CHAPTER II

THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF PURELY DEMOCRATIC ACTION, OR THE ACTION OF AVERAGE MEN IN CO-OPERATION

Carlyle was wrong in his claim for the great man because he failed to note that his powers were conditioned by the capacities of the ordinary men influenced by him • 215

The socialists are wrong because, seeing that the many do something, they argue that they do everything • 215

What the many do is limited. We must see precisely what the limits are • 216

If a Russian conspirator employs a hundred workmen to dig what they think is a cellar, but is a mine for blowing up the Czar, • 216

the conspirator contributes the entire criminal character of the enterprise • 217

When a choir sings Handel’s music, Handel contributes the specific character of the sounds sung by them • 217

Let us turn to the facts of progress, • 217

and begin with economic progress and progress in knowledge • 218

In the case of economic progress we must apply the method of inquiring what is produced by labour with and without the assistance of the great man • 218

To the question of progress in knowledge we must apply the method of inquiring what faculties are involved in it • 219

These are faculties entirely confined to the few • 219

And now let us turn to political government • 220

What can the faculties of average men do when left to themselves? • 220

They can accomplish only the simplest actions, • 220

and formulate only the simplest demands • 221

The moment matters become at all complex the faculties of the exceptional man are required • 221

Now in any civilised country few governmental measures are really simple • 222

Exceptional men must simplify them for the many • 222

Thus the voice of the many, in all complex cases, echoes the voice of the few • 223

This, however, is not the end of the matter; • 224

for the details of governmental measures are not the whole of government • 224

The true power of democracy is to be seen in religious and family life • 224

Though the influence of the great man in religion is enormous, • 225

yet religions have only grown and endured because they touch the heart of the average man • 225

Christianity exemplifies this fact, • 225

and especially Catholicism • 226

The doctrines formulated by the aristocracy of Popes and Councils originated among the mass of common believers • 227

Theologians and councils merely reasoned on the materials thus given them • 228

Catholicism shows the great part played by the many so clearly, because the part played by the few is defined by it so sharply • 228

Catholicism, however, is only alluded to here because it illustrates the essential nature of truly democratic action • 229

Thus enlightened by it, let us turn back to family life • 230

Catholicism shows that democracy is a natural coincidence of conclusions • 231

The home life of a nation depends on the same coincidence, or on spontaneously similar propensities • 231

This truly democratic coincidence forces all governments to accommodate themselves to it • 233

The same democratic power determines the structure of our houses, • 233

and the furniture and other commodities in them, • 234

and indeed all economic products • 234

For though in the process of production the many are dependent on the few, • 235

(a fact which the powers of trade unionism do but make more apparent) • 235

yet it is the wants and tastes of the many which determine what shall be produced • 238

and though great men elicit these wants by first supplying them, • 239

the wants themselves must be latent in the nature of the many, and when once aroused are essentially democratic phenomena • 239

Thus though economic supply is aristocratic, economic demand is purely democratic • 240

The most gifted brewer cannot make the public drink beer they do not like • 241

Now in politics also there is a similar demand and supply; • 242

but the truly democratic demand in politics is not for laws • 242

The demand for laws is not the counterpart of a demand for commodities, for commodities are demanded for their own sake, laws for the sake of their results • 243

The demand for laws is like a demand that commodities shall be made by some special kind of machinery • 243

No one makes this latter demand. Economic demand is single; political demand is double • 244

Political democracy is vulgarly identified with the demand not for social goods, but for machinery • 244

But in so far as democracy is a demand not for goods but for machinery, it is not purely democratic • 245

The demands of the many are manipulated by the few • 245

Why, then, is democracy especially associated with the demand in which its power is least? • 246

Because it is the only sphere of activity in which the many can interfere with the machinery of supply at all; • 246

and they can interfere with it here because the effects of political government on life are less close and important than the effects of business management on business; • 247

and in any case the apparent power of the many is even here controlled by the few • 247

The power of the many is a power to determine the quality of civilisation and progress, not to produce them • 248