WHAT THE MASSES CONTRIBUTE
THE MASSES THE INITIATORS OF SENTIMENT—THEY LIVE IN THE CENTRAL
CURRENT OF EXPERIENCE—DISTINCTION OR PRIVILEGE APT TO CAUSE
ISOLATION—INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTER OF UPPER CLASSES—THE MASSES
SHREWD JUDGES OF PERSONS—THIS THE MAIN GROUND FOR EXPECTING
THAT THE PEOPLE WILL BE RIGHT IN THE LONG RUN—DEMOCRACY ALWAYS
REPRESENTATIVE—CONCLUSION.
The function of leaders in defining and organizing the confused
tendencies of the public mind is evident enough, but just what the
masses themselves contribute is perhaps not so apparent.[57] The
thought of the undistinguished many is, however, not less important,
not necessarily less original, than that of the conspicuous few; the
originality of the latter, just because it is more conspicuous, being
easy to overestimate. Leadership is only salient initiative; and among
the many there may well be increments of initiative which though not
salient are yet momentous as a whole.
The originality of the masses is to be found not so much in formulated
idea as in sentiment. In capacity to feel and to trust those sentiments
which it is the proper aim of social development to express, they are,
perhaps, commonly superior to the more distinguished or privileged
classes. The reason is that their experience usually keeps them closer
to the springs of human nature, and so more under the control of its
primary impulses.
Radical movements aiming to extend the application of higher sentiment
have generally been pushed on by the common people, rather than by
privileged orders, or by conspicuous leadership of any sort.[58]
This seems to be true of Christianity in all ages, and of the many
phases of modern democracy and enfranchisement. In American history,
particularly, both the revolution which gave us independence and the
civil war which abolished slavery and reunited the country, were more
generally and steadfastly supported by the masses than by people
of education or wealth. Mr. Higginson, writing on the Cowardice of
Culture,[59] asserts that at the opening of the Revolution the men of
wealth and standing who took the side of liberty were so few that they
could be counted, and that “there was never a period in our history,
since the American Nation was independent, when it would not have been
a calamity to have it controlled by its highly educated men alone.” And
in England also it was the masses who upheld abolition in the colonies
and sympathized with the North in the American struggle.
The common people, as a rule, live more in the central current of
human experience than men of wealth or distinction. Domestic morality,
religious sentiment, faith in man and God, loyalty to country and the
like, are the fruit of the human heart growing in homely conditions,
and they easily wither when these conditions are lost. To be one
among many, without individual pretension, is in one way a position
of security and grandeur. One stands, as it were, with the human
race at his back, sharing its claim on truth, justice and God. _Qui
quœrit habere privata amittit communia_;[60] the plain man has not
conspicuously gained private things, and should be all the richer in
things that are common, in faith and fellowship. Nothing, perhaps, is
healthy that isolates us from the common destiny of men, that is merely
appropriative and not functional, that is not such as all might rejoice
in if they understood it.
Miss Jane Addams has advanced a theory,[61] far from absurd, that the
confused and deprived masses of our cities, collected from all lands
by immigration, are likely to be the initiators of new and higher
ideals for our civilization. Since “ideals are born of situations,”
they are perhaps well situated for such a function by the almost
complete destruction, so far as they are concerned, of old traditions
and systems. In this promiscuous mingling of elements everything is
cancelled but human nature, and they are thrown back upon that for a
new start. They are an “unencumbered proletariat” notable for primary
faith and kindness, “simple people who carry in their hearts a desire
for mere goodness. They regularly deplete their scanty livelihood in
response to a primitive pity, and, independent of the religions they
have professed, of the wrongs they have suffered, and of the fixed
morality they have been taught, they have an unquenchable desire that
charity and simple justice shall regulate men’s relations.”[62]
Some tendency to isolation and spiritual impoverishment is likely
to go with any sort of distinction or privilege. Wealth, culture,
reputation, bring special gratifications. These foster special tastes,
and these in turn give rise to special ways of living and thinking
which imperceptibly separate one from common sympathy and put him in
a special class. If one has a good income, for instance, how natural
it is to spend it, and how naturally, also, that expenditure withdraws
one from familiar intercourse with people who have not a good income.
Success means possessions, and possessions are apt to imprison the
spirit.
It has always been held that worldly goods, which of course include
reputation as well as wealth, make the highest life of the mind
difficult if not impossible, devotional orders in nearly all
religions requiring personal poverty and lowliness as the condition
of edification. _Tantum homo impeditur et distrahitur, quantum sibi
res attrahit._[63] “Sloth or cowardice,” says a psychologist, “creep
in with every dollar or guinea we have to guard ... lives based on
having are less free than lives based on either doing or being.”[64]
“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” Not for
nothing have men of insight agreed upon such propositions as these.
Distinction, also, is apt to go with an exaggerated self-consciousness
little favorable to a natural and hearty participation in the deeper
currents of the general life. Ambition and the passion for difference
are good in their way, but like most good things they are bought at a
price, in this case a preoccupation with ideas that separate one from
immediate fellowship. It is right to have high and unusual aims and
activities, but hard to keep them free from pride, mistrust, gloom and
other vices of isolation. Only a very sane mind can carry distinction
and fellowship without spilling either.
In the social regard paid to wealth and standing we symbolize our vague
sense of the value of personal faculty working in the service of the
whole, but it requires an unusual purity and depth of social feeling
for the possessor of faculty not to be demoralized by this regard,
which is—perhaps necessarily—almost disassociated from definite and
cogent responsibility. I mean that the eminent usually get the credit
of virtue as it were _ex officio_, whether they really have it or not.
We find therefore that power, instead of being simply higher service,
is generally more or less corrupt or selfish, and those who are raised
up are so much the more cast down. At the best they make some sacrifice
of innocence to function; at the worst they destroy themselves and
debauch society.
Even vulgarity (by etymology the vice of the crowd) if we take it
to mean undisciplined selfishness and pretension, flourishes at
least as much among the prosperous as among the hand-working people.
Wealth which is not dominated by noble tradition or by rare personal
inspiration falls into vulgarity because it permits the inflation
of those crude impulses which are much kept down in the poor by the
discipline of hardship. Whatever is severely necessary can never be
vulgar, while only nobleness can prevent the superfluous from being
so. And a superficial, functionless education and refinement is nearly
as vulgar as uninspired wealth. So it has been remarked that when
artists paint our contemporary life they are apt to choose it as humble
as possible in order “to get down below the strata which vulgarity
permeates.”[65]
Moreover, conspicuous and successful persons are more likely than the
commonalty to be institutionized, to have sacrificed human nature to
speciality. To succeed in the hour one must be a man of the hour, and
must ordinarily harness his very soul to some sort of contemporary
activity which may after all be of no real worth. An upper class is
institutional in its very essence, since it is control of institutions
that makes it an upper class, and men can hardly keep this control
except as they put their hearts into it. Successful business men,
lawyers, politicians, clergymen, editors and the like are such through
identifying their minds, for better or worse, with the present
activities and ideals of commercial and other institutions. “Seldom
does the new conscience, when it seeks a teacher to declare to men what
is wrong, find him in the dignitaries of the church, the state, the
culture, that is. The higher the rank the closer the tie that binds
those to what is but ought not to be.”[66]
The humbler classes are somewhat less entangled in spirit. It is better
to have the hand subdued to what it works in than the soul; and the
mechanic who sells to the times only his ten hours a day of muscular
work is perhaps more free to think humanly the rest of the time than
his employer. He can also more easily keep the habit of simple look
and speech, since he does not have to learn to conceal his thoughts
in the same degree that the lawyer, the merchant and the statesman
do. Even among students I have observed, in the matter of openness of
countenance, a marked difference, on the whole, between the graduates
of an engineering school and those of a law school, very much in favor
of the former.[67] Again, the hand laborer is used to reckoning his
wages by the hour—so much time so much pay—and would feel dishonest
if he did anything else. But in the professions, and still more in
commerce and finance, there is, as a rule, no definite measure of
service, and men insensibly come to base their charges on their view of
what the other man will pay; thus perilously accustoming themselves to
exploit the wealth or weakness of others.
The life of special institutions is often transient in proportion to
its speciality, and it is only natural that commercial and professional
activity should deal largely with evanescent interests of little
dignity in themselves. The “demand” of the public which the merchant
has to meet, is in great part a thing of vanity, if not of degradation,
which it can hardly be edifying to supply. Indeed, many, if not most,
business men play their occupation as a game, rather than in a spirit
of service, and are widely infected by the fallacy that they are
justified in selling anything that the people will buy. Simple minds
are revolted by the lack of tangible human service in many of the
higher-paid occupations, and young men enter them for the pay alone
when their better impulses would lead them to prefer hand labor.
The sentiment of the people is most readily and successfully exercised
in their judgment of persons. Montesquieu, in discussing republican
government, advocated on this ground an almost universal manhood
suffrage in the choosing of representatives. “For,” says he, “though
few can tell the exact degree of men’s capacities, yet there are none
but are capable of knowing in general whether the person they choose
is better qualified than most of his neighbors.”[68] The plainest men
have an inbred shrewdness in judging human nature which makes them good
critics of persons even when impenetrable to ideas. This shrewdness is
fostered by a free society, in which every one has to make and hold
his own place among his fellows; and it is used with much effect in
politics and elsewhere as a guide to sound ideas.
Some years ago, for instance, occurred a national election in which the
main issue was whether silver should or should not be coined freely
at a rate much above its bullion value. Two facts were impressed upon
the observer of this campaign: first, the inability of most men, even
of education, to reason clearly on a somewhat abstract question lying
outside of their daily experience, and, second, the sound instinct
which all sorts of people showed in choosing sides through leadership.
The flow of nonsense on both parts was remarkable, but personality
was the determining influence. It was common to hear men say that they
should vote for or against the proposition because they did or did not
trust its conspicuous advocates; and it was evident that many were
controlled in this way who did not acknowledge it, even to themselves.
The general result was that the more conservative men were united on
one side, and the more radical and shifting elements on the other.
The real interest of the voter at our elections is usually in
personality. One likes or dislikes A, who is running for alderman, and
votes accordingly, without knowing or caring what he is likely to do if
elected. Or one opposes B, because he is believed to be in league with
the obnoxious C, and so on. It is next to impossible to get a large or
intelligent vote on an impersonal matter, such as the constitutional
amendments which, in most of our states, have to be submitted to the
people. The newspapers, reflecting the public taste, say little about
them, and the ordinary voter learns of them for the first time when he
comes to the polls. Only a measure which directly affects the interests
or passions of the people, like prohibition of the liquor traffic, will
call out a large vote.
On this shrewd judgment of persons the advocate of democracy chiefly
grounds his faith that the people will be right in the long run. The
old argument against him runs as follows: democracy is the rule of
the many; the many are incompetent to understand public questions;
hence democracy is the rule of incompetence. Thus Macaulay held that
institutions purely democratic must sooner or later destroy liberty or
civilization or both; and expected a day of spoliation in the United
States, “for with you the majority is the government and has the rich
absolutely at its mercy.”[69] More recent writers of standing have
taken the same view, like Lecky, who declares that the rule of the
majority is the rule of ignorance, since the poor and the ignorant are
the largest proportion of the population.[70]
To this our democrat will answer, “The many, whether rich or poor,
are incompetent to grasp the truth in its abstractness, but they
reach it through personal symbols, they feel their way by sympathy,
and their conclusions are at least as apt to be right as those of any
artificially selected class.” And he will perhaps turn to American
history, which is, on the whole, a fairly convincing demonstration that
the masses are not incapable of temperate and wise decision, even on
matters of much difficulty. That our antecedents and training have been
peculiarly fortunate must be conceded.
The crudely pessimistic view is superficial not only in underestimating
the masses and overestimating wealth—which is, in our times at least,
almost the only possible basis of a privileged class—but in failing to
understand the organic character of a mature public judgment. Is it not
a rather obvious fallacy to say that because the ignorant outnumber the
educated, therefore the rule of the majority is the rule of ignorance?
If fifty men consult together, forty of whom are ignorant regarding
the matter in hand and ten informed, will their conclusions necessarily
be those of ignorance? Evidently not, unless in some improbable manner
the forty separate from the ten and refuse to be guided by them.
Savages and gangs of boys on the street choose the most sagacious
to lead in counsel, and even pirates will put the best navigators
in charge of the ship. The natural thing, as we have seen, is for a
group to defer to its most competent members. Lecky would himself have
maintained this in the case of Parliament, and why should it not be
true of other groups? I see no reason why the rule of the majority
should be the rule of ignorance, unless they are not only ignorant but
fools; and I do not suppose the common people of any capable race are
that.
I was born and have lived nearly all my life in the shadow of an
institution of higher learning, a university, supported out of the
taxes of a democratic state and governed by a board elected directly
by the people. So far back as I can remember there have not been
wanting pessimists to say that the institution could not prosper on
such a basis. “What,” they said, “do the farmers know or care about the
university? how can we expect that they should support astronomy and
Sanscrit and the higher mathematics?” In fact there have been troublous
times, especially in the earlier days, but the higher learning has
steadily won its way in open discussion, and the university is now
far larger, higher in its standards, better supported and apparently
more firmly established in popular approval than ever before. What
more exacting test of the power of democracy to pursue and effectuate
high and rather abstract ideals could there well be than this? One who
lives in the midst of such facts cannot but discover something rather
doctrinaire in the views of Macaulay and Lecky.
If it be true that most people judge men rather than ideas, we may say
that democratic society is representative not only in politics but in
all its thought. Everywhere a few are allowed to think and act for the
rest, and the essence of democratic method is not in the direct choice
of the people in many matters, but in their retaining a conscious power
to change their representatives, or to exercise direct choice, when
they wish to do so. All tolerable government is representative, but
democracy is voluntarily so, and differs from oligarchy in preserving
the definite responsibility of the few to the many. It may even happen,
as in England, that a hereditary ruling class retains much of its
power by the consent of a democratized electorate, or, as in France,
that a conception of the state, generated under absolute monarchy, is
cherished under the rule of the people.
As for popular suffrage, it is a crude but practical device for
ascertaining the preponderant bent of opinion on a definite issue.
It is in a sense superficial, mechanical, almost absurd, when we
consider the difference in real significance among the units; but it is
simple, educative, and has that palpable sort of justice that allays
contention. No doubt spiritual weight is the great thing, but as there
is no accepted way to measure this, we count one man one vote, and
trust that spiritual differences will be expressed through persuasion.
There is, then, no essential conflict between democracy and
specialization in any sphere. It is true that as the vital unity of
a group becomes more conscious each member tends to feel a claim
on everything the group does. Thus the citizen not only wishes the
government—of the village, the state or the nation—to be an expression
of himself; but he wishes the same regarding the schools, manufactures,
trade, religion and the advance of knowledge. He desires all these
things to go on in the best way possible, so as to express to the
fullest that human nature that is in himself. And as a guaranty of
this he demands that they shall be conducted on an open principle,
which shall give control of them to the fittest individuals. Hating
all privilege not based on function, he desires power to suppress such
privilege when it becomes flagrant. And to make everything amenable,
directly or indirectly, to popular suffrage, seems to him a practical
step in this direction.
Something like this is in the mind of the plain man of our time; but he
is quite aware of his incompetence to carry on these varied activities
directly, either in government or elsewhere, and common-sense teaches
him to seek his end by a shrewd choice of representatives, and by
developing a system of open and just competition for all functions. The
picture of the democratic citizen as one who thinks he can do anything
as well as anybody is, of course, a caricature, and in the United
States, at least, there is a great and increasing respect for special
capacity, and a tendency to trust it as far as it deserves. If people
are sometimes sceptical of the specialist—in political economy let
us say—and inclined to prefer their own common-sense, it is perhaps
because they have had unfortunate experience with the former. On the
whole, our time is one of the “rise of the expert,” when, on account
of the rapid elaboration of nearly all activities, there is an ever
greater demand for trained capacity. Far from being undemocratic, this
is a phase of that effective organization of the public intelligence
which real democracy calls for. In short, as already suggested, to be
democratic, or even to be ignorant, is not necessarily to be a fool.
So in answer to the question, Just what do the undistinguished masses
of the people contribute to the general thought? we may say, They
contribute sentiment and common-sense, which gives momentum and general
direction to progress, and, as regards particulars, finds its way by a
shrewd choice of leaders. It is into the obscure and inarticulate sense
of the multitude that the man of genius looks in order to find those
vital tendencies whose utterance is his originality. As men in business
get rich by divining and supplying a potential want, so it is a great
part of all leadership to perceive and express what the people have
already felt.
FOOTNOTES:
[57] Some discussion of leadership will be found in Human Nature and
the Social Order, chaps. 8 and 9.
[58] So Mr. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, chap. 76. Some emphasis
should be given to the phrase “pushed on,” as distinguished from
“initiated.”
[59] In the Atlantic Monthly, Oct., 1905.
[60] Who seeks to have private things loses common things. Thomas à
Kempis, De Imitatione Christi, book iii, chap. 13, sec. 1.
[61] In her book, Newer Ideals of Peace.
[62] Newer Ideals of Peace, chap. 1.
[63] De Imitatione Christi, book ii, chap. 1, sec. 7.
[64] William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 319.
[65] P. G. Hamerton, Thoughts About Art, 222.
[66] Henry D. Lloyd, Man the Social Creator, 101.
[67] I mean merely that the law graduates look sophisticated—not
dishonest. They have learned to use voice and facial expression as
weapons of controversy.
[68] The Spirit of Laws, book xi, chap. 6.
[69] From a letter written to an American correspondent in 1857 and
printed in the appendix to Trevelyan’s Macaulay.
[70] Democracy and Liberty, vol. i, chap. 1, page 25 and _passim_. Some
of Lecky’s expressions, however, are more favorable to democracy.