Part 6 (2/2)
The law abolis.h.i.+ng the right of primogeniture has obviously affected national morals, though it has not otherwise altered national character.
For a peculiar mental att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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 The old order has pa.s.sed away; modesty has been superseded by a desire for liberty, or for another union.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 a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sumed 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 inst.i.tution 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 citizens.h.i.+p.
”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 s.e.xes 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 a.s.ses; they walk about with their noses in the air and get out of n.o.body'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 cla.s.s of ”half-slaves.” He a.s.serts as an historical fact that only extreme and decadent democracies gave them rights of citizens.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s were slaves or foreigners, and therefore the majority of them are so now. The best form of State will not admit them to citizens.h.i.+p....”
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 ”... mult.i.tudes, 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 const.i.tutions 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 const.i.tutionally 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 G.o.d 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 inst.i.tuted 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 s.h.i.+p 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 banis.h.i.+ng the most prominent citizens.”
This is what we may call a const.i.tutional 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.signed to the ma.s.s 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 a.s.sign 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 a.s.semblies 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 pa.s.sages, 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 cla.s.s, 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 formulae, is still extremely vague.
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