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

The stage, we know, is an imitation of life. Life also, to perhaps an even greater extent, is an imitation of the stage. Similarly laws spring from morals, and morals spring from law. "Men are governed by many things," said Montesquieu, "by climate, religion, laws, precept, example, morals and manners, which act and react upon each other and all combine 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 was right in saying: "Morals take their colour from laws, and manners from morals," for laws certainly "help to form morals, manners" and even "national character." For instance in Rome under the Empire the code of morals was to some extent the result of arbitrary power, as to-day the moral character of the English is to some extent due to the laws and constitution of their country.

We know that by his laws Peter the Great changed if not the character at least 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 a thing incapable of change, but it appears to be changed, and it certainly undergoes some modifications; one set of tendencies is checked, while others are encouraged.

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

Since the passing of the law permitting divorce, a sad but necessary evil, there have been far more applications for divorce than there ever were for separation. Can this be accounted for solely by the fact that formerly it seemed hardly worth while to take steps to obtain the qualified freedom of separation? I think not. For when a yoke is unbearable, efforts to relax it would naturally be quite as strenuous and as unremitting as efforts to get rid of it altogether.

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

Thus democracy extends that love of incompetence which is its most imperious characteristic. Greek philosophers used to delight in imagining what morals, especially domestic morals, would be like under a democracy. They all vied with Aristophanes. One of Xenophon's characters says: "I am pleased with myself, because I am poor. When I was rich I had to pay court to my calumniators, who knew full well that they could harm me more than I could them. Then the Republic was always imposing fresh taxes and I could not escape. Now that I am poor, I am invested with authority; no one threatens me. I threaten others. I am free to come 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 State feeds me. I no longer fear misfortunes, and I hope to acquire wealth."

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

"These are only a few of the many advantages of democracy. It is a pleasant form of government in which equality reigns among unequal as well as among equal things. Moreover, when a democratic State, athirst for liberty, is controlled by unprincipled cupbearers, who give it to drink of the pure wine of liberty and allow it to drink till it is drunken, then if its rulers do not show themselves complaisant and allow it to drink its fill, they are accused and overthrown under the pretext that they are traitors aspiring to an oligarchy; for the people prides itself on and loves the equality that confuses and will not distinguish between those who should rule and those who should obey. Is it any wonder that the spirit of licence, insubordination, and anarchy should invade everything, even the institution of the family? Fathers learn to treat their children as equals and are half afraid of them, while children neither fear nor respect their parents. All the citizens and residents and even strangers aspire to equal rights of citizenship.

"Masters stand in awe of their disciples and treat them with the greatest consideration and are jeered at for their pains. Young men want to be on the same terms as their elders and betters, and old men ape the manners of the young, for fear of being thought morose and dictatorial. Observe too to what lengths of liberty and equality the relations between the sexes are carried. You would hardly believe how much freer domestic animals are there than elsewhere. It is proverbial that little lap-dogs are on the same footing as their mistresses, or as horses and asses; they walk about with their noses in the air and get out of nobody's way."

Aristotle, faithless at this point to his favourite method of always contradicting Plato, has no particular liking, as we have said, for democracy. He does not spare it though he does not imitate Plato's scathing sarcasm.

In the first place, Aristotle is frankly in favour of slavery, as was every ancient philosopher except perhaps Seneca; but he is more insistent on this point than anyone else, for he looks upon slavery, not as one of many foundations, but as the very foundation of society.

He considers artisans as belonging to a higher estate but still as a class of "half-slaves." He asserts as an historical fact that only extreme and decadent democracies gave them rights of citizenship, and theoretically he maintains that no sound government would give them the franchise of the city. "Hence in ancient times, and among some nations, the working classes had no share in the government—a privilege which they only acquired under the extreme democracy.... Doubtless in ancient times and among some nations the artisan class were slaves or foreigners, and therefore the majority of them are so now. The best form of 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 too that "... multitudes, of which each individual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together, may very likely be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively.... Hence the many are better judges than a single man of music and poetry; for some understand one part, and some another, and among them they understand the whole. [Observe that he is still speaking of a democracy in which slaves and artisans are not citizens.] Doubtless too democracy is the most tolerable of perverted governments, and Plato has already made these distinctions, but his point of view is not the same as mine. For he lays down the principle that of all good constitutions democracy is the worst, but the best of bad ones." But still Aristotle cannot help thinking that democracy is a sociological mistake "... It must be admitted that we cannot raise to the rank of citizens all those, even the most useful, who are necessary to the existence of the State."

Democracy has this drawback that it cannot constitutionally retain within itself and encourage eminent men. In a democracy "if there be some one person or more than one, although not enough to make up the whole complement of a State, whose virtue is so pre-eminent that the virtues or the capacity of all the rest admit of no comparison with his or theirs, he or they can be no longer regarded as part of a State; for justice will not be done to the superior, if he is reckoned only as the equal of those who are so far inferior to him in virtue and in political capacity. Such an one may truly be deemed a God among men. Hence we see that legislation is necessarily concerned only with those who are equal in birth and in power; and that for men of pre-eminent virtue there is no law—they are themselves a law. Anyone would be ridiculous who attempted to make laws for them: they would probably retort what, in the fable of Antisthenes, the lions said to the hares—'where are your claws?'—when in the council of the beasts the latter began haranguing and claiming equality for all. And for this reason democratic States have instituted ostracism; equality is above all things their aim, and therefore they ostracise and banish from the city for a time those who seem to predominate too much through their wealth, or the number of their friends, or through any other political influence. Mythology tells us that the Argonauts left Heracles behind for a similar reason; the ship Argo would not take him because she feared that he would have been too much for the rest of the crew."

Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, asked Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, one of the seven sages of Greece, for advice on the art of government. Periander made no reply but proceeded to bring a field of corn to a level by cutting off the tallest ears. "This is a policy not only expedient for tyrants or in practice confined to them, but equally necessary in oligarchies and democracies. Ostracism is a measure of the same kind, which acts by disabling and banishing the most prominent citizens."

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 of corn. It has a simpler method. It can systematically prevent any man who betrays any superiority whatsoever, either of birth, fortune, virtue or talent, from obtaining any authority or social responsibility. It can "send to Coventry." I have often pointed out that under the first democracy Louis XVI was guillotined for having wished to leave the country, while under the third democracy his great-nephews were exiled for wishing to remain in it. Ostracism is, in these instances, still feeling its way, and its action is contradictory because it has not made up its mind. This will continue till it has been reduced to a science, when it will contrive to level, by one method or another, every individual eminence, great and small, that dares to vary by the merest fraction from the regulation standards. This is ostracism, and ostracism, so to speak, is a physiological organ of democracy. Democracy by using it mutilates the nation, without it democracy would mutilate itself.

Aristotle often tries to solve the problem of the eminent man. "Good men," he says, "differ from any individual of the many, as the beautiful are said to differ from those who are not beautiful, and works of art from realities, because in them the scattered elements are combined.... Whether this principle can apply to every democracy and to all bodies of men is not clear.... But there may be bodies of men about whom our statement is nevertheless true. And if so, the difficulty which has been already raised—viz., what power should be assigned to the mass of freemen and citizens—is solved. There is still a danger in allowing them to share the great offices of State, for their folly will lead them into error and their dishonesty into crime. But there is a danger also in not letting them share, for a State in which many poor men are excluded from office will necessarily be full of enemies. The only way of escape is to assign to them some deliberative and judicial functions.... But each individual left to himself, forms an imperfect judgment."

It is not only the eminent man that is the thorn in the flesh of democracies, but every form of superiority, whether individual or collective, 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 "ancient prescriptions for the preservation of a tyranny...." "The tyrant should lop off those who are too high; he must put to death men of spirit: he must not allow common meals, clubs, education and the like; he must be upon his guard against anything which is likely to inspire either courage or confidence among his subjects; he must prohibit literary assemblies or other meetings for discussion, and he must take every means to prevent people from knowing one another (for acquaintance begets mutual confidence)." Aristotle's conclusions are subjectively aristocratic: "In the perfect State there would be great doubts about the use of ostracism, not when applied to excess in strength, wealth, popularity or the like, but when used against some one who is pre-eminent in virtue. What is to be done with him? Mankind will not say that such an one is to be expelled and exiled; on the other hand he ought not to be a subject, that would be as if men should claim to rule over Zeus on the principle of rotation of office. The only alternative is that all should joyfully obey such a rule, according to what seems to be the order of nature, and that men like him should be kings in their State for life." But when he speaks objectively, Aristotle comes to another conclusion, which we shall have occasion to mention later on.

Among moderns, Rousseau declared that he was not a democrat, and he was right, because by democracy he meant the Athenian system of direct government, of which he did not for an instant approve. In the "Social Contract" he has drawn up a most detailed scheme, which, in spite of some contradictions and obscure passages, is an exact description of democracy as we understand the word; but still we cannot tell if he is actually a democrat, because we do not know what he means by "citizens," whether he means everybody or only one class, though that a numerous one. Rousseau has written more fully than anyone else, not so much of the influence of democracy on morals, as of the coincidence between democracy and good morals. Equality, frugality and simplicity can all be found, according to Rousseau, in States where there is neither royalty nor aristocracy nor plutocracy. As I understand it, his meaning is that the same virtue which makes certain nations love equality, frugality and simplicity is also productive of a form of government which excludes aristocracy, plutocracy and royalty. If you have simplicity, frugality and equality, you will probably live in a republic that is democratic or virtually democratic. This is, I think, the clearest and most impartial summary that we can make of Rousseau's doctrine, which, though set forth in rigid formulÆ, is still extremely vague.

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

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

Now as to this transition, this passage from the public morals of a democracy to the private, domestic, personal morals which exist under that form of government, have you observed what is the common root of our failings both public and private? The common root of both is misunderstanding, forgetfulness and contempt of competence. If pupils despise their masters, young men despise old men, if wives do not respect their husbands and the unenfranchised do not respect the citizens, if the condemned do not stand in awe of their judges, nor sons in 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 not recognise the supremacy of their husbands in practical matters, the unenfranchised have no sense of the superiority of the citizens from the point of view of national tradition, the condemned do not feel the moral supremacy 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 of anything but the most transient description since the State itself is organised on a basis of contempt for competence, or of what is even worse, a reverence for incompetence, and an insatiable craving for the guidance and government of the incompetent?

Thus public morals have a great influence on private morals; and gradually into family and social life there comes that laxity in the daily 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 the equality of the sexes, and this is followed by woman's disrespect for man. This idea, be it admitted, is substantially correct, it only ceases to be true when it is viewed relatively to the varying competences of the two sexes. Woman is man's equal in cerebral capacity, and in civilised societies, where intellect is the only thing that matters, the woman is the equal of the man. She should be admitted to the same employments as men in society, and under the same conditions of capacity and education, but in family life the same rules should apply as in every other enterprise; (1) division of labour according to the competence of each; (2) recognition of a leader according to the competence of each. This is the law which women are constantly led to misunderstand in a democracy. They will not admit the principle of the division of labour either in the world at large or in the domestic circle. They try to encroach upon men's work, which perhaps they might do very successfully, if they were obliged to do it and had nothing else at all to do; but which they really spoil by undertaking when they have other obvious duties to perform. They will not admit that men should be at the head of affairs; they aspire to be not only partners but managing directors. This implies a contemptuous rejection of that form of social competence which comes from the acceptance of convention or contract. No doubt a woman would be just as good a tax-collector as her husband, but since they have entered into partnership, the one to administer the collection of taxes, the other to look after the house, it is just as bad for the one whose business it is to keep house to begin collecting taxes, as it is for the tax-collector to interfere with the housekeeping. It is necessary to respect the efficiency that arises out of the observance of convention and contract. This, with practice and experience, will quickly become a very real and a very valuable efficiency, but if thwarted from outside will lead to friction, insecurity and disorganisation.

It is particularly by their contempt, which they are at no pains to disguise, for the competence that comes from contract and later from habit, by their refusal to recognise the position of the head of the family, that women every day and in every minute particular are training their children to despise their father. Democracy seems bent on bringing up its children to despise their parents. No other construction can be put upon the facts, however good and innocent the motives. Just sum up the facts. In the first place democracy denies that the living can be guided by the dead; it is one of its fundamental axioms that no generation should be tied and bound by its predecessor. What inference can children be expected to draw from this except that they owe no obedience to their father and mother?

Children have naturally only too great a tendency to look down on their parents. They are proud of their physical superiority; they know that their star is rising while that of their parents is setting. They are imbued with the universal prejudice of modern humanity that progress is constant and that therefore whatever is of yesterday is ex hypothesi inferior to that which is of to-day. They are driven also, as I am constrained to believe, by a sort of Nemesis inspired by fear lest human science and power should hurry forward too fast if the children were content to pick up the burden of life where their parents left it, and simply followed their fathers and did not insist on effacing all that their fathers had done and beginning again—with the result that the edifice never rises far above its foundations, and that children for this and other reasons have a natural inclination to treat their parents as Cassandras. Then, as it were to clench the argument, democracy is ready with its teaching that each generation is independent of the other, and that the dead have no lesson to impart to the living.

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

At all events democracy is determined to take the child away from his family, to give him the education which it has chosen and not that which the parents have chosen, and to teach him that he must not believe what his parents teach him. It denies the competence of parents to rear their children and puts forward its own competence, asserting that it is only its own that has any value.

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

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

This is a most pertinent observation, for the general maxims of democracy are just as likely to make pupils despise their masters as to make sons despise their fathers. The master, too, represents in the eyes of his pupil that past which has no connection with the present and which by the law of progress is very inferior to the present. This is true; but the end of all is that between the school which counteracts the influence of the parents and the home which counteracts the influence of the school, the child becomes a personage who is never educated at all. He is in like case with a child who in the family itself receives lessons, and what is more important, example, from a mother who is religious and from a father who is an atheist. He is not educated, he has had no sort of education. The only real education, that is to say, the only transmission to the children of the ideas of their parents consists of an education at home which is reinforced by the instruction of masters chosen by the parents in accordance with their own views. This is precisely the form of education to which democracy refuses to be reconciled.

There is a still more cogent reason why old men are neither respected nor honoured in a democracy. Here is yet another efficiency formally denied and formally set aside. An interesting treatise might be written on 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 form of government. It is easy to understand why this should be. In primitive ages, all knowledge was experience and the old men possessed all the historical, social and political experience of the State. They were held in great honour and listened to with the profoundest respect and veneration, in fact with an almost superstitious reverence. Nietzsche was thinking of those days when he said: "Respect for the aged is the symbol of aristocracy," and when he added: "Respect for the aged is respect for tradition," he was thinking of the reason for this assumption. That the dead should rule the living was accepted instinctively, and it was their nearness to death which evoked honour for the aged.

At a later stage the old man shared in the civil government with monarchy, aristocracy or oligarchy, and retained an almost complete control of judicial affairs. His moral and technical efficiency were still appreciated. His moral efficiency to his contemporaries consisted in the fact that his passions were deadened and his judgment as disinterested as was humanly possible. Even his obstinacy is rather an advantage than otherwise. He is not liable to whims and fancies and sudden gusts of temper or to external influence. His technical efficiency is considerable, because he has seen and remembered much and his mind has unconsciously drawn up a reference book of cases. As history repeats itself with very slight alterations, every fresh case which arises is already well known to him; it does not take him by surprise and he has a solution at hand which only requires very slight modification.

All this, however, is very ancient history. That which undermined the authority of old men was the book. Books contain all science, equity, jurisprudence and history better, it must be confessed, than the memories of old men. One fine day the young men said: "The old men were our 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 can never be anything but the handmaiden of living science, the science which is being constantly remodelled and corrected by living thought. A book is a wise man paralysed; the wise man is a book which still thinks and writes.

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

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

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

It is a remarkable fact that even in mediÆval epics, Charlemagne himself, the emperor of the flowing beard, often plays a comic part. The epic is invaded by the atmosphere of the fable.

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

MoliÈre takes his lead from Aristophanes and Plautus rather than from Terence and is the scourge of old age as well as "the scourge of the ridiculous"; he pursues the old as a hound his prey and never leaves them in peace either in his poetry or his prose.

We must do this much justice to Rousseau that both he and his child, the Revolution, tried to restore the old man to his former glory; he makes honourable mention of him in his writings, and she gives him important posts in public ceremonies and national fÊtes. Therein were received the ancient memories of LacedÆmon and of early Rome, combined with a form of reaction against the days of Louis XIV and Louis XV.

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

Democracy has forgotten this advice, because it no longer believes in tradition and believes too much in progress. Old men are the natural upholders of tradition, and we must confess that an enthusiastic faith in the value of what we call progress is not commonly their failing. For this very reason their influence would be a most wholesome corrective to the system, or rather to the attitude of mind, which despises the past and sees in every change a step in the path of progress. But democracy will not allow that it needs a corrective, and the old man, to it, is only an enemy. The old man upholds tradition and has no enthusiasm for progress, but beyond this he appeals for respect, first for himself, then for religion, for glory, for his country and for the history of his nation. Democracy is indifferent to the sentiment of respect, or rather it 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 our own sentiments as to ourselves repeated in the minds of others. The crowd 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. The masses are young. How aptly does Horace's description of the young man apply 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 of nothing but horses, dogs and the Campus Martius, impressionable as wax to 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 has no love for the old; and it is interesting to note that the word gerontocracy to which the ancients attached the most honourable meaning is now only a term of ridicule, and is applied only to a government which, because it is in the hands of old men, is therefore grotesque.

This disappearance of respect, noted as we have seen by Plato, Aristotle and Montesquieu as a morbid system, is, regard it how we will, a fact of the gravest import. Kant has asked the question, what must we obey? What criterion is there to tell us what to obey? What is there within us which commands respect, which does not ask for love or fear, but for respect alone? He has given us the answer. The feeling of respect is the only 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 inspire respect. This is the only criterion which enables us to gauge correctly the men and things to whom we owe, if not absolute obedience, at least attention and deference. Old men are the nation's conscience, and it is a 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 be advantageous as well as curious. We degrade and finally vitiate our conscience if we do not respect its behests. Conscience then itself becomes small and timid and humble, shamefaced, and at length a mere whisper. 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 of passion; it ceases to use the categoric imperative and tries to be persuasive. It no longer raises the finger of command, but it seeks to cajole with caressing hand.

Then it falls still lower, it affects indifference and scepticism and it puts on the air of the trifler in order to insinuate a word of wisdom into the seductive talk that is heard around it, and it holds language somewhat as follows: "Probably everything has its good points and there is something to be said for both vice and virtue, crime and honesty, sin and innocence, rudeness and politeness, licence and purity. These are all simply different forms of an activity which cannot be wholly wrong in any of its manifestations; and it is precisely because every one of these 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 their nature and despoils them of their beauty and integrity. How true is Montesquieu's saying that the respect paid them by the young helps old men to respect themselves! Old men who are not respected take no interest in their natural duties; they cease to advise, or else they only venture to advise indirectly, as though they were apologising for their wisdom, or they affect a laxity of morals to enable them to insinuate a surreptitious dose of worldly wisdom;—and worst of all in view of the insignificant part assigned to them in society, old men will nowadays decline to be old.