Volume Ii Part 59 (1/2)

288.

HOW FAR MACHINERY HUMILIATES.-Machinery is impersonal; it robs the piece of work of its pride, of the individual merits and defects that cling to all work that is not machine-made-in other words, of its bit of humanity.

Formerly, all buying from handicraftsmen meant a mark of distinction for their personalities, with whose productions people surrounded themselves.

Furniture and dress accordingly became the symbols of mutual valuation and personal connection. Nowadays, on the other hand, we seem to live in the midst of anonymous and impersonal serfdom.-We must not buy the facilitation of labour too dear.

289.

CENTURY-OLD QUARANTINE.-Democratic inst.i.tutions are centres of quarantine against the old plague of tyrannical desires. As such they are extremely useful and extremely tedious.

290.

THE MOST DANGEROUS PARTISAN.-The most dangerous partisan is he whose defection would involve the ruin of the whole party-in other words, the best partisan.

291.

DESTINY AND THE STOMACH.-A piece more or less of bread and b.u.t.ter in the jockey's body is occasionally the decisive factor in races and bets, and thus in the good and bad luck of thousands.-So long as the destiny of nations depends upon diplomats, the stomachs of diplomats will always be the object of patriotic misgivings. _Quousque tandem_....

292.

THE VICTORY OF DEMOCRACY.-All political powers nowadays attempt to exploit the fear of Socialism for their own strengthening. Yet in the long run democracy alone gains the advantage, for _all_ parties are now compelled to flatter ”the ma.s.ses” and grant them facilities and liberties of all kinds, with the result that the ma.s.ses finally become omnipotent. The ma.s.ses are as far as possible removed from Socialism as a doctrine of altering the acquisition of property. If once they get the steering-wheel into their hands, through great majorities in their Parliaments, they will attack with progressive taxation the whole dominant system of capitalists, merchants, and financiers, and will in fact slowly create a middle cla.s.s which may forget Socialism like a disease that has been overcome.-The practical result of this increasing democratisation will next be a European league of nations, in which each individual nation, delimited by the proper geographical frontiers, has the position of a canton with its separate rights. Small account will be taken of the historic memories of previously existing nations, because the pious affection for these memories will be gradually uprooted under the democratic regime, with all its craze for novelty and experiment. The corrections of frontiers that will prove necessary will be so carried out as to serve the interests of the great cantons and at the same time that of the whole federation, but not that of any venerable memories. To find the standpoints for these corrections will be the task of future diplomats, who will have to be at the same time students of civilisation, agriculturists, and commercial experts, with no armies but motives and utilities at their back. Then only will foreign and home politics be inseparably connected, whereas to-day the latter follows its haughty dictator, and gleans in sorry baskets the stubble that is left over from the harvest of the former.

293.

GOAL AND MEANS OF DEMOCRACY.-Democracy tries to create and guarantee independence for as many as possible in their opinions, way of life, and occupation. For this purpose democracy must withhold the political suffrage both from those who have nothing and from those who are really rich, as being the two intolerable cla.s.ses of men. At the removal of these cla.s.ses it must always work, because they are continually calling its task in question. In the same way democracy must prevent all measures that seem to aim at party organisation. For the three great foes of independence, in that threefold sense, are the have-nots, the rich, and the parties.-I speak of democracy as of a thing to come. What at present goes by that name is distinguished from older forms of government only by the fact that it drives with new horses; the roads and the wheels are the same as of yore.-Has the danger really become less with _these_ conveyances of the commonwealth?