Part 11 (1/2)

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 succ.u.mb 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 past, and that it ought to disappear very soon before the warming rays of a peaceful civilisation.

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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sions 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.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DREAM.

What remedies can we apply to this modern disease, the wors.h.i.+p of intellectual and moral incompetence? What is, as M. Fouillee puts it, the best way of avoiding the hidden rocks which threaten democracies? It is hard to say, for we have to do with an evil which can only be cured by itself, with an evil which is more than content with itself.

M. Fouillee (in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of November, 1909) proposes an aristocratic Upper Chamber, that is to say, one that would represent all the competence of the country, inasmuch as it would be appointed by everything which is based on some particular form of excellence, the magistracy, the army, the university, the chambers of commerce, and so on.

Nothing could be better; but the consent of the democracy would be necessary, and it is precisely these incorporations of efficiency that the democracy cannot abide, looking on them, not without reason, as being in a sense aristocracies.

He proposes also an energetic intervention on the part of the State to restore public morality, action for the suppression of alcoholism, gambling and p.o.r.nography.

Beyond the fact that his argument savours of reaction, for it recalls to us the programme of ”moral order” of 1873, we must remark, as indeed M.

Fouillee himself acknowledges, that the democratic State can hardly afford to kill the thing which enables it to live, to destroy its princ.i.p.al source of revenue. Democracy, as its most authoritative representatives have admitted, is not a cheap form of government. It has always been inst.i.tuted with the hope, and partly with the expressed design, of being an economical government, and it has always been ruinous, because it requires a much larger number of partisans than other forms of government, and a smaller number of malcontents than other forms of government, and these partisans have to be remunerated in one fas.h.i.+on or another and the malcontents have to be silenced and bought in one way or another.

Democracy, whether ancient or modern, lives always in terror of tyrants who are always imminent or thought by it to be imminent. Against this possible tyrant who would govern with an energetic minority, the democracy requires an immense majority which it has to bind to it by the grant of many favours; it has also to detach from this tyrant the malcontents who would be his supporters if it did not disarm them by a still more lavish distribution of favours.

Democracy requires therefore plenty of money. It will find this by despoiling the wealthy as much as possible; but this is a very limited source of revenue, for the wealthy are not a numerous cla.s.s. It will find it more easily, more abundantly also, by exploiting the vices of all, for all is a very numerous group. Hence the complaisance shown to drinking shops, which, as M. Fouillee remarks, it would be more dangerous for the Government to close than to close the churches. As the needs of the Government increase, as M. Fouillee predicts, without much doubt it will claim a monopoly in houses of ill-fame and in the publication of indecent literature; enterprises in which there would be money. And after all, tolerating such things for the profit of certain traders and annexing them to be worked for the profit of the State, is surely much the same thing from a moral point of view. And the financial operation would be much more beneficent in the second case than in the first.

M. Fouillee also argues that reform must come ”from above and not from below,” and that ”the movement for regeneration can come from above and not from below.”

I ask nothing better, but I ask also how is it going to be done?

Inasmuch as everything depends upon the people, who, what, can influence the people except the people itself? Everything depends on the people, by what then can it be moved except by a force that is innate. We are here confronted--we are talking to a philosopher and can make use of scientific terms--with a {Kinetes akinetos} with a motive force which causes but does not receive motives.

A principle has disappeared, a prejudice if you like to call it so, the prejudice in favour of competence. We no longer think that the man who understands how to do a thing ought to be doing that thing, or ought to be chosen to do it. Hence, not only is everything mismanaged, but it seems impossible by any device to handle the matter effectually. We see no solution.

Nietzsche really has a horror of democracy; only like all energetic pessimists, who are not mere triflers, he used to say from time to time: ”There are pessimists who are resigned and cowardly. We do not wish to be like them.” When he would not take this view he persuaded himself to look at democracy through rose-coloured spectacles.

At times, looking at the matter from an aesthetic point of view, he used to say: ”Intercourse with the people is as indispensable and refres.h.i.+ng as the contemplation of vigorous and healthy vegetation,” and although this is in flagrant contradiction to all he has elsewhere said of the ”b.e.s.t.i.a.l flock” and the ”inhabitants of the swamp,” the thought has a certain amount of sense in it. It signifies that instinct is a force, and that every force must be interesting to study; and further that, as such, it contains an active virtue, a principle of life, a nucleus of growth.

This, though vaguely expressed, is very possible. After all the crowd is only powerful by reason of numbers, and because it has been decided that numbers shall decide. It is an expedient; but an expedient cannot impart force to a thing that had it not before. Motive power, initiative, belongs to the man who has a plan, who makes his combination to achieve it, who perseveres and is patient and does not relinquish pursuit. If he is eliminated and reduced to impotence or to a minimum of usefulness, one does not see how the crowd, without him, can obtain its power of initiation. Further explanation is needed.

At another time, Nietzsche asks whether we ought not to respect the right, which after all belongs to the mult.i.tude, to direct itself according to an ideal--there are of course many ideals--and according to the ideal which is its own. Ought we to refuse to the ma.s.ses the right to search out truth for themselves, the right to believe that they have found it when they come upon a faith that seems to them vital, a faith that is to them as their very life? The ma.s.ses are the foundation on which all humanity rests, the basis of all culture. Deprived of them, what would become of the masters? It is to their interest that the ma.s.ses should be happy. Let us be patient; let us grant to our insurgent slaves, our masters for the moment, the enjoyment of illusions which seem favourable to them.

So Nietzsche argues, but more often, for he returns on various occasions to this idea, led thereto by his customary aristocratic leanings, he speaks of democracy as of a form of decadence, as a necessary prelude to an aristocracy of the future. ”A high civilisation can only be built upon a wide expanse of territory, upon a healthy and firmly consolidated mediocrity.” [So he wrote in 1887. Ten years earlier he held that slavery had been the necessary condition of the high civilisation of Greece and Rome.] The only end, therefore, which at present, provisionally of course but still for a long time to come, we have to expect, must be the decadence of mankind--general decadence to a level mediocrity, for it is necessary to have a wide foundation on which a race of strong men can be reared. ”The decadence of the European is the great process which we cannot hinder, which we ought rather to accelerate. It is the active cause at work which gives us hope of seeing the rise of a stronger race, a race which will possess in abundance those same qualities which are lacking to the degenerate vanis.h.i.+ng species, strength of will, responsibility, self-reliance, the power of concentration....”