We have sought very conscientiously, and democrats themselves have sought very conscientiously, to find remedies for this constitutional disease of democracy. We have preserved certain bodies, relatively aristocratic, as refuges, we would fain believe, of efficiency. We have preserved for instance a Senate, elected by universal suffrage, not directly, but in the second degree. We have preserved also a Parliament (a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies), a floating aristocracy which is continually being renewed. This is, however, in a sense an aristocracy inasmuch as it stands between us and a direct and immediate government of the people by the people. These remedies are by no means to be despised, but we recognise that they are very feeble, for the reason that democracy always eludes them. By the care it takes to exclude The same thing applies to the Senate, though perhaps in a more direct fashion. The Senate is chosen by the delegates of universal suffrage. These delegates, however, are not chosen by a general universal suffrage where each department would choose four or five hundred delegates, but by the town councillors of each commune or parish. In these communes, especially in the rural communes, the municipal councillors who are by far the most numerous and, with regard to elections, the most influential, are more or less completely dependent on the prÉfets. The result is that the Senate is, practically, chosen by the prÉfets, that is, by the Government, as used to be the case under the First and Second Empire. The maker of the constitution made this arrangement for the benefit of his own party, for he It is well known that in France a deputy belonging to the opposition, though sure of his constituents, and certain to be re-elected indefinitely, who for private reasons wishes to be a senator, is obliged to be civil to the Government in power, to abate his opposition, and to make himself pleasant, if he wishes to avoid failure in his new ambition. It is very inconvenient to have a strong and active opposition in the Senate. It comes back again to this, that we have a Senate not far removed from one elected by universal suffrage. Universal suffrage elects the Chamber of Deputies, the Chamber elects the Government, and the Government elects the Senate. The Senate is therefore an extremely feeble anti-democratic remedy, and if it were intended as a check on democracy, it has not been a striking success. If we really wish to have an upper chamber It is, however, exactly the opposite of this that is done, and the French Senate is an extremely feeble, anti-democratic remedy. It represents the rural democracy, arbitrarily guided and governed by the democratic Government. Another remedy which has been given an equally conscientious trial is the system of competitive examination, which is supposed to —You call that an anti-democratic remedy! It is as democratic as well can be!— Nay, pardon! It would be anti-monarchical if we lived under a monarchy, anti-aristocratic if we lived under an aristocracy, and it is anti-democratic because our lot is cast in a democracy. Competition for public offices is a sort of co-optation. In fact it is co-optation pure and simple. When I suggested that the magistracy should be chosen by the magistrates, that is, the Cour de Cassation by the magistrates and the magistrates in turn by the Cour de Cassation, I was of course accused of being paradoxical, as is always the case, when one suggests something contrary to the usual custom. I was, however, only carrying a little further the principle which is already applied to officials. In a certain sense and to a large extent officials recruit their numbers by co-optation. It is true, they do not actually choose the officials, but they eliminate the candidates whom they do not wish to have. Examination is ostracism of the inefficient. The Government, of course, has to decide who may be candidates, but its selection for employment is limited to those of whom other officials (the officials who conduct the examination) can approve. It is in fact co-optation. The committee of examiners which admits a candidate to St. Cyr appoints an officer. The committee which admits a candidate to the École Polytechnique appoints an officer or an engineer. A committee also which refuses a candidate at either of these places is encroaching on the National Sovereignty, because it is forbidding the National Sovereignty to make of this young man an officer or an engineer. This is co-optation. This is a guarantee of efficiency. Here a wall is raised against incompetence, and against the jobbery under which incompetence would profit. It is hardly necessary for me to add that this co-optation is limited to a very narrow field of operation. It is confined in fact to the threshold of a man's career. Once the candidate has Unfortunately these prophylactic measures are very badly organised, and, far from being capable of amendment, ought to be completely revolutionised. The examination system in our country is founded on a misconception, I mean on the confusion between knowledge and competence. We search conscientiously for competence or efficiency, and we believe that we have found it when we find knowledge, but that is an error. Preparation for examination is responsible for intellectual indigestion, for minds overloaded with useless information, and for a system of cramming, which at once takes the heart out of men, perhaps with good ability, just at the age when their mental activity is most keen; which, further, as the result of this surfeit, disgusts for the rest of his life and renders impotent for all intellectual effort, the unfortunate patient 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 to support my argument by an instance well known to me, that, if I have been able to work from the age of twenty-five to that of sixty-three, it is because I have never succeeded except very moderately, and I am proud of it, in competitive examinations. Being The curious thing is that the results, not perhaps disastrous, but obviously very unsatisfactory, of this examination system do not lead us to abandon it (that perhaps would be an extreme measure), but make us aggravate and complicate it. Legal and medical examinations are much "stiffer" than they used to be, and they require a greater physical effort, but without requiring or obtaining any greater intellectual value. In truth, one might say, examination is nothing more than a test of good health, and it is a very searching test, for it often succeeds in destroying it. Here is an example which I know well. It The authorities, therefore, have put in an intermediate examination between the licence and the agrÉgation. The examination, it is true, is on a subject chosen by the candidate himself; so much it is only fair to admit. The subject chosen, however, must be submitted to the professors. Their advice and indeed assistance must be invited. The result, if not the object, of this examination is to prevent the candidate, during this perilous year of liberty, from developing original ideas of his own and acting on them. One examination every year for ten years—that is the ideal of the modern professor for the future professors who are in course of being trained. Between the second part of the bachelor's degree and the licentiate, as there is there an interval of two years, they will presently perceive that there ought to be an examination at the end of the first year, and we In this way the desired object is attained. Between the ages of seventeen and twenty-seven or thirty the examinee will have had to undergo sixteen examinations. He will never have worked alone. He will always have worked, for periods of twelve months, on a syllabus, for an examination, with a view of pleasing such and such professors, modelling himself on their views, their conceptions, their general ideas, their eccentricities, aided by them, influenced by them, never knowing, and feeling he ought not to know, not wishing to know, and running a great risk if he did know, and forming Not a vestige of personality or original thought till the moment when it is too late for it to appear, that is the maxim! Whence comes this frenzy, this examino mania? When one comes to think of it, it seems to be a simple case of Dandino-mania. Dandin says with great determination "I mean to go and judge." The professor of a certain age means to go and examine. He no longer loves to profess, he loves to be 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 an audience of students and amateurs, ceases at a certain age to be altogether pleasant; on the other hand to examine, to sit on the throne with all the majesty of a judge, to have only to criticise and not to produce, to intervene only when All this is true, but there is more than this. The precocious development of early talent and originality is the thing which strangely terrifies these examination-maniacs. They have a horror of the man who teaches himself. They have a horror of any one who ventures to think for himself and to enquire for himself at twenty-five years of age. They want, 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 the scoffer might well say, its limbs are absolutely atrophied. I do not say that they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain, conceited fellow who takes pleasure in think But here,—take note how the democratic spirit comes in everywhere—the question of numbers is raised. Ten times more numerous, I am told, are the pretenders to originality whom we save from themselves by discipline than the true geniuses whose wings we clip. I reply that, in matters intellectual, questions of figures do not count. An original spirit Nietzsche has well said: "Modern education consists in smothering the exceptional in favour of the normal. It consists in directing the mind away from the exceptional into the channel of the average." This ought not to be. I do not say that education should do the opposite of all this. Oh no, far from that. It is not the business of education to look for exceptional genius, or to help in its creation. Exceptional genius is born of itself and it has no need of such assistance. But even less is it the business of education to regard the exceptional with terror, and to take every means possible, even the most barbarous and most detailed, to prevent it as long as possible from coming to the light. Education ought to draw all that it can out of mediocrity, and to respect originality as much as it can. It ought never to attempt to turn mediocrity into originality, nor to reduce originality to the level of mediocrity. And how can all this be done? By an intervention that is always discreet, and sometimes by non-intervention. At the present moment its policy is equally distant from non-intervention and from an intervention that is discreet. It is in this way that the very institution which we have invented to safeguard efficiency contributes not a little to the triumph of its opposite. These victims of examination are competent in respect of knowledge, instruction and technical proficiency. They are incompetent in respect of intellectual value, often, though perhaps not so often as formerly, in respect of moral value. As far as their intellectual value is concerned, they have very frequently no mental initiative. It has been cramped, hidden away, and trampled down. If it ever existed, it exists now no longer. They are all their 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. "The difference between the novel and the play," said BrunetiÈre, "is that in the play the The official also is incompetent, though less and less often, in respect of moral worth. By the exercise of intellectual obedience, he has been trained to moral obedience also and he is little disposed to assert his independence. Observe how everything tends to this end. This method of co-opting officials by means of elimination, as I have said, operates only, as I have also shown, at the outset of the official's career. From this moment onwards the functionary must depend on the Government only, his whole preparation during ten years of education has been calculated to ensure his absolute dependence on his official directors. So far good, perhaps a little too good. It would have been well if the education of the functionary had left him, together with a little originality of mind, a little originality of character as well. We have sought, very conscientiously also, and, I may even say, with an admirable enthusiasm, yet another remedy for the faults of democracy, another remedy for its incompe From this argument aristocrats have derived some little amusement. "How is this?" they exclaimed, "what is the meaning of this paradox? You are democrats and that means that you attribute political excellence, 'political virtue,' as we used to say, to the crowd, that is to ignorance. Why then do you wish to enlighten the crowd, that is to destroy the very virtue which, on your own showing, is the cause of its superiority?" The democrats reply that the crowd, even as it is, is already very preferable to aristocracy, and that it will be still more so when it has received instruction. They resolve the apparent contradiction by the argument a fortiori. At all events, the democrats set to work most vigorously on the education of the people. The result is that the people is much better educated than formerly, and I am one of those who regard this result as excellent; but the further result is, that the people is saturated Ancient republics had their demagogues, their orators, who inflamed the evil qualities of the people, by bestowing on them high-sounding names and by flattery. The great democracy of modern times has its demagogues. These are its elementary school teachers. They come of the people, are proud to belong to it, for which of course no one can blame them, they distrust everything that is not the people, they are all the more of the people because among the people they are intellectually in the first rank while elsewhere they are of secondary importance; and what men love is not the group of which they form a part, but the group of which they are the chief. They are, therefore, profoundly democratic. So far nothing could be better. But it is a narrow form of democratic sentiment which they hold, for they are only half-educated, or rather (for who is completely educated or even well educated?), because they have only received a rudimentary education. Rudimentary education may perhaps make us capable of having one idea, it certainly renders Now no one ever convinces the elementary schoolmaster. He is confirmed in his convictions by defending, and still more by discussing them. He is the slave of his opinion. He does not possess it always quite clearly, but it possesses him. He loves it with all his soul, as a priest his religion, because it is the truth, because it is beautiful, because it has been persecuted, and because it means the salvation of the world. He would enjoy its triumph but he yearns still more to be a martyr in its cause. He is a convinced democrat and a sentimental democrat. His conviction forms a solid basis for his sentiment, and his sentiment 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 his argument leads. An idea which admits neither qualification nor question can go far in a very short space of time. And the schoolmaster drives all his democratic principles to their natural and logical conclusion. He develops these principles and all that they imply by the sheer force of what he calls his "reasoning reason," and it appears to him to be not only natural but salutary to seek their realisation. Everything of which the principle is good is good itself, and no one but Montesquieu could ever believe that an institution The schoolmaster, therefore, deduces their logical consequences from the two great democratic principles, the sovereignty of the nation, and equality; he deduces them rigorously, and arrives at the following conclusions. The people alone is sovereign. Therefore, though there can be individual liberty and liberty of association, there ought to be only such individual liberty and liberty of association as the people permits. Liberty cannot be and ought not to be anything more than a thing tolerated by the sovereign people. The individual may think, speak, write, and act as he pleases, but only so far as the people will allow him; for if he can do these things with absolute freedom, or even with limitations which are not imposed by the people, he becomes the sovereign power, or the power which fixed the limits of his freedom becomes the sovereign, and the sovereignty of the people disappears. This brings us back to the simple definition that liberty is the right to do what we please within the limits of the law. And who makes —But to have liberty to do only what the people permits, this is to be free 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 the people would be limited and this must not be. —Fundamental and constitutional laws might be devised to limit this sovereignty of the people in order to guarantee such and such of the liberties for the individual.— And the people would then be tied! The sovereignty of the people would be suppressed! No, the people cannot be tied. The sovereignty of the people 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 the sovereignty of the nation. It has its own laws, which from a democratic point of view is an absurd and monstrous incongruity. The right of association limits the national sovereignty, just as would a free town or sanctuary of refuge. It limits the nation, and pulls it up short in face of its closed doors. It is a State within a State; where there is association, there arises at once a source of organisation other than the great organism of the popular will. It is like an animal which lives some sort of independent life within another animal larger than itself and which, living on that other animal, is still independent of it. In fact 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, but their right of existence —Ah! but there is one association, at least, which to some extent is sacred, and which the sovereignty of the people is bound to respect. I mean the family. The father is the head of the family, he educates his children and brings them up as he thinks best, till they come to man's estate.— Nay, that will not pass! For here again we have a limitation of the sovereignty of the nation. The child does not belong to his father. If this were so, at the threshold of each home the sovereignty of the people would be arrested, which means that it would cease to exist anywhere. The child, like the man, belongs to the people. He belongs to it, in the sense that he must not be a member of an association which might dare to think differently from the people, or perhaps even harbour ideas in contradiction to the thought of the people. It would indeed be dangerous to leave our future citizens for twenty years outside the national thought, which is the same thing as being outside the It is above all things in the family that the sovereignty of the people ought to prevail. It ought above all things to refuse to recognise the association of the family, and to wage war against it wherever it finds it. It should leave to parents the right of embracing their children, but nothing more. The right to educate them in ideas perhaps contrary to those of their parents belongs to the people, which, here as well as elsewhere, perhaps even more than elsewhere for the interests at stake are more important, must be absolutely sovereign. This, then, is what the schoolmaster, with a relentless logic which appears to me to be irresistible, deduces from the principle of the national sovereignty. From the principle of equality he deduces another point. "All men are equal by nature and before the law." That is to say, if there were justice, all men ought to have been equal Very obviously, however, all men are not equal before the law, and they are 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 are not. The rich man, even supposing that the magistrates are perfectly and strictly honest, by reason of the fact that he can remunerate the best solicitors, advocates, and witnesses, by reason further of the fact that he 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 of constituted social forces which we call society. In this respect the rich man will be the "influential man"; the "man well connected," the man on whom no one depends, but whom no one likes to cross or to contradict. There is, between the rich and the poor man, however equal we may pretend them to be before the law, the difference between the man who gives orders and the man who is obliged to obey. Real equality, in But there will always be rich and poor, as long as the institution of inheritance 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 relatively to 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 if we abolish inheritance, a privilege, namely, the privilege of birth will still 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 only social policy so devised that no one can possess and no one can acquire anything is the policy of a community of goods, that is Communism or Collectivism. Collectivism is nothing very wonderful. Collectivism is equality; and equality is collectivism, otherwise But surely collectivism is a chimÆra, an utopia, a thing impossible. Certainly it is impossible in the sense that in the country which adopts it the source of all initiative will be destroyed. No man will make an effort to improve his position, since it must never be improved. The whole country will become one of those stagnant pools to which one of our ministers lately referred. Everyone having become an official, everyone will realise the ideal of the official which the Goncourts have very neatly described. "The good official," they say, "is the man who com That admits of no question; but what does it prove? That collectivism is only impossible because it is only possible if established in every country at once. Very well, and in order to establish it in every country at once, only one thing is needful, namely, that there shall no longer be distinct and separate countries and no longer any nationalities. It surely will not answer to establish collectivism before the abolition of nationalities, since, once established, it will serve no purpose except to bring into prominent relief the vast superiority of countries which have not adopted collectivism. We must, therefore, take our problems in order and abolish nationalities before we can establish collectivism. Now if nations organise themselves against nature (the nature that, the schoolmaster assumes, makes all men equal), if instinctively they organise themselves in a hierarchy which is aristocratic, if they have their leaders and Thus equality demands the abolition of inheritance, and the equality of possessions. Equality of possessions necessitates collectivism, and collectivism requires the abolition of nationalities. We are egalitarians, then collectivists, and by logical consequence anti-patriots. So argue the great majority of school teachers, with an absolute logic, in my opinion, irrefutable, with the logic which takes no account of facts, and which only takes account of its own principle and of itself. So they will Will they go back to the premises and say, that if the sovereignty of the people and equality lead logically and imperatively to these conclusions, it is perhaps because the sovereignty of the people and equality are false ideas, and because these conclusions prove them to be false? This is a course not likely to be taken, for the sovereignty of the people and the principle of equality are something more than general ideas, they are sentiments. They are sentiments which have become ideas, as is the case doubtless with all general ideas, and they are sentiments of great strength. The sovereignty 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 majesty for him as was CÆsar in all his pomp for the ancient Roman, or Louis XIV. 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 and They are dogmas of faith. A dogma is an overmastering sentiment which has found expression in a formula. From these two dogmas everything that can be deduced without breach of logic is truth which it is our right and duty to proclaim. We must add that the schoolmaster is urged in this same direction by sentiments of a less general character, which nevertheless have an influence of their own. He is placed in his commune in direct opposition to the priest, the only person very often who is, like himself, in that place a man of some little education. Hence rivalry and a struggle for influence. Now the priest, by a series of historical incidents, is a more or less warm partisan sometimes of monarchy but almost always of As the priest then belongs to an order endowed with an historic authority which is nevertheless distinct from, and in no wise a delegation from, the authority of the people, the priest cannot fail more or less definitely and consciously to adopt an attitude of mind favourable to aristocracy. The school teacher, his rival, is thrown then "Atheism is aristocratic," said Robespierre, thinking of Rousseau. Atheism is democratic, say our present-day school teachers. Whence comes this difference of opinion? First because it was fashionable among the great lords of the eighteenth century to be libertines and free-thinkers, but among the people the belief in God was unanimous. Secondly, because the priests of our day, for the reasons which I have given and from remembrance of the persecutions Besides, atheism fits in very well, whatever Robespierre may have thought, with the general sentiments of the baser demagogy. To be restrained by nothing, to be limited by nothing, that is the dominant idea of the people, or rather it is the dominant idea of the democrat for the people, that it should be restrained by nothing and limited by nothing 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 which the people could not destroy and which would prevent him from making bad laws; just as the democrat will not submit—if we may adopt the terminology of Aristotle—to being governed by laws, to be governed that is by an ancient body of law which would check the people and obstruct it in its daily fabrication of decrees; so just in the same spirit the democrat does not admit of a God Who has issued His After Sedan, Bismarck was asked: "Now that Napoleon has fallen, on whom do you make war?" He replied: "On Louis XIV." So the democrat questioned on his atheism could reply: "I am warring against Moses." This is the origin of the atheism of democrats and schoolmasters. This is the origin of the formula: "Neither God nor Master," which for the anarchist requires no correction nor supplement, which for the democrat has 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; the People and God." The modern democrat has persuaded himself that if there be a God, the sovereignty of the people is infringed, if he believe in Him. Lastly, the school teacher is confirmed in his democratic sentiments, in all his democratic sentiments, by the political position which has been made for him in France. It is a strange thing, a disconcerting anomaly, that the Governments of the nineteenth century (especially, we must do it this justice, the present Government), have very handsomely respected the liberty of professors of higher education, and of secondary education, and have not in the very slightest degree respected the liberty of the teachers of elementary education. The professor of higher education, especially since 1870, can teach exactly what he pleases, except immorality and contempt of our country and its laws. He can even discuss our laws, provided always that he maintains the principle that, such as they are, they ought to be obeyed till they are repealed. His liberty as to his opinions political, social and religious is complete. It is only occasionally constrained by the disorderly demonstrations of his students. The professor of secondary education enjoys a liberty almost equally wide. He is subject, but only in an extremely liberal fashion, to a programme or syllabus of studies. As to the spirit in which Nor has it ever occurred to any Government to ask a professor of higher and secondary education how he votes at political elections, still less to require him to canvass in favour of the candidates agreeable to the Government. When, however, we pass to elementary education we see everything is changed. 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 of the Government. In other words, this is the same process as the appointment of officials by the people, described a few pages back, but with one intermediary the less. It is pre-eminently the Minister of the Interior who represents the political will of the nation at any given date. And it is the Minister of the Interior who through his prÉfets appoints the elementary school teacher. It is then the political will of the nation which chooses the school teachers. It would be impossible to convey to them more clearly (which is only fair, for people should be made to under And indeed they are nothing else, or perhaps we should say they are something else but above all they are politicians. The schoolteachers depend 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 can remove them, who can get them promoted or disgraced, who by constant removals can reduce them to destitution. Surely, every candid person will exclaim, given the difficult and scandalous situation in which they are put by the hand which appoints them, they ought at least to have the guarantee and assurance, very relative and ineffectual though it be, of irremovability. But they have not got it. The professors of higher education who do not require it have got it, the professors of secondary education have it to all intents and purposes. The elementary school teacher has it not. He is, therefore, delivered over to the politicians who make of him an electioneering agent, who reckon him as such, and who would never pardon him if he failed them. The result is that the majority of school teachers are demagogues because they like it, and with magnificent enthusiasm and passion. The minority who have no turn for demagogy are demagogues though they do not like it, and because they are forced by necessity. Even those who have no disposition that way become demagogues in the end, 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 appear to be fighting, receive knocks and when they have received them, they become attached to the cause on whose behalf they have suffered. We always end by having the opinions which are attributed to us, and being taken for a demagogue the moment he arrives at his village, the young school teacher, not daring to say anything to the contrary, and being very ill received by all other parties, naturally becomes a demagogue with some show of conviction the very next year. So the democracy receives no instruction that does not confirm and strengthen it in its errors. For its good some one ought to teach it not to believe itself omnipotent, to have scruples as to its omnipotence, and to believe that this omnipotence should have defined limits; it is taught without reserve the dogma of the unlimited sovereignty of the people. For its good it should believe that equality is so contrary to nature that we have no right to torture nature in order to establish real equality among men, and that the people which has established such a state of things, which is quite possible, must succumb to the fate of those who try to live exactly in opposition to the laws of nature. Instead, it is taught, and it is true enough, that equality is not possible, if it is not complete, if it is not thorough, that it ought to be applied to differences of fortune, social position, intelligence, perhaps even to our stature and personal appearance, and that no effort should be spared to bring all things to one absolute level. For its good, since it is natural enough that it should dislike heavy taxation, sentiments of patriotism should be reinforced; it is taught on the contrary that military service is a painful legacy left by a hateful and barbarous In a word, to use again the language of Aristotle, the pure wine of democracy is poured out to the people as it was by the demagogues to the Athenians; and from the quarter whence a remedy might have been expected there come only incitements to deeper intoxication. Aristotle has made yet another wise and profound observation on the question of equality: "We must establish equality," he said, "in the passions rather than in the fortunes of men." And he adds: "And this equality can only be the fruit of education derived from the influence of good laws." That is indeed the point. Education should have but one object; to reduce the passions to equality, or rather to equanimity, and to a certain equilibrium of mind. The education given to modern democracy does not lead to this, but leads in the opposite direction. |