The Democrat was disillusioned, but he really was a democrat. He had
been cradled and taught in the atmosphere of democracy, and was
possessed by lifelong conviction of the righteousness of the
democratic ideal. For a long time, too--until he had come to know more
of the actual business of democracy--he had never questioned
democratic practice. He was young and innocent.
But the scales had fallen from his eyes; the enlightened vision of
manhood's years had disclosed in democracy a multitude of undemocratic
things of whose existence in his youthful days he had not even
dreamed. The preceptors of his boyhood had never told him--or his
hopeful heart had not let him understand--that men had to struggle
against other men to preserve even that equality to which they were
born; that justice, even in the courts, could be, in the very nature
of things, nothing more than an approximation, and that, among men of
the world in general, it was often might that made right; that there
were ways of depriving men of the ballot, in spite of enactments; that
laws could be made by the will of minorities, or of single
individuals. Even town-meetings could sometimes be undemocratic, and
his ears were startled by those who declared that, in the nation's
life at large, there was nothing left of democracy but seeming.
His faith in men had suffered the same rude shocks as his faith in
democracy--quite naturally, for neither faith stood alone. He had come
to see that the sordidness of human beings reached heights and depths
which his youth, slow to believe and slower to perceive, had never
imagined. Surely, the love of money _was_ the root of all evil--or of
nearly all. The heated oratory of the campaign was mostly inspired by
love of money or place. The patriotic sentiment that so abounded in
the press was mostly gush, the news was colored, and the whole
belonged to men with axes to grind. Yes, the press, that boasted
educator of the people, of whose wondrous achievement and
potentiality--yes, and whose freedom--he and his schoolfellows had
written and declaimed, was sometimes bought. Votes at the polls and in
legislative halls were sometimes bought. Contracts with the government
were sometimes bought. Expert scientific opinion was sometimes bought.
War scares were manufactured for a purpose. Great industries could use
intimidation to secure a party the votes of their employees. There was
no form of meanness in life high or low that could not find ready a
hand for its undertaking. Cities were sinks of rottenness and
suffering because it paid their democratic administrators to have them
so. The greed of men could force other men to live and beget their
children in unhealthful, degrading environment, birth into which was
birth into slavery and disease of body and soul. "Life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness" was a mockery to tens of thousands.
And all this took place under a democracy--a government which he had
been taught was the most equitable on earth, the refuge of the poor
and the oppressed, who sailed into the haven where Liberty was
Enlightening the World to enter the Land of Promise where all their
tears should be wiped away! And the worst of it was, that those who
talked most loudly of the democratic ideal were those most eager to
profit at its expense. If he could have laid it all to the rich or the
aristocratic, it would not have been so bad; but he couldn't. The poor
were by nature as greedy and unjust as the rich, and showed themselves
as bad in practice when they had the chance, and the democrat turned
tyrant as soon as it suited his purse or ambition. It was dismaying.
The contrast between the actual workings of democracy and the ideal
his innocence had worshipped was so enormous that he sometimes doubted
whether they had anything at all in common.
But in time dismay, and even surprise, had worn away, and he recovered
equanimity. He was disillusioned, but still a democrat. At the same
time he learned of the weakness of his idol, he learned of the
weakness of human nature. He knew that the evils he lamented were due
much more to human weakness than to the form of government under
which the evils occurred. With a philosopher of his own land, he
agreed that no form of government was so good as not to work ill in
the hands of the bad, and none so bad as not to work well in the hands
of the good. Henceforth, if he must worry, let it be about men.
Thus it was that the Democrat, from being a partisan, became a
Spectator. Democracy--or what was called that--was amusing: it was so
human--so human in its faults, so human in its self-deception. He was
moved to smiles at the spectacle of a nation of individuals all wisely
thinking themselves intelligent voters, patriots, and capable managers
of their country's affairs.
Was it, after all, a democracy? The Democrat possessed the none too
common art of looking behind mere words, and contemplating Things as
They Are. He was reading his magazine one evening--it contained one of
those comforting political science essays, entitled "Whither Are We
Drifting?"--when the notion seized on him to find some better name for
the government under which he lived. So he laid aside the essay, and
let his thoughts run.
Elimination seemed to appeal as a method. He made a whimsical
beginning: it wasn't a timocracy; however much the love of honor
flourished, it seemed agreed that it was not that which ruled the
nation. That the government wasn't an ochlocracy he also felt sure;
for, in spite of the rule of mobs, in labor troubles, lynchings,
institutions of learning, and weddings in high life, he well knew that
the real authority of the land lay in fewer hands.
Was it, then, an aristocracy? That could not be, for no one was better
than anyone else. In matters of personal worth there was no
superlative; there was not even a comparative. At least, there was no
surer path to defeat at the polls than for a candidate to be called
"better," to say nothing of "best."
Whether it was a theocracy hardly needed consideration. True, the coin
of the realm recorded the nation's Trust in God, and God was
frequently quoted as being heartily in favor of a variety of political
projects; but on the whole the Democrat was convinced that the
function of the inscription was decorative, and felt that any proposal
to entrust God alone with the affairs of the nation would create a
mighty upheaval in politics and commerce, and be followed by a period
of depression. He couldn't really see that God had much part in the
actual government, though he would not go so far as Epicurus, and say
that He cared nothing about what men were doing. He felt more like
agreeing with the Hebrew who conceived God as laughing men to
derision. And besides, to say that the government was at present a
theocracy would place the Democrat in the position of an adverse
critic of the Almighty, which was as much as to say that he himself
was better than the Almighty; and that would be undemocratic.
On the whole, those who called the government an oligarchy seemed to
be getting more near to reality; for at certain crises it became quite
clear that a few men determined the measures of government. And yet,
the individuals of the group were not always the same, but varied
according to the interests involved; and they were not an openly
constituted and declared body, elected by the people. To be sure, they
operated through legislators, but they themselves were more often than
not far removed from open political life. To call the real government
a plutocracy, its governing agents plutocrats, and their instruments
the legislators, seemed reasonable enough. It was humiliating, it
seemed the fact that the great democracy was ruled, not by itself, but
by a Thing.
However, the rule of money, that is, financial self-interest, was not
really a form of government; it was only an influence, and one that
might work good as well as ill. It underlay, more or less, all
governments, not only modern, but ancient as well, and had to, in the
nature of things, so long as property existed and prosperity meant
increase. What else did the phenomenon of economic history-writing
signify but the appreciation of this fact?
The Democrat concluded to let the government under which he lived
stand as a democracy. The term might not be absolutely sufficient, but
it covered the case as well as any. At any rate, whatever the
reality, the government was cast in the democratic mold: every man had
a vote, and was sovereign over it, and could sell it, or throw it
away, or even make use of it, as he chose; and he was represented, or
at least thought he was, by someone whom he elected, or thought he
elected; and was heeded when he clamored his desires or his
indignation, provided it didn't interfere too much with what his
representative was induced to conceive to be the interests of "the
people."
And there were also other manifestations of the democratic ideal which
really distinguished the government under which he lived from that of
many other nations. There was democracy in education. The public set
out to educate _all_ its sons and daughters, from kindergarten to
college Commencement. The day was past when education was only for
gentlemen's sons; the children of the people, rich and poor,
blue-blooded and flat-footed, male and female, brainy and brainless,
came to college, and within its walls there was no connection, it was
said, between honors and money or place. Students dressed from the
same clothes-shop, yelled the same college yell, bought their
apparatus at a co-operative store, ate at the same boarding-house,
took the same examinations, often subserving the cause of democracy by
evading aristocratic tyranny in the person of the faculty and making
democratic use of their neighbors' learning, and asked no questions
about each other's finances or forbears--except, of course, the
fraternity and sorority students, who had _tria nomina_ and were the
exceptions to prove the rule.
And not only were the college rolls and records indicative of
democracy, but there was a democracy of subjects to study. You had
free election: one subject was as good as another, one course as
valuable as another. So long as you had the required number of
credits, the character of the credits made no difference: an hour
contained sixty minutes, and no hour set up to be better than its
fellows. A college education was defined as "something of everything
for everybody," and the definition was especially applicable to the
education of the State Universities, those great examples of learning
in action. In them anyone might study anything at any time under any
instructor under any conditions and in any place--for you could study
in absence, and by correspondence, and hypnotism, and Christian
Science. And when you got through, whatever your method or matter or
capacity or docility or imbecility, you were labelled A. B., and were
as good as any other A. B., and had a fortune assured--until you found
out that the great democratic world thought A. B. no better than D.
F., or any other combination of letters, or no letters at all.
Yes, and there was democracy of religion as well as of education.
Ministers wore plain clothes, avoided religion in conversation,
greeted everyone with the loudness which in some way had become
confused with cordiality, romped with children, attended kissing
parties, and used slang in sermons. Men believed anything, or nothing;
it was a free country, a free age. Any religion, or any interpretation
of it, was as good as any other, so long as you really believed it.
You could pray kneeling, or standing, or sitting, or walking, or
jumping--as you chose. You could interpret your creed literally, or
symbolically, or allegorically, or pragmatically. You could devote
your church edifice to God, or you could make it a meeting-house for
the people, and use it for socials, athletics, kindergarten, lyceum,
vaudeville, soup kitchens, rummage sales, teachers' institutes--and
when all these religious activities grew too extensive for it, you
could sell it to the liveryman or the storage company or the
movie-man. What were churches for, if not for the people?
There was democracy in art, too--especially in literature. Poets wrote
in what vein and in what meter they chose, at what length, with what
attention to rhyme and rhythm, with what preparation or equipment they
chose. They bowed before no laws, ancient or modern. If they made use
of the great names in poetry, it was to justify their own vagaries.
They not only pleaded Tennyson for Tennysonian liberties, but took
what additional license they chose on the ground of personal liberty.
Didn't Homer nod? Of course; and, taking advantage of the example,
they slept the sleep of the unworrying. Poets could write in prose,
and prose authors dress their commonplace thoughts in verse. In
oratory and the novel, matter was all, form nothing. Men were content
if their readers _could_ get their meaning; the compelling power of
style and accurate expression were qualities for which they were
unwilling to pay the price of long and patient preparation. Olympus,
Helicon, and Arcadia had become the paradise of anarchists, to say
nothing of democrats. Who cared now when Zeus's ambrosial locks were
shaken in wrath, or Apollo slammed his baton down in a rage? Who were
they, to set up to be better than others?
And, as for painters and sculptors, and architects and musicians, who
should presume to tyrannize over them by requiring standards of style
or subject? If an architect chose to construct a High School that
looked like a prison or a warehouse, why shouldn't he? After all, what
was the High School but the people's college, and what was its purpose
if not to fit the sons and daughters of the commonwealth for life, and
why _should_ it be built in the Tudor style, or in any other style?
What the people needed was usefulness, not style. And if a musician
wished to compose an overture imitative of all the noises that
accompanied the Retreat from Moscow, including French and Russian
profanity, or if a painter preferred to paint a drunken prostitute
rather than Diana or a Daughter of the Revolution, why shouldn't he?
It was a free country, a democratic age, and it was time art entered
into the service of the people.
And there was democracy of manners, too, and of dress. Democracy had
grown so used to insisting on clothes not making the man, that
distinction in dress had long been a rarity, and men were no longer
constrained to live up to the garb they wore. You could wear a white
vest without obligation to keep it clean, and you could appear with
silk hat and long coat without being suspected of religion or
literature. Men made the clothes now: the process was reversed; they
made them by the wholesale, every season, and if you weren't satisfied
with a good democratic costume--i. e., the one imposed by the despotic
democratic fashion of the season--and had your clothing made to
adorn, why, you were an aristocrat.
And if clothes didn't oblige, neither did _noblesse_, that other
aristocratic bugbear, oblige. Gentlemen? Family? Why, everyone was a
gentleman, from pugilist to preacher. Who said so? Why, who but the
gentleman himself? It was a free country, and a man had a right to be
a gentleman if he chose, didn't he? Just what a gentleman was, to be
sure, no one seemed able to say; but no one failed to lay claim to the
title, or to pull off his coat and prove the justice of his claim if
you denied it. Surely there was no greater proof of the beneficent
power of democracy than that it made all men gentlemen, and all women
ladies.
And there was democracy in the home as well. The American husband was
so democratic that he bettered the apostolic instruction which told
wives to be obedient to their husbands. You might have thought that it
read the reverse. And children--the children of democratic America
were famous the world over for their unquestioning assumption of
knowledge and authority, for their assurance and aggressiveness; for
their easy contradiction of their parents, who were intimidated by the
pedagogical direction never to let your child fear you. Travellers
returned from Europe and reported no Hans and Giovannino who made wide
the mouth and thrust out the tongue in the streets of aristocracy.
Since the time of the bald-headed prophet and the two and forty
she-bears, it had been natural for youth to presume on its
superiority, but it was only the spirit of democracy which seemed to
_encourage_ the presumption.
But why not? If democracy meant equality, why not be consistent? If
all men--black and white, good and bad, rich and poor, wise and
foolish--were to be made equal, why not all women with them? Women
were surely members of the commonwealth. And why not all children?
Hadn't Spencer said so? Children were members of the commonwealth,
too. And why not the beasts, wild and tame, who were also part and
parcel of the population of the country? Why stop merely with men?
Yes, the Democrat concluded, his country was best described as a
democracy, even though the few ruled over the many in matters of
substance, and the many ruled over the few in art and manners, and
both were tyrants. He remembered Plato's definition--Plato the
blasphemer--and it seemed applicable to his own time: "Democracy, a
charming form of government, full of variety and diversity, and
dispensing equality to equals and unequals alike." It was marvellous
how men believed in their equality with other men, what
self-confidence they possessed, and what assurance came to them from
the oft repeated word liberty. "This is a free country, and I'm just
as good as you" could be said by anyone, and was said by everyone, and
as a result his back was a little stiffer and his head a degree or two
more erect. Foreigners learned to say it before they learned to speak
the language. The very animals seemed to understand it; it was Plato
over again: "And the horses and asses had come to have a way of
marching along with all the rights and dignities of free men; and they
would run at anybody whom they met in the street if he did not get out
of their way: and all things were just ready to burst with liberty."
The Democrat, you see, through his habit of looking at Things as They
Are, had come to possess a lively sense of the ridiculous side of
democracy--its inconsistencies, its unconscious enjoyment of words,
its silly self-deception and placid self-satisfaction.
Now that you have seen the workings of his mind, you will easily
understand, too, how the expression of his thoughts might provoke
those who were always on the lookout for the red rag of aristocracy.
And the fact is, that on occasion he did express his thoughts with
great frankness and no little vehemence; and, as no one likes to be
told his faults by even a friendly critic, he often brought the angry
hornets of democracy about his ears.
Yes, and by your smiling you seem to say that he deserved it. And yet
I assure you now, as I did in the beginning, that he was really a
democrat. You must not mistake realization of the faults of democracy
in operation for hostility to democracy itself. He had seen something
of life in aristocratic countries, and was thankful above all things
that there _was_ something in the atmosphere of his own land which had
the effect of making men look up. This virtue alone covered a
multitude of the sins of democracy. There _was_ something in his
country more than the mere form of democratic society. Whether men got
their rights or not, they knew they had rights, and anyone who wanted
to make them consent to injustice had at least to take the trouble of
giving it the appearance of justice. And not only were they possessed
of a lively sense of their own rights, but the air was full of talk
about other people's having _their_ rights. Generosity and benevolence
were abroad in the land. It was, to be sure, something of the sort of
Sidney Smith's benevolence--the feeling which A experienced when he
thought B ought to do something to relieve C's necessities; but even
that kind was better than none. It was vastly important whether large
classes of human beings acquiesced in being regarded as cattle--as
they seemed to in the Old World--or not.
But if he had a vivid sense of the desirability of the democratic
ideal, he had just as vivid a sense of the dangers of democratic
practice. It was not difficult to see that the universal talk about
making all men equal, vapid as it might be, was having an effect which
could but make the judicious grieve. It was pulling excellence from
her lofty seat to set her on a level with mediocrity. Democracy aimed
at equality. But equality on a high plane was impossible. Certain
men--most men--could not rise to a high plane, or would not. Those
therefore who could climb were not to keep on climbing, but to remain
at the lower level, or return from the heights, or assist those who
were at the lowest of all. Not all could reach the mountain top;
therefore let those who _were_ able to make the ascent engage in
assisting the great majority to attain the _middle_ space of the
incline. Not all could take a college degree; therefore let the
college degree be brought within the reach of all. Not all could be
gentlemen; therefore reconstruct and democratize the definition of the
gentleman. In scholarship, religion, manners, in literature, in all
the arts--in everything except the art of making money--democracy
seemed in danger of fostering the mediocre, and discouraging the
excellent. In its effort for breadth, it was encouraging shallowness.
It might be that for the poorest, the meanest, and the stupidest,
democracy meant individualism and opportunity; but for the brightest
and most ambitious, it seemed to partake of the nature of tyranny. The
main idea in Plato's Republic was the sacrifice of the individual to
the whole. In the Modern Republic it seemed something like the
sacrifice of the best to the good, the leveling down of the highest as
well as the raising up of the lowest. Certain kinds of talent and
effort were in great danger of neglect--the kind of talent and effort
which had made nations live in history. If there was anything in the
record of the past, if civilization was not on the wrong track, and if
literature and religion and the arts were indeed the supremely worth
while, it seemed plain that the encouragement of uniformity beyond
limits was a crime against the race. The atoms of Democritus,
streaming forever downward in parallel lines, would never have
accomplished a world. It needed an Epicurus and a Lucretius to
recognize that they must have swerved from their deadly course of
uniformity. It took friction and collision to beget a universe. The
democratic passion for freedom and equality and uniformity once fully
realized, what deadness and monotony! And as for the boasted educating
power of responsibility, there was as little chance for it in the
frictionless machine of perfect democracy as under despotism itself.
Democracy certainly did savor of the machine; just as the object of
machinery was to insure a uniform product without personal handling of
each individual piece, so the object of democracy seemed to be in such
wise to regulate the affairs of men that justice would be automatic.
The fact was, human laziness occupied great space in the foundations
of the democratic spirit. There were other qualities also, of course.
There was misapprehension. The democratic poor imagined ideal
possession on the part of those more prosperous than themselves, and
the democratic rich imagined the extreme of unpossession on the part
of those poorer than themselves; and both forgot, or had never
discovered, what Horace knew two thousand years ago, that the poor man
was seasick in the hired skiff the same as the rich man in his private
trireme. And there was the spirit of restlessness--the everlasting
desire of the human animal for new things, and his perennial ignorance
of the fact that a change of sky did not necessarily mean a change of
heart. And of course there was human sympathy, the greatest of them
all.
But the place of human laziness was great. Men shrank from
responsibility; uniformity and automatic justice appealed to them.
Democracy was a labor-saving device. The meting out of justice by and
to individuals was difficult, and took time, and, what was worse,
thought. It was much easier to legislate a form of equality, and have
done with it--to press a button, have a uniform product, and not
bother with hand-made goods.
Not that equality and uniformity were undesirable. The trouble with
the popular democratic ideal consisted only in its exaggeration. The
democracy of the enthusiastic multitude was an extreme. Aristocracy
went to the extreme of inequality and diversity, and democracy went to
the extreme of equality and uniformity. Both extremes were vicious;
for vices are only exaggerated virtues. And vices are easier than
virtue, extremes easier than the golden mean. To proceed on the
assumption that all men could be treated as free and equal was easier
by far than to recognize and study their inequalities and limitations,
and to attempt the best for each individual; but the result was only a
vicious approximation.
Let democracy recognize that there were two sides to the shield. The
Democrat sympathized with the ignorant and needy, and believed that
the more fortunate should make cheerful sacrifice to help them rise.
As for himself, he would regulate his conduct among men on the basis
of worth, not wealth or blood,
_scilicet uni æquus virtuti atque eius amicis_,
and stand ready to obey unselfishly any measure for the common good,
however undesirable from his particular point of view. If, however, he
demanded sacrifice on the part of the more fortunate in the interest
of the masses, he demanded no less the spirit of sacrifice on the
part of the masses for the sake of such of their fellows as gave
evidence of superior worth. A democracy should be a great family, in
which the sons of promise were gladly helped on their way to honor and
usefulness, even at the cost of deprivation and suffering on the part
of the rest of the household--as in many an actual family which
performed such sacrifice, and rejoiced in it--and by the sacrifice
added to its own glory and strength. It should give all its sons and
daughters the greatest possible opportunity of self-realization, but
never fail to recognize that some selves were more worth realization
than others. Whatever was levelled, let it not be intellect or
character.
After all, government was a means, not an end. The end was
character--individual _and_ national. A form of government was good or
bad as it succeeded or failed to produce that depth and breadth of
individual and collective spirit which marked great eras in
history--such a spirit as that which made possible the Parthenon or
the North Portal of the Erechtheum; or turned back the Armada; or
inspired the Italian Risorgimento; or crystallized into the dramas of
Shakespeare or Sophocles; or formed the soul of other periods when men
were actuated by passionate desire for the common good and common
glory, for time _and_ eternity. The momentary good of the
individual--his comfort or enjoyment--was a worthy ideal only in so
far as it contributed to character. Without elevation of the ideals of
the individual citizen, there could be no great leaders; without great
leaders there was no vision, and the people perished.
So it appears that the Democrat's ideal society was somewhere between
that of Plato, who thought that, until the union of political power
and philosophy in the same person could be effected, there would be no
relief, and that in which the Democrat lived, where men were chosen
lawmakers and rulers ostensibly because they were good fellows, or at
least none of your damned aristocrats.