admire. Consequently, politeness, in that it consists inconcealing our faults, is intolerable to a man who is impatient todisplay qualities that to him appear commendable and worthy. The usualreason why we do not correct our faults is that we mistake them forqualities, and think that any practice which requires their concealmentmust be quite absurdly tyrannical. 

The democrat is therefore profoundly convinced of two things; first, that all men are equal and that there is no such thing as inferiority orfailing, and secondly, that what men call faults are really naturalcharacteristics of great interest. He believes that faults are popularprejudices invented by intriguers, priests, nobles and rulers, for theirown base purposes to inspire the poor with humility. He looks upon thissense of inferiority as a curb on the people's power, all the morepotent that it works from within and has a paralysing effect on itsenergy. He is persuaded that, from this point of view, politeness is anaristocratic instrument of tyranny. 

This explains why, when the wave of democracy swept over France, itbrought with it a perfect frenzy of rudeness, all the more curious in anation remarkable for courtesy. It was an affirmation that, appearancesnotwithstanding, neither superiorities nor excellences of humancharacter had any real existence. 

Rudeness is democratic. 

CHAPTER X. 

PROFESSIONAL CUSTOMS. 

The contempt for efficiency is carried far even in the liberalprofessions and in professional customs. We all know the story, perhapsa mythical one, of the judge who said to an earnest young barrister whowas conscientiously elaborating a question of law: "Now, Mr. So and So, we are not here to discuss questions of law but to settle thisbusiness. " He did not say this by way of jest; he wished to say: "Thecourts no longer deliver judgment on the merits of a case according tolaw, but according to equity and common sense. The intricacies of thelaw are left to professors, so please when conducting a case do notbehave like a professor of law. " This theory, which even in this mildform would have horrified the ancients, is very prevalent nowadays inlegal circles. It has crept in as an infiltration, as one might call it, from the democratic system. 

A magistrate, nowadays, whatever remnant of the ancient feeling of castehe may have retained, certainly does not consider himself bound by theletter of the law, or by jurisprudence, the written tradition; when heis anything more than a subordinate with no other idea of duty thansubservience to the Government, he is a democratic magistrate, a Heliastof Athens; he delivers judgment according to the dictates of hisindividual conscience; he does not consider himself as a member of alearned body, bound to apply the decisions of that body, but as anindependent exponent of the truth. 

An eccentric, but in truth very significant, example of the new attitudeof mind is to be found in the judge, who formally attributed to himselfthe right to make law and who in his judgments made references, not toexisting laws, but to such vague generalities as appealed to him, or todoctrines which he prophesied would _later on_ be embodied in the law. His Code was the Code of the future. 

The mere existence of such a man is of no particular importance, but thefact that many people, even those partially enlightened, took himseriously, that he was popular, and that a considerable faction thoughthim a good judge, is most significant. 

There is another much commoner sign of the times. The worst form ofincompetence is perhaps that which allows a man to be competent withoutrealising it, and, in criminal cases at least, this seems to be thenormal attitude of the majority of our magistrates. 

We should read on this point a very curious pamphlet called _Le PliProfessionnel_ (1909), by Marcel Lestranger, a provincial magistrate. Itis very pertinent to our subject. It shows plainly that the magistracynowadays, both the qualified stipendiaries and the bench of magistrates, has lost all confidence in itself and is terrified of public opinion asrepresented by newspapers, associations, political clubs and the man inthe street; the magistrate knows too, or thinks he knows, that promotiondepends, not on a reputation for severity as it used to do, but on areputation for indulgence. 

He is confronted in the execution of his duty by forces which are alwaysin coalition against him; the public, almost always favourable to theaccused, the press, both local and Parisian, the so-called science ofjudicial medicine, which is almost always disposed to consider theaccused as persons not responsible for their actions. He lives, too, inconstant terror of being mixed up in a miscarriage of justice, formiscarriage of justice is now a sort of craze, and with a considerablesection of the public every conviction is a miscarriage of justice. Andso the magistrate of first instance never dares to sum up severely, andthe stipendiary never dares press his interrogations with firmness. 

There are exceptions of course; but these exceptions, by theastonishment which they excite, and by the reaction to which they giverise, show sufficiently, indeed conclusively, that they are abnormal, outside the new order of things, outside the new habits of the people. 

More often than not the subordinate magistrate, whose business it is tocommit the prisoner for trial, acts with timidity and reserve, apologetically attenuating the crime; he leaves loopholes of escape, appeals in audible asides for indulgence, dwells on the uncertainty ofevidence. He demands indeed the prisoner's head but lives in terror lesthe obtain it. 

The fact is what both he and the stipendiary desire is that the affairshould be settled by an acquittal, for an affair settled by anacquittal is an affair buried. Stone-dead has no fellow; it is consignedto oblivion. It can never be made the sort of affair which someone issure to declare is a miscarriage of justice, or which someone, animatedby private and political spite or merely for the sake of a jest, canmake into a ghost to haunt for ten or even fifteen years the unfortunatemagistrate who had to deal with it. 

M. Lestranger tells a story which, from all the information I can gleanand from what I can remember hearing at the time, is absolutely true anda perfect illustration of thousands of similar cases. 

A poacher, aged nineteen, first outraged and then strangled in the woodsa peasant woman, the mother of a family. On this occasion there could beno question of a miscarriage of justice or even of any suggestion ofsuch a thing, because the prisoner pleaded guilty. That is a greatpoint. In France every conviction that is not based upon the prisoner'sconfession is a miscarriage of justice; but when the prisoner pleadsguilty there can be no incriminations of this sort, although there mightbe, for false confessions are not unknown, but nothing of the sort isever put forward, and the case seemed to be quite straightforward. 

But the magistrates were terrified that the prisoner would be condemnedto death. The crime was horrible, particularly in the eyes of a villagejury, whose wives and daughters were often obliged to work some distancefrom the village. Moreover, there was a tiresome man, the widower of thevictim, thirsting for vengeance, who sang the praises of his wife andbrought his weeping son into court while he gave his evidence. Thepresident and the public prosecutor were in despair. 

"I have done all I can, " said the president to the public prosecutor. "Ihave made the most of his youth. I have repeated 'only nineteen years ofage. ' I have indeed done all I can. "

"I have done all I can, " said the public prosecutor to the president. "Ihave not said a word about the punishment. I merely accused. I could notplead for the defence. I have done my best. "

At the close of the hearing the chief constable was very reassuring tothese gentlemen. "He is under twenty and he looked so respectable atthe enquiry. It is quite impossible that he should be condemned to deathin this quiet village. You will see, he will not be sentenced to capitalpunishment. "

He was not. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty with extenuatingcircumstances. The magistrates recovered their tranquillity. 

M. Lestranger's facts are supported by figures. Those who commit crimeswhich excite pity, such as infanticide and abortion, are less and lesslikely to be prosecuted, and if they are, they are frequently let off, however flagrant the offence. The average number of acquittals duringthe last twelve years is twenty-six per cent. A magistrate nowadays is aSt. Francis of Assize. 

Either the magistrate does not believe in his own efficiency, or hesacrifices it to his peace of mind, and he cares more for his own peaceof mind than for the public safety. The magistracy will soon be no morethan a _façade_, still imposing but not at all alarming. 

There is already a very serious symptom of how little confidence thecrowd has in the wholesome severities of justice; the criminal caught inthe act is often lynched or almost lynched, because it is well knownthat if he is not punished immediately, he is very likely to escapepunishment altogether. 

--Yet this same crowd, in the form of a jury, is often, almost always, very indulgent. --True, and that is because between the crime and theassizes there is often an interval of six months. At the date of thecrime it is the misfortune of the victim that excites the crowd, at thedate of the assize it is the misfortune of the accused. Be this as itmay, the practice of lynching amounts to a formal accusation that bothmagistrates and juries are over indulgent. 

 * * * * *

The clergy even, who are more tenacious of tradition than any otherorder in the State, are gradually becoming democratic to this extent, that though by profession teachers of dogmas and mysteries, they nowteach only morality. In this way they try to get into closer touch withthe poor, and so have a greater hold upon them. Evidently they are notaltogether to blame. Only, when they cease to teach dogma and interpretmysteries, they cease to be a learned body or to have the prestige of alearned body. On the other hand they sink to the level of any otherphilosophy, which teaches and explains morality, and illustrates it bysacred examples just as well as any priesthood. The result is that thepeople say to themselves "What need have we of priests? Moralphilosophers are good enough for us. "

This Americanism is not very dangerous, in fact it does not matter, inAmerica, where there are very few lay moral philosophers; but it is avery great danger in France, Italy and Belgium where their name islegion. 

 * * * * *

In every profession, to sum it all up, the root of the evil is this, that we believe that mere dexterity and cunning are incomparablysuperior to knowledge and that cleverness is infinitely more valuablethan sound learning. Those who follow professions believe this, and thelay public that employs the professions is not dismayed by this attitudeof the professional class; and so things tend to that equality ofcharlatanry to which democracy instinctively tends. Democracy does notrespect efficiency, but it soon will have no opportunity to respect it;for efficiency is being destroyed and before long will have disappearedaltogether. There will soon be no difference between the judge and thesuitor, between the layman and the priest, the sick man and thephysician. The contempt which is felt for efficiency destroys it littleby little, and efficiency, accepting the situation, outruns the contemptthat is felt for it. The end will be that we shall all be only too muchof one opinion. 

CHAPTER XI. 

ATTEMPTED REMEDIES. 

We have sought very conscientiously, and democrats themselves havesought very conscientiously, to find remedies for this constitutionaldisease of democracy. We have preserved certain bodies, relativelyaristocratic, as refuges, we would fain believe, of efficiency. We havepreserved for instance a Senate, elected by universal suffrage, notdirectly, but in the second degree. We have preserved also a Parliament(a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies), a floating aristocracy which iscontinually being renewed. This is, however, in a sense an aristocracyinasmuch as it stands between us and a direct and immediate governmentof the people by the people. 

These remedies are by no means to be despised, but we recognise thatthey are very feeble, for the reason that democracy always eludes them. By the care it takes to exclude efficiency, it has made the Chamber ofDeputies (with some few exceptions) a body resembling itself withabsolute fidelity both in respect of the superficial character of itsknowledge and the violence of its prejudices; with the result in myopinion that the crowd might just as well govern directly and, withoutthe intervention of representatives, by means of the plebiscite. 

The same thing applies to the Senate, though perhaps in a more directfashion. The Senate is chosen by the delegates of universal suffrage. These delegates, however, are not chosen by a general universal suffragewhere each department would choose four or five hundred delegates, butby the town councillors of each commune or parish. In these communes, especially in the rural communes, the municipal councillors who are byfar the most numerous and, with regard to elections, the mostinfluential, are more or less completely dependent on the _préfets_. Theresult is that the Senate is, practically, chosen by the _préfets_, thatis, by the Government, as used to be the case under the First and SecondEmpire. The maker of the constitution made this arrangement for thebenefit of his own party, for he upheld authority; and he wanted theCentral Government to control the elections of the Senate. It has notturned out as he intended. _Vos non vobis_, others have profited by hisdevice, as the following considerations will show. 

It is well known that in France a deputy belonging to the opposition, though sure of his constituents, and certain to be re-electedindefinitely, who for private reasons wishes to be a senator, is obligedto be civil to the Government in power, to abate his opposition, and tomake himself pleasant, if he wishes to avoid failure in his newambition. It is very inconvenient to have a strong and active oppositionin the Senate. 

It comes back again to this, that we have a Senate not far removed fromone elected by universal suffrage. 

Universal suffrage elects the Chamber of Deputies, the Chamber electsthe Government, and the Government elects the Senate. The Senate istherefore an extremely feeble anti-democratic remedy, and if it wereintended as a check on democracy, it has not been a striking success. 

If we really wish to have an upper chamber as competent as possible, independent of the central authority, and relatively independent ofuniversal suffrage, we must establish a chamber elected by the greatconstituent bodies of the nation, and also in my opinion, by universalsuffrage, but with modifications somewhat as follows. The whole nation, divided for practical purposes into five or six large districts, shouldelect five or six thousand delegates who in turn should elect threehundred senators. There would then be no pressure from Government norany manufacture by the crowd of a representation fashioned in its ownimage, and we should have a really select body composed of as muchcompetence as could be got in the country. 

It is, however, exactly the opposite of this that is done, and theFrench Senate is an extremely feeble, anti-democratic remedy. 

It represents the rural democracy, arbitrarily guided and governed bythe democratic Government. 

 * * * * *

Another remedy which has been given an equally conscientious trial isthe system of competitive examination, which is supposed to be aguarantee for the ability of those who seek admission into governmentservice. The object of these examinations, which are extremely detailedand complicated, is to test the ability of the candidate in everyparticular, to give employment to merit and to exclude favouritism. 

--You call that an anti-democratic remedy! It is as democratic as wellcan be!--

Nay, pardon! It would be anti-monarchical if we lived under a monarchy, anti-aristocratic if we lived under an aristocracy, and it isanti-democratic because our lot is cast in a democracy. Competition forpublic offices is a sort of co-optation. In fact it is co-optation pureand simple. When I suggested that the magistracy should be chosen by themagistrates, that is, the _Cour de Cassation_ by the magistrates and themagistrates in turn by the _Cour de Cassation_, I was of course accusedof being paradoxical, as is always the case, when one suggestssomething contrary to the usual custom. I was, however, only carrying alittle further the principle which is already applied to officials. In acertain sense and to a large extent officials recruit their numbers byco-optation. 

It is true, they do not actually choose the officials, but theyeliminate the candidates whom they do not wish to have. Examination isostracism of the inefficient. The Government, of course, has to decidewho may be candidates, but its selection for employment is limited tothose of whom other officials (the officials who conduct theexamination) can approve. It is in fact co-optation. 

The committee of examiners which admits a candidate to St. Cyr appointsan officer. The committee which admits a candidate to the _ÉcolePolytechnique_ appoints an officer or an engineer. A committee alsowhich refuses a candidate at either of these places is encroaching onthe National Sovereignty, because it is forbidding the NationalSovereignty to make of this young man an officer or an engineer. This isco-optation. This is a guarantee of efficiency. Here a wall is raisedagainst incompetence, and against the jobbery under which incompetencewould profit. 

It is hardly necessary for me to add that this co-optation is limited toa very narrow field of operation. It is confined in fact to thethreshold of a man's career. Once the candidate has been consecratedofficial, by a board of examining officials, he belongs, both as regardsadvancement, promotion and the reverse, to the central authority alone, except in certain cases. The co-optation of officials is merely aco-optation by elimination. The elimination is made once and for all, and the non-eliminated (_i. E. _, the successful candidate) steps at onceinto the toils of the Government, that is, into the toils of popularelectioneering and party politics, when all the abuses which I haveenumerated can and do arise. To be fair I had of course to point outthat we had tried to invent some slight barriers against the omnipotenceof incompetence, which prevent it being absolutely supreme. 

Unfortunately these prophylactic measures are very badly organised, and, far from being capable of amendment, ought to be completelyrevolutionised. 

The examination system in our country is founded on a misconception, Imean on the confusion between knowledge and competence. We searchconscientiously for competence or efficiency, and we believe that wehave found it when we find knowledge, but that is an error. Anexamination requires from a candidate that he shall know, andcompetition demands that he shall know more than the others, butthat is almost all that examination and competition require of him. Therefrom results one of the most painful open sores of ourcivilisation, --preparation for examinations. 

Preparation for examination is responsible for intellectual indigestion, for minds overloaded with useless information, and for a system ofcramming, which at once takes the heart out of men, perhaps with goodability, just at the age when their mental activity is most keen; which, further, as the result of this surfeit, disgusts for the rest of hislife and renders impotent for all intellectual effort, the unfortunatepatient who has been condemned to undergo this treatment for five, eight, and sometimes ten years of his youth. 

I am satisfied, if I may be allowed to speak of myself in order tosupport my argument by an instance well known to me, that, if I havebeen able to work from the age of twenty-five to that of sixty-three, itis because I have never succeeded except very moderately, and I am proudof it, in competitive examinations. Being of a curious turn of mind Ihave been interested in the subject set in the syllabus, but in othermatters also, and the syllabus has been neglected. I sometimes passed, more often I failed, with the result that at twenty-six I was behind mycontemporaries, but I was not overworked, broken down, and utterly sickof all intellectual effort. I admit that some of my contemporaries whonever failed in an examination, and who passed them all with greatbrilliance, have worked as hard as I have up to sixty, but they areextremely few. 

The curious thing is that the results, not perhaps disastrous, butobviously very unsatisfactory, of this examination system do not lead usto abandon it (that perhaps would be an extreme measure), but make usaggravate and complicate it. Legal and medical examinations are much"stiffer" than they used to be, and they require a greater physicaleffort, but without requiring or obtaining any greater intellectualvalue. In truth, one might say, examination is nothing more than a testof good health, and it is a very searching test, for it often succeedsin destroying it. 

Here is an example which I know well. It is necessary, if a man desireto gain distinction as a professor of secondary education, that heshould be a bachelor, a licentiate, an _agrégé_ or a doctor. This is aqualification that counts, and it means ten examinations orcompetitions, two for the first half of the bachelor's degree, two forthe second, two for the licentiate, two for _agrégé_, two for thedoctor's degree. This, moreover, does not appear to be enough. Betweenthe second part of the bachelor's degree and the licentiate's degreethere is normally an interval of two years; between the licentiate andthe _agrégation_ two years, and between the _agrégation_ and thedoctor's degree there is generally three or four years. You perceive thedanger! Between the _licence_ and the _agrégation_, to go no further atpresent, the future professor has two whole years to himself. That is tosay, that during the first of these two years he will work alone. He canwork freely, he can study in what direction he pleases, without thinkingof an examination at the end of twelve months; he has escaped for themoment from the servitude of the syllabus. The prospect makes us shudderwith apprehension. It is sadly to be feared that the young man may takea rest and draw breath, or worse still he may be carried into someextraneous study by his personal aptitudes or tastes. The personality ofthe candidate has here an opening, a moment at which it has apossibility of asserting itself. That must be stopped at all costs. 

The authorities, therefore, have put in an intermediate examinationbetween the _licence_ and the _agrégation_. The examination, it is true, is on a subject chosen by the candidate himself; so much it is only fairto admit. The subject chosen, however, must be submitted to theprofessors. Their advice and indeed assistance must be invited. Theresult, if not the object, of this examination is to prevent thecandidate, during this perilous year of liberty, from developingoriginal ideas of his own and acting on them. 

_One examination every year for ten years_--that is the ideal of themodern professor for the future professors who are in course of beingtrained. Between the second part of the bachelor's degree and thelicentiate, as there is there an interval of two years, they willpresently perceive that there ought to be an examination at the end ofthe first year, and we shall have certificates of study inintermediate, secondary, higher subjects. Between the _agrégation_ andthe _doctorat_, there are four years, and naturally we shall want threeexaminations just to see how the future professor is getting on with histheses, to encumber him with assistance and to prevent him doing themalone; first examination called the _Bibliography of the Theses for theDoctorat_, second examination called the _Methodology of the Doctorat_, third examination called the _Preparation for the Sustaining of theThesis_, and then the examination for the doctor's degree itself. 

In this way the desired object is attained. Between the ages ofseventeen and twenty-seven or thirty the examinee will have had toundergo sixteen examinations. He will never have worked alone. He willalways have worked, for periods of twelve months, on a syllabus, for anexamination, with a view of pleasing such and such professors, modellinghimself on their views, their conceptions, their general ideas, theireccentricities, aided by them, influenced by them, never knowing, andfeeling he ought not to know, not wishing to know, and running a greatrisk if he did know, and forming habits for his whole life so that hemay never know what he thinks himself, what he imagines himself, what heseeks and would like to seek of his own motion, or what he ought himselfto try to be. He will take up all this after he is thirty. 

Not a vestige of personality or original thought till the moment when itis too late for it to appear, that is the maxim!

Whence comes this frenzy, this _examino mania_? When one comes to thinkof it, it seems to be a simple case of _Dandino-mania_. Dandin says withgreat determination "I mean to go and judge. " The professor of a certainage means to go and examine. He no longer loves to profess, he loves tobe always examining. This is very natural. Professing, he is judged;examining, he judges. The one is always much pleasanter than the other. For a professor, to sweat in harness, to feel oneself being examined, that is, criticised, discussed, held up to judgment, and chaffed by anaudience of students and amateurs, ceases at a certain age to bealtogether pleasant; on the other hand to examine, to sit on the thronewith all the majesty of a judge, to have only to criticise and not toproduce, to intervene only when the victim stumbles, and to let himknow that he has made a slip, to hold the student for the whole yearunder the salutary terror of an approaching examination, to remind himthat he may need help and must by no means displease his professor--allthis is very agreeable and makes up for many of the worries of theteaching profession. The examination mania proceeds partly from theterror of being oneself examined, and partly from the pleasure ofexamining others. 

All this is true, but there is more than this. The precociousdevelopment of early talent and originality is the thing which strangelyterrifies these examination-maniacs. They have a horror of the man whoteaches himself. They have a horror of any one who ventures to think forhimself and to enquire for himself at twenty-five years of age. Theywant, like an old hen, to mother the young mind as long as possible. They will not let it find its own feet, till very late, and till, as thescoffer might well say, its limbs are absolutely atrophied. I do not saythat they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain, conceited fellow who takes pleasure in thinking for himself, and hasan absolute delight in despising the thoughts of others. It is, however, no less the fact, that it is among these self-taught men that we findthose vigorous spirits who venture boldly beyond the domain of humanscience and extend its frontier. The question then is which is best, tofavour all these troublesome self-taught people in the hope of findingsome good ones among them, or by crossing and worrying them to run therisk of destroying the good as well as the bad. I am myself strongly infavour of the first of these alternatives. It is better to let all gotheir own way, even though pretenders to originality come to grief, athing that matters very little. Minds that are truly original willdevelop themselves and find room for the expansion of all their powers. 

But here, --take note how the democratic spirit comes in everywhere--thequestion of numbers is raised. Ten times more numerous, I am told, arethe pretenders to originality whom we save from themselves by disciplinethan the true geniuses whose wings we clip. 

I reply that, in matters intellectual, questions of figures do notcount. An original spirit strangled is a loss which is not compensatedby the rescue of ten fools from worse excesses of folly. An originalspirit left free to be himself is worth more than ten fools whose follyis partially restrained. 

Nietzsche has well said: "Modern education consists in smothering theexceptional in favour of the normal. It consists in directing the mindaway from the exceptional into the channel of the average. " This oughtnot to be. I do not say that education should do the opposite of allthis. Oh no, far from that. It is not the business of education to lookfor exceptional genius, or to help in its creation. Exceptional geniusis born of itself and it has no need of such assistance. But even lessis it the business of education to regard the exceptional with terror, and to take every means possible, even the most barbarous and mostdetailed, to prevent it as long as possible from coming to the light. 

Education ought to draw all that it can out of mediocrity, and torespect originality as much as it can. It ought never to attempt to turnmediocrity into originality, nor to reduce originality to the level ofmediocrity. 

And how can all this be done? By an intervention that is alwaysdiscreet, and sometimes by non-intervention. 

At the present moment its policy is equally distant fromnon-intervention and from an intervention that is discreet. 

It is in this way that the very institution which we have invented tosafeguard efficiency contributes not a little to the triumph of itsopposite. These victims of examination are competent in respect ofknowledge, instruction and technical proficiency. They are incompetentin respect of intellectual value, often, though perhaps not so often asformerly, in respect of moral value. 

As far as their intellectual value is concerned, they have veryfrequently no mental initiative. It has been cramped, hidden away, andtrampled down. If it ever existed, it exists now no longer. They are alltheir days merely instruments. They have been taught many things, especially intellectual obedience. They continue to obey intellectually, their brain acts like well made and well lubricated machinery. "Thedifference between the novel and the play, " said Brunetière, "is that inthe play the characters act, in the novel they are acted. " I do notknow if this be true, but of the functionary we might say as often asnot, he does not think, he is thought. 

The official also is incompetent, though less and less often, in respectof moral worth. By the exercise of intellectual obedience, he has beentrained to moral obedience also and he is little disposed to assert hisindependence. Observe how everything tends to this end. This method ofco-opting officials by means of elimination, as I have said, operatesonly, as I have also shown, at the outset of the official's career. Fromthis moment onwards the functionary must depend on the Government only, his whole preparation during ten years of education has been calculatedto ensure his absolute dependence on his official directors. So fargood, perhaps a little too good. It would have been well if theeducation of the functionary had left him, together with a littleoriginality of mind, a little originality of character as well. 

 * * * * *

We have sought, very conscientiously also, and, I may even say, with anadmirable enthusiasm, yet another remedy for the faults of democracy, another remedy for its incompetence. It is said: "The crowd isincompetent, so be it, it is necessary to enlighten it. Primaryeducation, spread broadcast, is the solution of every difficulty, andprovides an answer to every question. "

From this argument aristocrats have derived some little amusement. "Howis this?" they exclaimed, "what is the meaning of this paradox? You aredemocrats and that means that you attribute political excellence, 'political virtue, ' as we used to say, to the crowd, that is toignorance. Why then do you wish to enlighten the crowd, that is todestroy the very virtue which, on your own showing, is the cause of itssuperiority?" The democrats reply that the crowd, even as it is, isalready very preferable to aristocracy, and that it will be still moreso when it has received instruction. They resolve the apparentcontradiction by the argument _a fortiori_. 

At all events, the democrats set to work most vigorously on theeducation of the people. The result is that the people is much bettereducated than formerly, and I am one of those who regard this result asexcellent; but the further result is, that the people is saturatedwith false ideas, and this is less comforting. 

Ancient republics had their demagogues, their orators, who inflamed theevil qualities of the people, by bestowing on them high-sounding namesand by flattery. The great democracy of modern times has its demagogues. These are its elementary school teachers. They come of the people, areproud to belong to it, for which of course no one can blame them, theydistrust everything that is not the people, they are all the more of thepeople because among the people they are intellectually in the firstrank while elsewhere they are of secondary importance; and what men loveis not the group of which they form a part, but the group of which theyare the chief. They are, therefore, profoundly democratic. 

So far nothing could be better. But it is a narrow form of democraticsentiment which they hold, for they are only half-educated, or rather(for who is completely educated or even well educated?), because theyhave only received a rudimentary education. Rudimentary education mayperhaps make us capable of having one idea, it certainly renders usincapable of having two. The man of rudimentary education is always theman of one single idea and of one fixed idea. He has few doubts. Now thewise man doubts often, the ignorant man seldom, the fool never. The manof one idea is more or less impermeable to any process of reasoning thatis foreign to this idea. An Indian author has said: "You can convincethe wise; you can convince, with more difficulty, the ignorant; thehalf-educated, never. "

Now no one ever convinces the elementary schoolmaster. He is confirmedin his convictions by defending, and still more by discussing them. Heis the slave of his opinion. He does not possess it always quiteclearly, but it possesses him. He loves it with all his soul, as apriest his religion, because it is the truth, because it is beautiful, because it has been persecuted, and because it means the salvation ofthe world. He would enjoy its triumph but he yearns still more to be amartyr in its cause. 

He is a convinced democrat and a sentimental democrat. His convictionforms a solid basis for his sentiment, and his sentiment kindles to awhite heat his conviction. His conviction makes him turn a deaf ear toevery objection, his sentiment inspires him with hatred for hisadversary. For him the man who is not a democrat is wrong, and further, to him an object of hatred. In his eyes the distance between himself andthe aristocrat is as the distance between truth and error, nay betweengood and evil, between honour and dishonour. The schoolmaster is thefanatic vassal of democracy. 

Then, as he is a man of one idea, he is single-minded, narrowly logical, and logical to the utmost extreme. He goes straight forward where hisargument leads. An idea which admits neither qualification nor questioncan go far in a very short space of time. And the schoolmaster drivesall his democratic principles to their natural and logical conclusion. 

He develops these principles and all that they imply by the sheer forceof what he calls his "reasoning reason, " and it appears to him to be notonly natural but salutary to seek their realisation. Everything of whichthe principle is good is good itself, and no one but Montesquieu couldever believe that an institution could be ruined by the excess of theprinciple in which its merit consists. 

The schoolmaster, therefore, deduces their logical consequences from thetwo great democratic principles, the sovereignty of the nation, andequality; he deduces them rigorously, and arrives at the followingconclusions. 

The people alone is sovereign. Therefore, though there can be individualliberty and liberty of association, there ought to be only suchindividual liberty and liberty of association as the people permits. Liberty cannot be and ought not to be anything more than a thingtolerated by the sovereign people. The individual may think, speak, write, and act as he pleases, but only so far as the people will allowhim; for if he can do these things with absolute freedom, or even withlimitations which are not imposed by the people, he becomes thesovereign power, or the power which fixed the limits of his freedombecomes the sovereign, and the sovereignty of the people disappears. 

This brings us back to the simple definition that liberty is the rightto do what we please within the limits of the law. And who makes thelaw? The people. Liberty is then the right to do everything which thepeople permits us to do. Nothing more; if we attempt to go beyond this, the sovereignty of the individual begins, and the sovereignty of thepeople disappears. 

--But to have liberty to do only what the people permits, this is to befree as we were under Louis XIV. --and that is not to be free at all!

So be it. There will indeed be no liberty unless the law permit it. Surely you do not wish to be free in opposition to the law?

--The law may be tyrannical. It is tyrannical if it is unjust. --

The law has the right to be unjust. Otherwise the sovereignty of thepeople would be limited and this must not be. 

--Fundamental and constitutional laws might be devised to limit thissovereignty of the people in order to guarantee such and such of theliberties for the individual. --

And the people would then be tied! The sovereignty of the people wouldbe suppressed! No, the people cannot be tied. The sovereignty of thepeople is fundamental and must be left intact. 

--Then there will be no individual liberty?--

Only such a measure as the people will tolerate. 

--Then there will be no liberty of association?

Still less; for an association is in itself a limitation of thesovereignty of the nation. It has its own laws, which from a democraticpoint of view is an absurd and monstrous incongruity. The right ofassociation limits the national sovereignty, just as would a free townor sanctuary of refuge. It limits the nation, and pulls it up short inface of its closed doors. It is a State within a State; where there isassociation, there arises at once a source of organisation other thanthe great organism of the popular will. It is like an animal which livessome sort of independent life within another animal larger than itselfand which, living on that other animal, is still independent of it. Infact there can be only one association, the association of the nation, otherwise the sovereignty of the nation is limited, that is, destroyed. No liberty of association can then exist. 

Associations of course will exist which the people will tolerate, buttheir right of existence is always revocable and they are always liableto be dissolved and destroyed. Otherwise the national sovereignty wouldbe held to abdicate and it can never abdicate. 

--Ah! but there is one association, at least, which to some extent issacred, and which the sovereignty of the people is bound to respect. Imean the family. The father is the head of the family, he educates hischildren and brings them up as he thinks best, till they come to man'sestate. --

Nay, that will not pass! For here again we have a limitation of thesovereignty of the nation. The child does not belong to his father. Ifthis were so, at the threshold of each home the sovereignty of thepeople would be arrested, which means that it would cease to existanywhere. The child, like the man, belongs to the people. He belongs toit, in the sense that he must not be a member of an association whichmight dare to think differently from the people, or perhaps even harbourideas in contradiction to the thought of the people. It would indeed bedangerous to leave our future citizens for twenty years outside thenational thought, which is the same thing as being outside thecommunity. Imagine five or six bees brought up apart, outside the laws, regulations, and constitution of the hive; imagine further that of thesegroups of bees there were several hundreds in the hive. The result wouldbe the destruction of the hive. 

It is _above all things_ in the family that the sovereignty of thepeople ought to prevail. It ought above all things to refuse torecognise the association of the family, and to wage war against itwherever it finds it. It should leave to parents the right of embracingtheir children, but nothing more. The right to educate them in ideasperhaps contrary to those of their parents belongs to the people, which, here as well as elsewhere, perhaps even more than elsewhere for theinterests at stake are more important, must be absolutely sovereign. 

This, then, is what the schoolmaster, with a relentless logic whichappears to me to be irresistible, deduces from the principle of thenational sovereignty. 

From the principle of equality he deduces another point. "All men areequal by nature and before the law. " That is to say, if there werejustice, all men ought to have been equal by nature, and further, ifthere is to be justice, all men ought to be equal before the law. 

Very obviously, however, all men are not equal before the law, and theyare not equal by nature. Very well then, we must make them so. 

They are not equal before the law. They appear to be so, but they arenot. The rich man, even supposing that the magistrates are perfectly andstrictly honest, by reason of the fact that he can remunerate the bestsolicitors, advocates, and witnesses, by reason further of the fact thathe intimidates by his influence all those who could appear against him, is not in every respect the equal of the poor man before the law. 

Even less does this equality exist in the presence of that union ofconstituted social forces which we call society. In this respect therich man will be the "influential man"; the "man well connected, " theman on whom no one depends, but whom no one likes to cross or tocontradict. There is, between the rich and the poor man, however equalwe may pretend them to be before the law, the difference between the manwho gives orders and the man who is obliged to obey. _Real_ equality, in society, in presence of society and even in presence of the law, only exists where there is neither rich nor poor. 

But there will always be rich and poor, as long as the institution ofinheritance remains. Abolish inheritance therefore!

But, even with inheritance abolished, there will still be rich and poor. The man who can make his fortune rapidly will be a strong man relativelyto the man who can not make a fortune, and, I would have you note it, even when we have abolished inheritance, the son of the strong man, during the life of his father, will be strong himself, so that even ifwe abolish inheritance, a privilege, namely, the privilege of birth willstill exist and equality will not exist. 

There is only one state of affairs under which equality is possible, that is when no one possesses and no one can acquire anything. The onlysocial policy so devised that no one can possess and no one can acquireanything is the policy of a community of goods, that is Communism orCollectivism. Collectivism is nothing very wonderful. Collectivism isequality; and equality is collectivism, otherwise our equality will benothing but a phantom and an hypocrisy. Every one who is a convinced andsincere _egalitarian_, and who takes the trouble to think, is forced tobe a collectivist. Bonald asked very wittily: "Do you know what is adeist? It is a man who has not lived long enough to be an atheist. " Wein our turn ask: "Do you know what is an anti-collectivist democrat? Itis a man who has not lived long enough to be a collectivist, or who, having lived long enough, has never taken the trouble to think, and toperceive what are the necessary consequences of his own principles. "

But surely collectivism is a chimæra, an utopia, a thing impossible. Certainly it is impossible in the sense that in the country which adoptsit the source of all initiative will be destroyed. No man will make aneffort to improve his position, since it must never be improved. Thewhole country will become one of those stagnant pools to which one ofour ministers lately referred. Everyone having become an official, everyone will realise the ideal of the official which the Goncourts havevery neatly described. "The good official, " they say, "is the man whocombines laziness with extreme accuracy. " It is a definitivedefinition. The country that reformed itself in this way would beconquered at the end of ten years by some neighbouring people more orless ambitious. 

That admits of no question; but what does it prove? That collectivism isonly impossible because it is only possible if established in everycountry at once. Very well, and in order to establish it in everycountry at once, only one thing is needful, namely, that there shall nolonger be distinct and separate countries and no longer anynationalities. It surely will not answer to establish collectivismbefore the abolition of nationalities, since, once established, it willserve no purpose except to bring into prominent relief the vastsuperiority of countries which have not adopted collectivism. We must, therefore, take our problems in order and abolish nationalities beforewe can establish collectivism. 

Now if nations organise themselves against nature (the nature that, theschoolmaster assumes, makes all men equal), if instinctively theyorganise themselves in a hierarchy which is aristocratic, if they havetheir leaders and their subordinates, their stronger and their weakermembers, it is because this arrangement is necessary in a camp, and eachnation feels that it is a camp. If each feels that it is a camp, it issimply because there are other nations round it, because it feels andknows that there are others round it. When there are no longer othernations, each nation will organise itself no longer against nature, butnaturally, that is to say on _egalitarian_ principles. Nature perhapsstrictly speaking is not _egalitarian_, but it tends towards equality inthe sense that it produces many more, indeed infinitely more, mediocrities than superior intelligences. 

Thus equality demands the abolition of inheritance, and the equality ofpossessions. Equality of possessions necessitates collectivism, andcollectivism requires the abolition of nationalities. We are_egalitarians_, then collectivists, and by logical consequenceanti-patriots. 

So argue the great majority of school teachers, with an absolute logic, in my opinion, irrefutable, with the logic which takes no account offacts, and which only takes account of its own principle and of itself. So they will all argue to-morrow, if they continue, as it is probablethey will continue, to be very excellent dialecticians. 

Will they go back to the premises and say, that if the sovereignty ofthe people and equality lead logically and imperatively to theseconclusions, it is perhaps because the sovereignty of the people andequality are false ideas, and because these conclusions prove them to befalse? This is a course not likely to be taken, for the sovereignty ofthe people and the principle of equality are something more than generalideas, they are sentiments. 

They are sentiments which have become ideas, as is the case doubtlesswith all general ideas, and they are sentiments of great strength. Thesovereignty of the people is the truth for him who believes in it, because it ought to be true, because it is a thing as full of majestyfor him as was Cæsar in all his pomp for the ancient Roman, or LouisXIV. In all his glory for the man of the seventeenth century. 

Equality is truth for him who believes, because it ought to be true, because it is justice, and because it would be infamous if justice andtruth were not one. For the democrat, the world has ever been risinggradually, since its creation, towards the sovereignty of the people andthe doctrine of equality; the latter contains the former, the former isdestined to found the latter and has this mission for its purpose inlife; together they constitute civilisation, and if they are notattained, there is a relapse into barbarism. 

They are dogmas of faith. A dogma is an overmastering sentiment whichhas found expression in a formula. From these two dogmas everything thatcan be deduced without breach of logic is truth which it is our rightand duty to proclaim. 

We must add that the schoolmaster is urged in this same direction bysentiments of a less general character, which nevertheless have aninfluence of their own. He is placed in his commune in direct oppositionto the priest, the only person very often who is, like himself, in thatplace a man of some little education. Hence rivalry and a struggle forinfluence. Now the priest, by a series of historical incidents, is amore or less warm partisan sometimes of monarchy but almost always ofaristocracy. He is a member of a body that once was an estate of therealm, and he is persuaded that his corporation is still an estate ofthe realm, notwithstanding all that has happened. If the existing orderis regulated by the _concordat_, the existing order recognises hiscorporation as a body legitimatised by the State, since it treats it onthe same terms as the magistracy and the army. If the existing order isone based on the separation of State and Church, his corporation appearsto him still more to be an estate of the realm, because being forcedinto an attitude of solid organisation, and recognising no limitationsof frontier, it becomes a collective personage which, not without peril, but also not without a certain measure of success, has often ventured tocross swords with the State itself. 

As the priest then belongs to an order endowed with an historicauthority which is nevertheless distinct from, and in no wise adelegation from, the authority of the people, the priest cannot failmore or less definitely and consciously to adopt an attitude of mindfavourable to aristocracy. 

The school teacher, his rival, is thrown then all the more inevitablytowards the adoption of democratic principles, and he embraces them witha fervour into which enters jealousy quite as much as conviction. Theymean more to him than even to an eighteenth century philosopher, becausehe has a much greater personal interest in believing them, the interestof personal dislike and animosity; for it is his belief that everythingtaught by the priest is the pure invention of ingenious oppressors whowish to enslave the people in order to consolidate their own tyranny;and that is his reason for professing philosophical ideas resuscitatedfrom the teaching of Diderot, and Holbach. For the school teacher it isalmost inconceivable that the priest should be anything but a rascal. 

"Atheism is aristocratic, " said Robespierre, thinking of Rousseau. Atheism is democratic, say our present-day school teachers. Whence comesthis difference of opinion? First because it was fashionable among thegreat lords of the eighteenth century to be libertines andfree-thinkers, but among the people the belief in God was unanimous. Secondly, because the priests of our day, for the reasons which I havegiven and from remembrance of the persecutions suffered by their Churchat the date of the first triumphs of democracy, have remainedaristocrats or have become so even more firmly than they ever werebefore. Atheism then has become democratic as a weapon against thedeists who are generally aristocrats. 

Besides, atheism fits in very well, whatever Robespierre may havethought, with the general sentiments of the baser demagogy. To berestrained by nothing, to be limited by nothing, that is the dominantidea of the people, or rather it is the dominant idea of the democratfor the people, that it should be restrained by nothing and limited bynothing in its sovereign power. Now God is a limit, God is a restraint. And just as the democrat will not admit of a secular constitution whichthe people could not destroy and which would prevent him from making badlaws; just as the democrat will not submit--if we may adopt theterminology of Aristotle--to being governed by _laws_, to be governedthat is by an ancient body of law which would check the people andobstruct it in its daily fabrication of _decrees_; so just in the samespirit the democrat does not admit of a God Who has issued Hiscommandments, Who has issued His body of laws, anterior and superior toall the laws and all the decrees of men, and Who sets His limit on thelegislative eccentricities of the people, on its capricious omnipotence, in a word, on the sovereignty of the people. 

After Sedan, Bismarck was asked: "Now that Napoleon has fallen, on whomdo you make war?" He replied: "On Louis XIV. " So the democrat questionedon his atheism could reply: "I am warring against Moses. "

This is the origin of the atheism of democrats and schoolmasters. Thisis the origin of the formula: "Neither God nor Master, " which for theanarchist requires no correction nor supplement, which for the democrathas only to be modified: "Neither God nor Master, save the People. "

At the end of one of his great political speeches in 1849 or 1850, Victor Hugo said: "In the future there will only be two powers; thePeople and God. " The modern democrat has persuaded himself that if therebe a God, the sovereignty of the people is infringed, if he believe inHim. 

Lastly, the school teacher is confirmed in his democratic sentiments, inall his democratic sentiments, by the political position which has beenmade for him in France. It is a strange thing, a disconcerting anomaly, that the Governments of the nineteenth century (especially, we must doit this justice, the present Government), have very handsomely respectedthe liberty of professors of higher education, and of secondaryeducation, and have not in the very slightest degree respected theliberty of the teachers of elementary education. The professor of highereducation, especially since 1870, can teach exactly what he pleases, except immorality and contempt of our country and its laws. He can evendiscuss our laws, provided always that he maintains the principle that, such as they are, they ought to be obeyed till they are repealed. Hisliberty as to his opinions political, social and religious is complete. It is only occasionally constrained by the disorderly demonstrations ofhis students. The professor of secondary education enjoys a libertyalmost equally wide. He is subject, but only in an extremely liberalfashion, to a programme or syllabus of studies. As to the spirit inwhich he conducts his work he is practically never molested. He isgiven a free hand. 

Nor has it ever occurred to any Government to ask a professor of higherand secondary education how he votes at political elections, still lessto require him to canvass in favour of the candidates agreeable to theGovernment. 

When, however, we pass to elementary education we see everything ischanged. The elementary teacher is not appointed by his natural chief, the _recteur_ or Minister of Public Education, he is appointed by the_préfet_, that is by the Minister of the Interior, the political head ofthe Government. In other words, this is the same process as theappointment of officials by the people, described a few pages back, butwith one intermediary the less. It is pre-eminently the Minister of theInterior who represents the political will of the nation at any givendate. And it is the Minister of the Interior who through his _préfets_appoints the elementary school teacher. It is then the political will ofthe nation which chooses the school teachers. It would be impossible toconvey to them more clearly (which is only fair, for people should bemade to understand their duties) that they are chosen forconsiderations of politics and that they ought to consider themselves aspolitical agents. 

And indeed they are nothing else, or perhaps we should say they aresomething else but above all they are politicians. The schoolteachersdepend on the _préfets_ and the _préfets_ depend much on the deputies, yet it is not the deputies who appoint them, but it is they who canremove them, who can get them promoted or disgraced, who by constantremovals can reduce them to destitution. Surely, every candid personwill exclaim, given the difficult and scandalous situation in which theyare put by the hand which appoints them, they ought at least to have theguarantee and assurance, very relative and ineffectual though it be, ofirremovability. But they have not got it. The professors of highereducation who do not require it have got it, the professors of secondaryeducation have it to all intents and purposes. The elementary schoolteacher has it not. 

He is, therefore, delivered over to the politicians who make of him anelectioneering agent, who reckon him as such, and who would never pardonhim if he failed them. 

The result is that the majority of school teachers are demagoguesbecause they like it, and with magnificent enthusiasm and passion. Theminority who have no turn for demagogy are demagogues though they do notlike it, and because they are forced by necessity. 

Even those who have no disposition that way become demagogues in theend, for that is the way of the world. "In the heat of the _mêlée_, "said Augier, "there are no mercenaries. " Our school teachers, thrown, sometimes against their will, into the battle, forced at least to appearto be fighting, receive knocks and when they have received them, theybecome attached to the cause on whose behalf they have suffered. Wealways end by having the opinions which are attributed to us, and beingtaken for a demagogue the moment he arrives at his village, the youngschool teacher, not daring to say anything to the contrary, and beingvery ill received by all other parties, naturally becomes a demagoguewith some show of conviction the very next year. 

 * * * * *

So the democracy receives no instruction that does not confirm andstrengthen it in its errors. 

For its good some one ought to teach it not to believe itselfomnipotent, to have scruples as to its omnipotence, and to believe thatthis omnipotence should have defined limits; it is taught withoutreserve the dogma of the unlimited sovereignty of the people. 

For its good it should believe that equality is so contrary to naturethat we have no right to torture nature in order to establish realequality among men, and that the people which has established such astate of things, which is quite possible, must succumb to the fate ofthose who try to live exactly in opposition to the laws of nature. Instead, it is taught, and it is true enough, that equality is notpossible, if it is not complete, if it is not thorough, that it ought tobe applied to differences of fortune, social position, intelligence, perhaps even to our stature and personal appearance, and that no effortshould be spared to bring all things to one absolute level. 

For its good, since it is natural enough that it should dislike heavytaxation, sentiments of patriotism should be reinforced; it is taught onthe contrary that military service is a painful legacy left by a hatefuland barbarous past, and that it ought to disappear very soon before thewarming rays of a peaceful civilisation. 

In a word, to use again the language of Aristotle, the pure wine ofdemocracy is poured out to the people as it was by the demagogues to theAthenians; and from the quarter whence a remedy might have been expectedthere come only incitements to deeper intoxication. 

Aristotle has made yet another wise and profound observation on thequestion of equality: "_We must establish equality_, " he said, "_in thepassions rather than in the fortunes of men. _" And he adds: "And thisequality can only be the fruit of education derived from the influenceof good laws. " That is indeed the point. Education should have but oneobject; to reduce the passions to equality, or rather to _equanimity_, and to a certain equilibrium of mind. The education given to moderndemocracy does not lead to this, but leads in the opposite direction. 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE DREAM. 

What remedies can we apply to this modern disease, the worship ofintellectual and moral incompetence? What is, as M. Fouillée puts it, the best way of avoiding the hidden rocks which threaten democracies? Itis hard to say, for we have to do with an evil which can only be curedby itself, with an evil which is more than content with itself. 

M. Fouillée (in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of November, 1909) proposesan aristocratic Upper Chamber, that is to say, one that would representall the competence of the country, inasmuch as it would be appointed byeverything which is based on some particular form of excellence, themagistracy, the army, the university, the chambers of commerce, and soon. 

Nothing could be better; but the consent of the democracy would benecessary, and it is precisely these incorporations of efficiency thatthe democracy cannot abide, looking on them, not without reason, asbeing in a sense aristocracies. 

He proposes also an energetic intervention on the part of the State torestore public morality, action for the suppression of alcoholism, gambling and pornography. 

Beyond the fact that his argument savours of reaction, for it recalls tous the programme of "moral order" of 1873, we must remark, as indeed M. Fouillée himself acknowledges, that the democratic State can hardlyafford to kill the thing which enables it to live, to destroy itsprincipal source of revenue. Democracy, as its most authoritativerepresentatives have admitted, is not a cheap form of government. It hasalways been instituted with the hope, and partly with the expresseddesign, of being an economical government, and it has always beenruinous, because it requires a much larger number of partisans thanother forms of government, and a smaller number of malcontents thanother forms of government, and these partisans have to be remunerated inone fashion or another and the malcontents have to be silenced andbought in one way or another. 

Democracy, whether ancient or modern, lives always in terror of tyrantswho are always imminent or thought by it to be imminent. Against thispossible tyrant who would govern with an energetic minority, thedemocracy requires an immense majority which it has to bind to it by thegrant of many favours; it has also to detach from this tyrant themalcontents who would be his supporters if it did not disarm them by astill more lavish distribution of favours. 

Democracy requires therefore plenty of money. It will find this bydespoiling the wealthy as much as possible; but this is a very limitedsource of revenue, for the wealthy are not a numerous class. It willfind it more easily, more abundantly also, by exploiting the vices ofall, for all is a very numerous group. Hence the complaisance shown todrinking shops, which, as M. Fouillée remarks, it would be moredangerous for the Government to close than to close the churches. As theneeds of the Government increase, as M. Fouillée predicts, without muchdoubt it will claim a monopoly in houses of ill-fame and in thepublication of indecent literature; enterprises in which there would bemoney. And after all, tolerating such things for the profit of certaintraders and annexing them to be worked for the profit of the State, issurely much the same thing from a moral point of view. And the financialoperation would be much more beneficent in the second case than in thefirst. 

M. Fouillée also argues that reform must come "from above and not frombelow, " and that "the movement for regeneration can come from above andnot from below. "

I ask nothing better, but I ask also how is it going to be done?Inasmuch as everything depends upon the people, who, what, can influencethe people except the people itself? Everything depends on the people, by what then can it be moved except by a force that is innate. We arehere confronted--we are talking to a philosopher and can make use ofscientific terms--with a {Kinêtês akinêtos} with a motive forcewhich causes but does not receive motives. 

A principle has disappeared, a prejudice if you like to call it so, theprejudice in favour of competence. We no longer think that the man whounderstands how to do a thing ought to be doing that thing, or ought tobe chosen to do it. Hence, not only is everything mismanaged, but itseems impossible by any device to handle the matter effectually. We seeno solution. 

Nietzsche really has a horror of democracy; only like all energeticpessimists, who are not mere triflers, he used to say from time to time:"There are pessimists who are resigned and cowardly. We do not wish tobe like them. " When he would not take this view he persuaded himself tolook at democracy through rose-coloured spectacles. 

At times, looking at the matter from an æsthetic point of view, he usedto say: "Intercourse with the people is as indispensable and refreshingas the contemplation of vigorous and healthy vegetation, " and althoughthis is in flagrant contradiction to all he has elsewhere said of the"bestial flock" and the "inhabitants of the swamp, " the thought has acertain amount of sense in it. It signifies that instinct is a force, and that every force must be interesting to study; and further that, assuch, it contains an active virtue, a principle of life, a nucleus ofgrowth. 

This, though vaguely expressed, is very possible. After all the crowdis only powerful by reason of numbers, and because it has been decidedthat numbers shall decide. It is an expedient; but an expedient cannotimpart force to a thing that had it not before. Motive power, initiative, belongs to the man who has a plan, who makes his combinationto achieve it, who perseveres and is patient and does not relinquishpursuit. If he is eliminated and reduced to impotence or to a minimum ofusefulness, one does not see how the crowd, without him, can obtain itspower of initiation. Further explanation is needed. 

At another time, Nietzsche asks whether we ought not to respect theright, which after all belongs to the multitude, to direct itselfaccording to an ideal--there are of course many ideals--and according tothe ideal which is its own. Ought we to refuse to the masses the rightto search out truth for themselves, the right to believe that they havefound it when they come upon a faith that seems to them vital, a faiththat is to them as their very life? The masses are the foundation onwhich all humanity rests, the basis of all culture. Deprived of them, what would become of the masters? It is to their interest that themasses should be happy. Let us be patient; let us grant to our insurgentslaves, our masters for the moment, the enjoyment of illusions whichseem favourable to them. 

So Nietzsche argues, but more often, for he returns on various occasionsto this idea, led thereto by his customary aristocratic leanings, hespeaks of democracy as of a form of decadence, as a necessary prelude toan aristocracy of the future. "A high civilisation can only be builtupon a wide expanse of territory, upon a healthy and firmly consolidatedmediocrity. " [So he wrote in 1887. Ten years earlier he held thatslavery had been the necessary condition of the high civilisation ofGreece and Rome. ] The only end, therefore, which at present, provisionally of course but still for a long time to come, we have toexpect, must be the decadence of mankind--general decadence to a levelmediocrity, for it is necessary to have a wide foundation on which arace of strong men can be reared. "The decadence of the European is thegreat process which we cannot hinder, which we ought rather toaccelerate. It is the active cause at work which gives us hope ofseeing the rise of a stronger race, a race which will possess inabundance those same qualities which are lacking to the degeneratevanishing species, strength of will, responsibility, self-reliance, thepower of concentration. .. . "

But how, out of this mediocrity of the crowd, a mediocrity which, asNietzsche says, is always increasing, by what process natural orartificial can a new and superior race be created? Nietzsche seems to berecalling the theory, very disrespectful and very devoid of filialpiety, by which Renan sought to explain his own genius. "A long line ofobscure ancestors, " he says, "has economised for me a store ofintellectual energy, " and he jots down in his note book certainsuggestions, a little immature but still emitting a ray of light. "It isabsurd, " he says, "to imagine that this victory or survival of values(that is low values, values, that is, that seem to be mediocrity) can beantibiological: we must look for an explanation in the fact that theyare probably of some vital importance to the maintenance of the type'man' in the event of its being threatened by a preponderance of thefeeble-minded and degenerate. Perhaps if things went otherwise, manwould now be an extinct animal. The elevation of type is dangerous forthe preservation of the species. Why? _Strong races are wasteful, wefind ourselves here confronted with a problem of economy. _"

We perceive, in this train of reasoning, some inkling of what Nietzscheis trying to formulate as his solution of the difficulty. What is neededmust be a natural process, a _vis medicatrix naturæ_. In the process ofdeclining and falling, races practise a sort of thrift; they save andthey economise. Then, if we may suppose that the quantity of energy ofintellectual and moral power, _i. E. _, of "human values" at the disposalof the race is constant, the races that so act are creating inthemselves a reserve which one day will irresistibly take shape in achosen class. They are creating in their own bosom an _élite_ which willone day emerge, they have conceived all unconsciously an aristocracywhich will one day be born to be their ruler. 

We always find in Nietzsche the theory of Schopenhauer, the theory ofthe great deceiver who leads the human race by the nose and who makesit do and, as if it liked it, that which it would never do if it knewwhere it was being led. It is very possible; still it remains thateconomy carried to an extreme, though it can lead to a reserve of force, may also lead, and perhaps much more surely, to a condition of anæmia;the annihilation of one set of competent people in order to prepare theway for races of competent people in the future, I do not know if thisis a game inspired by the great deceiver, but it is a game which to meappears dangerous. We ought to be sure (and who is sure?) that the greatdeceiver does not abandon those who abandon themselves. 

I have often said, without thinking of any metaphysical mythology, thinking indeed of the ambitious people whom we meet everywhere, andthinking only of giving them some good advice: "The best way to getthere is to come down. " Nothing could be more philosophical, Nietzschewould reply; it is even more true of peoples than of individuals: thebest way for peoples to become one day great is to begin by growingsmaller. I rather doubt it. There is no really solid reason to supportthe theory that feebleness cultivated with perseverance results instrength. Neither Greece nor Rome supply examples, nor did thedemocratic republic of Athens nor the democratic Cæsarism of Rome eversucceed in giving birth to an aristocracy of competence by a prolongedeconomy of values. 

--They did not have the time. --

Ah yes, there is always that to be said. 

It would perhaps be better to try to put the brake on democracy than toencourage this process of degeneration on the chance of a favourableresurrection. At least this is the course which presents itself mostnaturally to our mind, and which seems most consonant with duty. 

When I say put the brake on democracy, it must be understood that I meanthat it should put the brake on itself, for nothing else can stop it, when once it has made up its mind. It must be persuaded or left alone, and even persuasion is a rash experiment, for it dislikes beingpersuaded of anything but of its own omnipotence. It must be persuadedor left alone, for every other method would be still more useless. 

It must be reminded that forms of government perish from the abandonmentand also from the exaggeration of the principle from which their meritis derived, though this is a very superannuated maxim; that they perishby an abandonment of their principle because that principle is thehistorical reason of their coming into existence, and they perish bycarrying their principle to excess, because there is no such thing as aprinciple that is absolutely good and sufficient in itself forregulating the complexity of the social machine. 

What do we understand by the principle of a government? It is not thatwhich makes it be such and such a thing, but that "which makes it act"in a particular way, as Montesquieu has remarked; that is, "the humanpassions which supply the motive forces of life. " It is clear then thatthe passion for sovereignty, for equality, for incompetence, is notsufficient to give to a government a life which is at once complete andstrong. 

It is necessary to give to competence its part, or rather it isnecessary to give competence one part, for I do not wish to argue thatthere is any question of right involved, I only affirm that it is asocial necessity. It is necessary that competence, technical, intellectual, moral competence should be assigned its part to play, eventhough the sovereignty of the people should be limited and the principleof equality be somewhat abridged thereby. 

A democratic element is essentially necessary to a people, anaristocratic element also is essentially necessary to a people. 

A democratic element is essentially necessary to a people in order thatthe people should not feel itself to be a mere onlooker, but shouldrealise that it is a part and an important part of the body social, andthat the words "You are the nation, defend it, " have a meaning. Otherwise the argument of the anti-patriot demagogues would be just. "What is the good of fighting for one set of masters against anotherset, since it will make no difference, only a change of masters?"

A democratic element is required in the government of a people, becauseit is very dangerous that the people should be an enigma. It isnecessary to know what it thinks, what it feels, what it suffers, whatit desires, what it fears, and what it hopes, and as this can only belearnt from the people itself, it is necessary that it should have avoice which can make itself heard. 

This should be done in one way or another, either by a Chamber of itsown which should be endowed with great authority, or by the presence ina single chamber of a considerable number of representatives of thepeople, or by plebiscites constitutionally instituted as necessary forthe revision of the constitution and for laws of universal interest, orby the liberty of the press and the liberty of association and publicmeeting. This would not perhaps be enough, but it would be almostenough. It is necessary that the people should be able to make known itswants, and to influence the decisions of the Government, in a word itsvoice should be heard and considered. 

An aristocratic element is also necessary in a nation and in thegovernment of a nation so that all that admits of precision shall not besmothered by that which is confused; so that what is exact shall not beobscured by what is vague, and so that its firm resolves shall not beshaken by vacillating and incoherent caprice. 

Sometimes history itself makes an aristocracy--a fortunate circumstancefor a nation! This forms a caste more or less exclusive, it hastraditions, traditions more conservative of the laws than the lawsthemselves, and it embodies in itself all that there is of life, andenergy and growth in the soul of a people. Sometimes history has failedto give us an aristocracy or that which history has made hasdisappeared. It is then that the people ought to draw one out of itself, it is then its duty to appropriate and preserve the high qualities to befound in men who have rendered service to the State or whose ancestorshave rendered service to the State, who have special qualifications foreach particular office and a moral efficiency for every form of publicservice. 

These qualities constitute the acquired aptitude of an aristocracy fortaking a part in the government; these qualities constitute itsadaptation to its social environment, and to its special function in oursocial machinery and organisation. One might say that it is by thesequalities that _it enters into and becomes part of the organism of whichit is the material_. As John Stuart Mill has justly remarked, therecannot be an expert, well-managed democracy if democracy will not allowthe expert to do the work which he alone can do. 

What is wanted then and will always be wanted, even under socialismwhere, as I pointed out, there will still be an aristocracy though amore numerous one, is a blending of democracy and aristocracy; and here, though he wrote a long time ago, we shall find Aristotle is always rightfor he studied in a scientific spirit some hundred and fifty differentconstitutions. 

He is an aristocrat, without concealment, as we have seen, but his finalconclusions, whether he is speaking of Lacedæmon, which he did not like, or of Carthage, or in general terms, have always been in favour of mixedconstitutions as ever the best. "There is, " he says, "a manner ofcombining democracy and aristocracy--which consists in so arrangingmatters that both the distinguished citizens and the masses have whatthey want. The right of every man to aspire to magisterial appointmentsis a democratic principle, but the admission of distinguished citizensonly is an aristocratic principle. "

This blending of democracy and aristocracy makes a good constitution, but the union must not be one of mere juxtaposition which would serveonly to put hostile elements within striking distance. I said a"blending" but the blending must be a real fusion. Our need is that inthe management of public business aristocracy and democracy should becombined. 

How? Well for many years I have been saying it and I hope I may live formany years longer to say it again. A healthy nation is one in which thearistocracy is "_demophil_, " that is a lover of the people, and wherethe people is aristocratic in its leanings. Every people where thearistocracy is aristocratic and where the democracy is democratic is apeople destined to perish promptly, because it does not understand whata people is, it has not got beyond the stage of knowing what is a classand perhaps not even as far as that. 

Montesquieu praises highly the Athenians and the Romans for thefollowing reason. "At Rome, although the people had the right ofelevating plebeians to office, it could never bring itself to electthem; and although at Athens, it could by the law of Aristides, choosemagistrates from all classes, it never happened according to Xenophon, that the lower people demanded the election of rulers who could injureits safety and its glory. The two instances are identical; only, as faras Athens is concerned, it signifies nothing, for at Athens everythingwas decided by plebiscite and in consequence the real rulers of Athenswere the orators, in whom the people trusted, who enforced theirdecisions and really governed the city. At Rome the fact is of greatimportance for it was the elected magistrates who governed. "

Republican Rome was indeed a country aristocratically governed whichhad, however, a democratic element in its constitution, and thisdemocratic element, up to the time of the civil wars, was itselfprofoundly aristocratic, just as the aristocracy which was always opento an accession of members from the plebs was profoundly "demophil. "

The institution of patron and client, even in the state of degeneracywhich overtook it, is a phenomenon which I believe is well-nigh unique. It shows to what extent two classes felt the social necessity, thepatriotic necessity of mutual support and of a recognition of anidentity of interest. 

A nation whose people is aristocratic and whose aristocracy is"demophil" is a healthy nation. Rome succeeded in the world because forfive hundred years she enjoyed this social health. 

An aristocratic people and a people-loving aristocracy. I had longbelieved the formula was of my own invention. I have just discovered, and I am in no way surprised, that Aristotle was before me. He quotesthe oath which oligarchs take in certain cities. "I swear to be alwaysthe enemy of the people and never to counsel any thing that I do notknow to be injurious to them. " "This, " he continues, "is the veryopposite of what they ought to do or to pretend to do . .. It is apolitical fault which is often committed in oligarchies as well as indemocracies, and where the multitude has control of the laws, thedemagogues make this mistake. In their combat against the rich, theyalways divide the State into two opposing parties. _In a democracy, onthe contrary, the Government should profess to speak for the rich, andin oligarchies it should profess to speak in favour of the people. _"

It is a Machiavelian counsel. Aristotle seems convinced that democratscan only _profess_ to speak for the rich and that all we can expect fromoligarchs is an appearance of speaking in favour of the people. Nevertheless he recognises clearly that for the peace and well-being ofthe commonwealth such should be their attitude. 

There is something more profound than this. Aristocrats ought not onlyto appear but to be verily favourable to the demos, if they understandthe interests of aristocracy itself, for aristocracy requires a base. Democrats also ought not only to appear but to be aristocratic if theyunderstand the interests of democracy which requires a guide. 

This reciprocity of good offices, this reciprocity of devotion, and thiscombination of effort are as necessary in modern as they were in ancientrepublics. It is, and we must coin a word to express it, a social"synergy" that is wanted. A union of all the vitalizing elements is asnecessary in society as in the family. Every family that is divided mustperish, every kingdom that is divided must perish. 

I have said little of royalty which only indirectly concerns my subject. If we have seen instances of the institution of royalty firmlyestablished, it is where the sentiment of royalty, appealing at onceboth to the aristocracy and to the people, has realised that "synergy"of the whole community of which we speak; it is where both, being unitedin devotion to one object, are led to be devoted to each other by reasonof this convergence of their wills. _Eadem velle, eadem nolle amicitiaest. _

There is no need of royalty for this. Royalty is our country itselfpersonified in one man. In the identification of country and kingdom, wecan and must arrive at this same union of the separate vitalities of thenation, at this same community and convergence of will. The humble mustlove their country in loving the great and the great must love theircountry in loving the humble; and so all classes must be at one in theirhopes and in their fears. _Amicitia sit!_

INDEX. 

 Abbeville, 115

 Abolition of Inheritance, 200, 203

 Academies, 27

 America, 170

 Amoeba, 15 _et seq. _

 Antisthenes, 132

 Aristides, law of, 232

 Aristocracy, 36, 90, 137, 159 ---- aptitude for government, 230 ---- constitution which obeys laws, 88 ---- demophil, 2, 232, 233 ---- education under, 190 ---- and examination system, 176 ---- fusion with democracy, 231-233 ---- impossible without merit, 31 ---- old men under, 147 ---- of Parliament, 172 ---- permanent senators form, 58 ---- and religion, 205, 207 ---- result of indirect election, 19 ----- and special jurisdictions, 98

 Aristophanes, 126, 150

 Aristotle, 14, 16, 31, 70, 78, 85, 88, 129, 131, 134-136, 153, 208, 215, 231, 234, 235

 _Arrondissement_, 44 ---- _scrutin d'_, 83

 Atheism, 207, 208

 Athens, 17, 31, 37, 83, 113, 149, 163, 226, 232

 Augier, 213

 Austria, 49

 Barthélemy, Abbé, 157

 Barthou, M. , 9, 118

 Belgium, 170

 Bismarck, 209

 Bonald, 201

 Brunetière, 188

 Busiris, 115

 Calas, 115

 Carnot, 93

 Carthage, 16, 231

 Caucus, 6

 Chamber of Deputies, 44, 118, 172-174

 Charlemagne, 149

 Charondas, 87

 Church, the, 98, 206

 Cicero, 70 ---- _de Senectute_, 149

 Civility, 156 _et seq. _

 Civil Service, the, appointments to, 45-51 ---- examinations for, 176 _et seq. _

 Clergy, the, 169

 Code, the, 75, 76, 163

 Colbert, 43

 Collectivism, 200-203

 Communism, 200

 _Compétence par collation_, 19, 22

 Competitive examination, 175 _et seq. _

 Conciliation Boards, 97

 _Concordat_, 206

 Constitution of 1873, 57 ---- mixed, 231

 Co-optation, 176

 _Cour de Cassation_, 57, 101, 108, 176

 Court of Appeal, 57, 107

 Courts, ecclesiastical, 98 ---- martial, 98

 Criminal procedure, 83 ---- jurisdiction, 99

 Dandin, 184

 _Dandino-mania_, 184

 Decadence, 222, 223

 Decrees, 84, 91, 208, 209

 Demagogues, 85, 191, 213

 Democracy, Aristotle on, 129-136 ---- Athenian, 17 ---- children under, 142-146 ---- and direct government, 37 _et seq. _

 Democracy, encouragement of incompetence under, 30, 92, 126 ---- English, 170 ---- evolution of a modern, 18 _et seq. _ ---- fusion with aristocracy, 231-235 ---- governed by decrees, 34, 91 ---- and imperative mandate, 32 ---- lack of respect under, 158-161 ---- legislation under, 66, 79-81 ---- magistrature, 110-122 ---- Montesquieu on, 137-139 ---- morality under, 139 ---- Nietzsche on, 220-226 ---- old men under, 146-153 ---- Plato on, 127-129 ---- and politicians, 34, 36 ---- position of women under, 140-142 ---- principle of, 14, 15 ---- and private enterprise, 59-61 ---- and reform, 216-219 ---- Rousseau on, 136, 137 ---- and schoolmasters, 191-215 ---- and socialism, 61-65 ---- and special jurisdictions, 98, 99

 Demos, 56, 86

 Demosthenes, 82

 Deputy, 55, 174 ---- mayors, 119

 Despotism, principle of, 12 ---- tendency of democracy towards, 62, 65, 96

 D'Etalonde, 115

 Diderot, 207

 Division of labour, 15 ---- ---- in domestic life, 141

 Divorce, 125

 Germans, 67

 Gerontocracy, 146, 153

 Gladstone, Mr. , 3, 5

 Goncourt, 201

 Greece, 222, 226

 Greeks, 71, 73, 87

 Greek philosophers, 126

 Holbach, 207

 Homer, 56

 Horace, 152

 Hugo, Victor, 209

 Ideal legislator, the, 79

 Imperative mandate, 32, 33

 Indirect election, 19

 Inequalities, artificial and natural, 30

 Interpellation, 83

 Italy, 170

 Japy, Mme. , 114

 Jesuits in Paraguay, 62

 Joannès, Baron, 68

 Judges, appointment of, 46, 100-112 ---- interpretation of the law, 163

 _Juge de paix_, 111, 116 _et seq. _

 Jurisdiction, criminal, 99 ---- ecclesiastical, 97 ---- military, 97 ---- seignorial, 97

 Jury, the 112-115, 168, 169

 Kant, 153

 La Barre, 115

 Lacedæmon, 150, 231

 Law, abolishing primogeniture, 124 ---- abuse of, 110 ---- of competence, 97 ---- and decrees, 84-91 ---- degree in, 116 ---- doctors of, 108 ---- ecclesiastical, 125 ---- emergency, 82-89 ---- fundamental, 89 ---- governs men, 121 ---- of July 12th, 1905, 117 ---- made by the ideal legislator, 67-74 ---- made by the people, 17, 18, 25, 40, 194-196, 234 ---- must be ancient and unchanged, 77-79 ---- not the same for rich and poor, 199 ---- permitting divorce, 125 ---- of proportion, 14 ---- questions of, 113, 162 ---- of Sunday observance, 75, 76 ---- and tradition, 230

 Legal profession, the, 60

 Legislation, ancient, 87 ---- English, 2, 4 ---- party, 81-82 ---- philanthropic, 6 ---- predatory, 8 ---- requires special knowledge, 18, 67

 Legislator, essential qualifications for, 66-81 ---- Greek, 73

 Lestranger, M. Marcel, 164, 166

 Liberty of association, 194, 196

 Louis XIV, 21, 22, 150, 195, 204, 209 ---- XV, 150 ---- XVI, 133

 Louvois, 43

 Lycurgus, 2, 73, 87

 Lynching, 168, 169

 Machiavel, 71

 Machiavelian counsel, 234

 Magistracy, hereditary system advocated for, 105, 163, 168

 Magistrates, election of, 48, 100-112 ---- incompetence of, 164-168 ---- subservience to government, 163

 Mayors, 117

 Medical examinations, 180 ---- profession, 60

 Mill, John Stuart, 230

 Minister of Agriculture, 94 ---- of Commerce, 92 ---- of Education, 92, 211

 Minister of Interior, 211 ---- of Justice, 76, 118-120 ---- of Navy, 92 ---- of War, 92, 93

 Miscarriage of justice, 165

 Monarchy, old men under, 147 ---- principle of, 12, 62, 96

 Montesquieu, 4, 12, 14, 28, 37, 44-47, 66-70, 74-89, 103-105, 123, 137, 138, 150-156, 193, 227, 232

 Moral effect of law, 125 ---- order, 217

 Morals, high standard of, 150 ---- laxity of, 155 ---- private, 139, 140 ---- public, 123, 124, 139

 More, Thomas, 71

 Moses, 67, 209

 Napoleon, 13, 105, 209

 Nationalisation, 60

 Nietzsche, 147, 187, 220-225

 Oligarchy, 63, 128, 147

 Olympiad, 87

 Ostracism, 133

 Paraguay, 62

 Parental authority, 143

 Parliament, 172

 Party system under Socialism, 61

 Pascal, 107, 157

 Patriotism, 12, 214

 Peel, Sir R. , 3

 Periander, 132

 Peter the Great, 124

 Phædo, personification of laws in, 87

 Plato, 71, 105, 126-129, 138, 140, 153

 Plautus, 150

 Plebiscite, 24, 173

 _Pli Professionnel, Le_, 164

 Pnyx, the, 37

 Politeness, 156 _et seq. _

 Politician, definition of, 34 ---- democracy's need of, 35, 51 ---- as schoolmaster, 212

 _Préfet_, 62-55, 173, 212

 President of the Chamber, 110 ---- of the Council, 93 ---- of the Republic, 42, 57

 Primogeniture, 124

 _Procureur-général_, 52, 53, 119-122

 Proudhon, 73

 Public officials, appointment of, 43-51 ---- under Socialism, 201

 Purchase system, the, 103

 Quinet, Edgar, 13

 Rabelais, 115

 Republic, 12, 13, 73

 Renaissance, 149

 Renan, 223

 Renouvier, 50

 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 22

 Rhédi, 78

 Robespierre, 207, 208

 Roman Republic, 13, 113, 204, 233

 Romans, the, 68, 87, 232

 Rome, 124, 149, 222, 226, 232-234

 Rousseau, 32, 72, 136-138, 149, 150, 207, 208

 Royalty, 137, 286 ---- democratic, 18

 St. Cyr, 177

 St. Louis, 74

 Schopenhauer, 224

 _Scrutin de liste_, 83, 112, and note ---- _d'arrondissement_, 83

 Senate, 38, 58, 117, 118, 172-175

 Senators, 55, 172-175 ---- irremovable, 57

 Seneca, 129

 Socialism, 61-65, 231

 Socrates, 18, 88 ---- on democracy, 144

 Solon, 67, 73

 Sovereignty of the People, 40, 45, 56, 177, 194-198, 204-209, 214

 Specialisation of functions, 15-18, 31

 Special jurisdictions, 97, 98

 State control of children, 144 ---- ---- of magistrates, 100, 101 ---- ---- of private enterprise, 60-61 ---- danger of eminent man to, 131-137 ---- intervention to restore public morality, 217-219

 State policy, 110 ---- services rendered to, 230 ---- within a State, 196

 Steinheil case, 114

 Suidas, 103, 105

 Sunday observance, 75

 Sylla, 73

 Synergy, 235, 236

 Terence, 150

 Thrasybulus, 132

 Toulouse, 115

 Tyranny, 135

 Universal suffrage, 21, 173-175

 University degrees, 20, 181-183

 Upper chamber, suggestions for strong, 174

 Usbek, 78

 Virtue, civic, 14, 103, 104 ---- the principle of a republic, 12, 13

 Voltaire, 103-105, 116

 Women, their position in a democracy, 140-143

 Xenophon, 126, 233

 Young man, Horace's description of, 152

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