CHAPTER IV

THE MEANS BY WHICH THE GREAT MAN ACQUIRES POWER IN POLITICS

In discussing, with reference to political government, the means by which the great man controls the actions of others, it will be found that the point on which we shall have to concentrate our attention differs somewhat from that which engaged it when we were discussing the same question with reference to economic production. For all the points which, with reference to the directors of industry, it was necessary to establish in opposition to the sociological sophistries of to-day are, with reference to the political governor, admitted by all alike. Thus we shall find on reflection that the extremest democratic reformer, no less than the aristocrat or the strict upholder of autocracy, admits, firstly, that satisfactory governors must be exceptional or great men; secondly, that the fittest great men can be secured by competition only; and, thirdly, that however they are appointed, and whatever may be the principles on which they govern, their orders must in every case be enforced by virtually the same {177} sanctions. The last of these three facts—namely, that the commands of the governor must be enforced by some system of restraint and punishment for the disobedient—is sufficiently plain to require no further notice; but the two others, obvious as they really are, are not perhaps generally realised, and it will be well to give a few words to them.

That the efficient governor, though he need not always be a genius, must in some respects, at all events, be a great or exceptional man, is of course admitted by the advocates of autocracy, aristocracy, or oligarchy. All that requires to be shown is that it is admitted also by the thinkers who are most opposed to them—by socialists and extreme democrats. This admission on their part is implied in the notorious importance attached by them to the machinery of popular election; for popular election is simply an elaborate means of expressing the opinion of the people that out of so many possible governors, this one or that one is endowed with greater capacity than the others. If the capacities of all were equal, or if exceptional capacity was not required, the _personnel_ of the government might be chosen by casting lots. Next, as to the question of competition, it must be obvious to every one that the popular election of governors is not only an admission that some few men out of many are greater or more capable than the rest, but is also, on the part of the candidates for election themselves, competition in one of its intensest and most sharply accentuated forms. {178}

Competition, indeed, is implicit in every form of government. Were it absent in any, it would be absent in complete autocracies; but even in these it is latent, and always ready to come into operation; for the most absolute autocrat, if he happen to make his rule sufficiently odious to a sufficient number of his subjects,—“_postquam cerdonibus esse timendus cœperat_”—will, as history shows us, be assassinated or got rid of somehow, and some other candidate for power, probably an autocrat also, will be put in his place, and will either retain or lose it, according as experiment shows him to be a tolerable ruler, or the reverse. Here is political competition in its most rudimentary form; but it is competition none the less; and it generally involves a competition more advanced than itself; for the most absolute autocrat is obliged to govern through ministers; and these rise and fall according as experiment shows them to be fitter or less fit for the accomplishment of their master’s purposes. If, then, even the power of the autocrat rests ultimately on competition and practical experiment, much more does the power of government, under aristocratic and oligarchic constitutions. Oligarchies invariably aim at ruling through their strongest members; and which are the strongest is shown by experimental competition only; whilst political democracy, under all its forms, is experimental competition open and undisguised. A Gladstone remains in power because, as his years of office succeed each other, he satisfies the majority by the manner in which he governs them; and his {179} power is taken from him when the majority cease to be satisfied, not only because they are of opinion that he governs badly, but because they are of opinion that a Disraeli will govern better. A democracy, in fact, and an oligarchy, so far as competition is concerned, differ merely in the way in which the competitors are admitted to the arena, and in the number and character of the jury which awards the prizes.

Since, then, with regard to the points just dealt with—namely, the necessity for great men as governors, for the selection of the fittest of them by competition, and for the use of coercion and punishment as a means of enforcing orders—there is no essential difference between the most extreme democracy and its opposites, in what does that practical or theoretical difference between them consist, by which most undoubtedly the former is distinguished from the latter? The only essential point of difference between them lies, not in their respective schemes or theories of the machinery of government, or of their methods of electing governors, but in their theory of the powers which election communicates to those elected. An elected governor, whether chosen from a large or a small class, is, according to the aristocratic or oligarchic theory, chosen because he is personally wiser than those who elect him; and it is theoretically his mission, within very wide limits, to follow his own judgment, not that of the electors. The democratic theory is the very reverse of this. The elected governor, {180} according to that theory, is elected not because he is supposed to be wiser than his constituents, but because he is supposed to be exceptionally capable of understanding their precise wishes, and giving effect to each of them. In the first of these two cases the governor is like the physician whom the patient calls in, but whose orders he never thinks of disputing. In the second, he is like the professional Spanish letter-writer, whom the illiterate lover employs to put his passion for him grammatically upon paper.

The only point, then, in which democracy can claim to differ essentially, not only from autocracy, but from any form of oligarchy, lies not in its form of government, but in the power that is behind its government. This power, according to democratic theorists, is the power of the mass of ordinary men, as definitely opposed to exceptional men; and the exceptional men who are picked out as governors would necessarily, in an ideal democracy, be exceptional only for such qualities as practical activity and a quick apprehension of the wishes of other people, which would enable them to do what their many-headed master bade them; but they would have to be wanting in any strength of mind or originality which might prompt them to acts out of harmony with their master’s temper at the moment, or what is the same thing, to any acts beyond their master’s comprehension, even although such acts might be for his future benefit. This is what the democratic theory, in its last analysis, means. All exceptional will {181} is to be smothered or over-ridden by the average will, as is expressed clearly enough in the well-worn democratic formula—every man’s vote is to count for one in government; no man’s vote is to count for more than one.

Now this theory of the relation of the great man to the many, so far as regards the conduct of civil government, is identical with the theory which, with a much wider application, Mr. Herbert Spencer enunciates as the foundation of his sociological system. As enunciated by Mr. Spencer we have already submitted it to examination, and we have shown that, in every practical sense, it is altogether fallacious, and that its acceptance renders all practical sociology impossible. We will now proceed to show that, as applied even to the most popular forms of government, it is as false as it is when applied to social phenomena generally.

That the essential principle of democracy, as just described, according to which the brain of the ideal ruler is merely a balance for weighing the wills of multitudes, which are dropped into one or other of its scales, like marbles—that this principle has ever yet been completely realised, no democrat will perhaps venture to maintain; but the whole democratic propagandism of the present day implies, before all things else, that its complete realisation is possible, and that every day “the peoples” are getting nearer to it. The facts, however, which are supposed to warrant this conclusion are to be sought, not in the sphere of official government, but {182} without it. They are to be sought not in the conduct of elected legislators, but in the machinery by which they are elected, and, above all, in those unofficial movements, meetings, and agitations by which the prophets of democracy affirm that the great mass of the people is learning to exert the power which was always latent in it, and to express its will with regard to every question of government as it arises, even if it has something yet to learn in the art of securing that its governors shall carry out its commands. It is this view of the situation which is expressed in the popular saying that a constituency has elected a member, or that the people has elected a parliament, with what is called a “mandate” to do some specified thing or things—to break up the United Kingdom, to disestablish the English Church, to penalise the drinking of a glass of beer on Sundays, or to deprive our soldiers of protection against the most malignant of contagious maladies.

Now the democrats, it must be admitted, are so far right, that a real political power has come into existence which has no constitutional connection with the men who nominally govern; and this is frequently used with such efficiency, and with such definite purpose, that official governors—men of most exceptional intellect—are compelled by it to use their intellect for ends which they themselves condemn. Here, then, in this external power, is to be found, if it is to be found anywhere, the will of the many, as conceived of by the theorists of {183} democracy, exerting itself independently of any separate will of the few, and turning the powers of the few into its willing or unwilling instruments.

Now perhaps the question which will in this place most naturally suggest itself is whether this will of the many, however effectively it may be exercised, is really a power that makes for civilisation and progress, and whether it is not more likely to bring harm than benefit to those very collections of ordinary men who exercise it. And this question is, no doubt, extremely pertinent; but it is not one that need engage our attention now. The fact which alone we are now concerned to demonstrate is that the alleged will of the many is not what democrats conceive it to be, and that it is not really the will of the many at all.

For although there is much in the history of the present century to warrant the assumption that the political will of the many is at last emerging as a supreme and independent governing power, we shall find that these movements and opinions, which seem, when viewed superficially, to result from the spontaneous actions and spontaneous thoughts of the many, really imply the influence of exceptional men, just as much as those movements which are avowedly aristocratic in origin; and that in the absence of these men the movements could never have taken place, nor the opinions have ever assumed any uniform and coherent shape.

To understand how this is, we need merely reflect upon the fact that masses of men, as masses, can {184} only have a will at all when their judgments with regard to certain particular questions happen to be absolutely identical, and have thus a cumulative force, like that of weights piled on one another above some substance which it is desired to compress. Now, whatever may be the thoughts, wishes, or opinions which spontaneously shape themselves in the minds of any body of ordinary men—men various in training and temperament, and none of them remarkable for wisdom—these never take a shape which will give them any cumulative power unless amongst the ordinary men there is some man more active than the rest, who weighs them, compares them, eliminates what he thinks to be their discrepancies, adds what is in his opinion necessary to their logical completion, and clothes them in catching language, which appeals both to the mind and to the memory. Not till this is done do the mass of persons concerned realise how identical their opinions on a given question are; and they then perceive them to be identical for an exceedingly simple reason—that the exceptional man has made a mould for them, into which they have all been run.

It is then, for the first time, that the mass of ordinary men become conscious of corporate power; for then they become, with regard to a given question, conscious for the first time that their opinions are absolutely identical, and that in a certain given direction their power is consequently cumulative. But the opinion of these men, whose numbers give political force to it, is very far from representing {185} the capacities of these men only. It represents the capacities, the character, and very probably the personal designs of the exceptional man who supplied that common mould to which the unanimity of the other men’s opinions is due; and the one opinion which thus comes to be held by all of them will not be precisely the opinion that was originally held by any. The original opinion of each will have undergone some modification. It will have been softened, emphasised, developed, or other elements will have been added to it, which would never have entered the mind of the ordinary man naturally, and which even when admitted he does but imperfectly understand. Thus whilst a political opinion expressed, or a political demand made, by a body of ordinary men thus absolutely unanimous seems at first sight a genuine expression of the will and the capacities of the many, it always in part, and it very often mainly represents capacities and purposes belonging to one man alone, the many being practically little more than a phonograph, which repeats his words to the world through an enormous resonator.

Let us take, for instance, the two questions of Free Trade and Bimetallism. If any British Government were to revert to the system of protection, it cannot be doubted that throughout the country there would be meetings and demonstrations, at which every throat would be unanimous in shouting condemnation of their conduct. America has witnessed a precisely similar outburst in favour of a proposal {186} to remonetise silver. The issues raised, however, both by the free traders and the bimetallists, are of a kind so complicated that exceedingly few people would be able even to describe their nature clearly enough to satisfy the most lenient examiner who should set them a paper in economics. The majority of those who declared for bimetallism in America had as little to do with forming their own opinions as the little boys would have in a preparatory school who should shout their approval of some new emendation made by one of their masters of a corrupt passage in Pindar; nor does that British opinion in favour of free trade principles which has caused our Government to adopt them, and would hinder or prevent their repudiation, rest in the minds of the majority of those who hold it, on any larger amount of original thought or knowledge. Ninety-nine free traders out of a hundred would never have been free traders at all if it had not been for the oratory of Cobden. The least-educated portion of the citizens of the United States would never have howled themselves hoarse over an intricate financial problem if it had not been for the oratory and the singular activity of Mr. Bryan. Indeed, what is oratory itself, which in all democracies, from that of Athens downwards, has been essential to the work of government, but an embodied expression of the fact that the many are powerless, unless here and there some thinker will think for them, and give them opinions which may form a mould or a nucleus for their own? Even a {187} village meeting is never got together without the agency of some one who is slightly more efficient than the rest. He need not be wiser than they. He very frequently is not; but he has some gift or other which qualifies him for taking the lead. His temperament is more active, his words flow more freely, or he is hampered by less insight into his own ignorance or imbecility; and his opinions are the nucleus round which those of the rest form themselves, and which generally imparts to them something of its own character, as a vinegar plant does to the liquor in which it is immersed.

Without some such nuclei afforded to the many by the few, popular thought is nebulous, and popular will unborn. An exceptional few are essential even to those revolutionary movements which have the destruction of the power of the few for their object. It is impossible for the many to attack one set of superiors, except by submitting themselves to the leadership or dictatorship of another set; and although these last may to a certain extent represent the multitude, it is usually just as true that the multitude represent them. The multitude cannot even unite to influence those exceptional persons to whom is entrusted the official work of government without placing themselves under the influence of another set of exceptional persons; and thus the extremest democracy will be found, if we only look below the surface, to be neither more nor less than an oligarchy disguised. It is, no doubt, true that those who actually govern do in a certain {188} sense derive their power from the many. They do so even in countries where the supreme governor is an autocrat. In countries with a popular constitution they derive their power from the many by an organised and conscious system; but even in the extremest democracies the average men can exercise their power only by constant processes of surrendering it into the hands of exceptional men. They surrender it into the hands of the exceptional men for the simple and enduring reason that, with very few exceptions, which will be examined in another place, it comes into existence only in the very act of surrendering it; and the many accordingly place themselves in the hands of the few because, from the very constitution of human nature, they cannot avoid doing so.

We thus see that even in that sphere of political action in which, if anywhere, the many should be independent of the few, the many without the few would have no power at all.

The apologists of democracy, however, have another argument left them. They may contend that the exceptional men, who are necessary to the development of the collective powers of ordinary men, though each of them is constantly, with regard to particular questions, following his own devices rather than the instructions of the electorate, do on the whole, and in the long-run, substantially carry out the intentions and devices of those who are theoretically their masters; and that though they may do what their masters could never have thought of for {189} themselves, yet they can never continue to do anything of which their masters do not actually approve. Now even were this representation of the case true, it would leave untouched that broad and fundamental truth on which it is the primary purpose of the present work to insist. It would leave untouched the truth that the great mass of human beings are helpless without the assistance of a minority more efficient than themselves. If ninety-nine average men, through the aid of a hundredth man who is exceptional, can develop and give effect to a collective will, which is altogether their own, and originates entirely with themselves, but if they can neither develop it nor give effect to it unless the hundredth man lent them his services, the power of this one man is as essential to the power of the ninety-nine, as it would be if the orders which he executes had been largely originated by himself; just as a lens is essential to the photographer’s camera though its function is solely to focalise, not to colour, the rays transmitted by it. Accordingly, even on the above hypothesis, the modern democratic formula, which makes each man count for one, and nobody count for more than one, would, if judged scientifically, be absolutely and fundamentally false; for the power ascribed by it to the accumulated faculties of equals would be really the power of equals united with the power of a superior; and the difference between the equals and the superior would be at once apparent from this—that if one of the equals were subtracted, the power of the whole {190} hundred would be diminished by one ninety-ninth only; but if the one superior were subtracted, it would collapse altogether. Thus the presence of the superior, and the terms on which his services can be secured, would even in this case be subjects on which the sociologist would be bound to bestow the same attention as he bestows at present on the activities of the ordinary men; and unless he should do this, his conclusions would be wholly valueless.

As a matter of fact, however, the hypothesis that the superior few are ever the mere passive agents which the democratic theory assumes them to be is false; and it is as a rule false in exact proportion to the difficulty and importance of the cases to which it is applied. The qualities which enable men to organise the opinions of others are usually qualities which endow them with strong opinions of their own; and in addition to their own opinions, these men, with their exceptional vigour, have usually their own purposes also; and the popular will, as put into execution by them, is always modified, and very often metamorphosed, by what they themselves add to or subtract from it. Still it must be admitted that, in spite of their dependence on the few, the many can, and do to a great extent, impress their own genuine will—the will and wishes of the average man as distinct from the will and wishes of the man who is in any way exceptional—on the exceptional men to whom their power is surrendered. The acts of the governing few may never entirely represent {191} the will and wishes of the average man, when these acts are considered as a whole; but they may be forced to embody, and they generally do embody, a certain element of what average men wish and will; and their character as a whole is profoundly modified in consequence. The question then is simply a question of degree. What is the extent—or rather what is the utmost possible extent—of this genuine power of the many to make the faculties of the exceptional few their servants? Is it great or small?

The reader will perceive that when this question is asked our inquiry is gradually taking a new turn, and that having started with asserting the claims of the great man as the author and sustainer of both intellectual and economic progress, we are led, when we come to consider him as an agent in the domain of politics, to inquire into what is done by the average man, as well as into what is done by him. And the reason for this is that in the domain of politics the many, so far as direct and intentional influence is concerned, are actually capable of playing a far larger part than they are in the domain of speculation or of advanced economic production. A statesman like Mr. Gladstone might, without absurdity, maintain that he had a mandate from the many to grant home-rule to Ireland; but nobody could pretend that any body of mechanics had given Watt a mandate to invent the steam-engine, or that any one gave Newton a mandate to discover the law of gravitation. And yet the reflection will {192} probably force itself upon every reader that if the many play a part in politics which is commensurate with that of the few, they play a part in intellectual and economic progress also. It would be useless for the few to unfold their thoughts and their discoveries to the many, if the many were not, in various degrees, capable of assimilating and responding to them. Still less could the great man of industry realise his progressive inventions, or carry out his extending schemes of business, if it were not that an indefinite number of ordinary men—those “serviceable animals,” as Mr. John Morley calls them—were endowed with capacities that enabled them to carry out his bidding. What would Mahomet have done if he had not had followers? What would Columbus have done if he had not had seamen? The reader, accordingly, will inevitably be led to urge that in attributing to the great men of the world the results which we have attributed to them, our statements are unmeaning, unless they are accepted as incomplete, and are understood to imply more than they have actually expressed. If no progress of any kind could have taken place without the many, surely, it will be argued, the many must have had some share in producing it; and unless we can assert and discriminate precisely what this share is—what are the phenomena of progress which are due to the activity of ordinary men—it is meaningless to assert that most of them are due to the activity of exceptional men.

And the larger part of this argument is perfectly {193} true. In dealing with the activities of the few, we have taken those of the many for granted. This general assumption, however, though inevitable at the beginning of our inquiry, has been provisional only. To any scientific conception of what is done exclusively by the few, an equally scientific conception of what is done by the many is essential. We must measure the former by the latter, as we measure mountains by their respective heights above the sea-level. That such a discrimination between the work of these two bodies is possible may be doubted by some; and accordingly before we actually proceed to undertake it, we will dispose of the arguments that will be, and actually have been, advanced in proof of its impracticability, and set forth the principles on which it must be, and obviously can be, made.

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