The Psychology of Socialism
Book 5: The Conflict Between the Laws of Evolution, The Democratic Ideal,
and the Aspirations of the Socialists
Chapter 1: The Laws of Evolution, the Democratic Ideal and the The Social Solidarity
Gustave Le Bon
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I. The relations between living things and their surroundings:-The existence of all living creatures is conditioned by their environment --The importance of the changes produced by environment, and the slowness of these changes-Why species appear to be immutable--The social environment-The sudden changes produced in these environments by modern discoveries, and the difficulty with which man is able to adapt himself to them. 2. The conflict between the natural laws of evolution and the conception of the democrats: -- The increasing opposition between our theoretical conception of the world and the realities presented by science-It is with difficulty that the democratic ideas can place themselves in agreement with the new scientific ideas--How the conflict resolves itself in practice-Democracies are finally led to favour all kinds of superiority-The formation of castes in the democratic régime -- The dangers and advantages of democracies-The financial morals of the American democracy-Why the venality of American politicians is attended with only slight social inconveniences -Democratic ideas and the sentiments of the crowd-The instincts of crowds are not democratic. 3. The conflict between the democratic ideal crud the aspirations of the Socialists :-The fundamental opposition between the fundamental principles of democracy and Socialism -The fate of the weak in democracies-Why they will gain nothing by the triumph of the Socialistic ideas-The hatred of Socialists for liberty and free competition-Socialism is really the most redoubtable enemy of democracy.
I. THE RELATIONS BETWEEN LIVING THINGS AND THEIR SURROUNDINGS.
THE naturalists have proved long ago that the existence of all living things is rigorously conditioned by the environment in which they live, and that
(278) a very slight modification of this environment suffices, on the simple condition that it be prolonged, entirely to transform its inhabitants. The procedure of these transformations is to-day perfectly well known. Embryology, ,which repeats the series of ancestral phases, shows us the profound changes which have been undergone during the succession of geologic ages.
For these transformations to be produced, it is not necessary that the variations of environment should have been very great, but they must have been very prolonged. If too rapid they would lead to death and not to change. An increase or decrease of temperature to the extent of a few degrees, if continued during a great number of generations, suffices, by slow adaptations, entirely to transform the fauna or flora of a country.
M. Quinton, in a recent work, gives a very interesting example of the changes produced by simple variations of temperature.
"Organised beings, to compensate in themselves for the cooling of the globe, tend artificially to maintain in their tissues the high exterior temperature of primeval times. The importance of this tendency is very great. We know that it already determines, in the branch of vertebrates, the evolution of the reproductive organs, and correlatively that of the osseous processes. It also causes the modification of all the other organic processes, and consequently that of evolution itself.
"This follows plainly, from a simple (z priori consideration. Let us imagine an organism of primitive type. The globe begins to cool ; the life of the organism tends to maintain itself at its former high temperature. It can do so only by the production of heat in the tissues, that is to say, by combustion. All combustion demands combustible material and oxygen, and here to satisfy the demands of combustion, are determined the development
(279) of the digestive and respiratory processes. The necessity of carrying these materials and this oxygen into the tissues, a necessity which increases as the combustion increases, demands the evolution of the circulatory system. From the progress of these three systems, to which the reproductive system attaches itself, there necessarily results the progress of the nervous system. Finally, it is not enough to produce heat ; it must be conserved, and hence is determined the evolution of the integument. But as the cooling of the earth progresses the thermal difference to be maintained between the two systems, animate and inanimate, increases, so that a quicker combustion and a more perfect organism are incessantly called for. We thus see how by reason of the cooling of the globe, the very natural effort which life makes to maintain the first conditions of its chemical phenomena incessantly determines the evolution of all the organic processes, and imposes on them à priori, a perfection proportionate to their recency. To confirm this theoretical view we have only to consider the various groups of animals in the order of their appearance on the globe, and to observe the effective advance of all their organic processes in that order."
What is true of physical environments is also true of the moral environments, and notably of social environments. Living beings always tend to adapt themselves, but, on account of the power of heredity which struggles against the tendency to change, they adapt themselves only with extreme slowness, and the factor of time intervenes. It is this fact that makes species seem invariable , when we consider only the short duration of historical ages. It is invariable to all seeming, but only as Hit: individual we regard for a moment is invariable. He has not varied visibly, but none the less the slow process which conducts him from youth to decrepitude
(280) and death did not cease during that instant, but accomplished its work although we did not see it.
All creatures, then, are conditioned by their physical or moral environments. If they are subjected to environments which change slowly-and such is generally the case with continents and climates as well as with civilisations--they have time to adapt themselves to them. Let any particular circumstance arise which shall violently modify the environment, and adaptation becomes impossible ; the creature is doomed to disappear. If, by a geological upheaval, the temperature of the pole or of the equator were to be established in France, in three or four generations she would lose the greater number of her inhabitants, and her civilisation could not continue in its present state.
But these sudden cataclysms are unknown to geology, and we know to-day that the greater number of the transformations which have come to pass on the surface of the globe have been effected very slowly.
Hitherto it has been the same with social environments. Except in cases of destruction by conquest, civilisations have always changed gradually. Many an institution has perished, many a god has fallen into dust, but gods and institutions alike have been replaced only after a long period of old age. Great empires have vanished, but only after a lengthy period of decadence, which neither societies nor living creatures can escape. The power of Rome finally withered before the invasions of the Barbarians, but it was only very gradually, after many centuries of decomposition, that she finally gave place to them, and it is in reality by the most imperceptible transitions, contrary to what the general run of books tell us, that the ancient world is connected with the modern world.
But by a phenomenon hitherto unique in the annals of the world, the modern scientific and industrial discoveries
(281) have in less than a century created far greater changes in the conditions of existence than all that history has recorded from the epoch when man sowed the seeds of his first civilisations on the banks of the Nile and the plains of Chaldea. Old-established societies, established on bases they believed eternal, have seen these bases shattered. The environment has changed too suddenly to allow time for man to adapt himself to it, and the result is a grave confusion of spirit, an intense uneasiness, and a general opposition between the sentiments fixed by hereditary and the conditions of existence and ideas created by modern necessities. Everywhere the conflict is breaking out between the old ideas and the new ideas born of the new requirements.
We do not know yet what will result from all these conflicts ; we can only state their existence. In considering here those which are related to the questions to which this book is dedicated we shall see that some of them are very profound.
2. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE NATURAL LAWS OF EVOLUTION AND THE CONCEPTIONS OF THE DEMOCRATS.
Among the conflicts which the near future is preparing for us, and which we already see beginning, perhaps one of the most conspicuous will be the increasing opposition already existing between the theoretical conceptions of the world which were created of old by our imaginations, and the realities which science has finally put before us.
It is not only between the religious conceptions on which our civilisation is still based and the scientific conceptions due to modern discoveries that there is evident contradiction. This discrepancy is no longer militant ; time has rubbed down the corners. The chief antagonists
(282) are the new scientific doctrines and the political conceptions upon which the modern nations base their institutions.
When the men of the Revolution, guided by the dreams of their philosophers, saw the triumph of their humanitarian ideals, and inscribed the words Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity, which were the synthesis of those dreams, on the pediments of the public buildings, the modern sciences were not born. So that then they could invoke the state of nature, the original goodness of man, and his perversion by societies, and no one could formulate a contradiction ; and then they could act as though societies were artificial things which they could re-fashion at their will.
But the new sciences have sprung up to make evident the vanity of such conceptions. The doctrine of evolution above all has utterly refuted them, by showing all through nature an incessant struggle, resulting always in the extinction of the weakest ; a cruel law, no doubt, but the origin of all progress, without which humanity would never have emerged from its primitive savagery, and would never have given birth to a civilisation.
That these scientific principles should ever have seemed democratic, and that democracy should have assimilated them without seeing how utterly they were opposed to it, is one of those phenomena which can only be understood by those who have studied the history of religions, and who know how readily the believer will draw from a sacred text, the most improbable deductions, and the most completely opposed to the text itself. As a matter of fact, nothing could be more aristocratic than the laws of nature. " Aristocracy," as some one has justly said, " is the law of human societies, as it is, under the name of selection, the law of species." We have as much trouble to-day in reconciling the new data of science
(283) with our democratic illusions as had the theologians a short time back in reconciling the Bible with the discoveries of geology. We manage to conceal these divergencies to a certain extent as yet by means of a certain amount of manoeuvring, but as they are every day growing greater they must presently be apparent to every eye.
Although very real this conflict is far from being as grave as might be supposed. I doubt even if it will ever be of such importance as to emerge from the region of philosophic discussion. To tell the truth, the disagreement is purely theoretical. In the facts there is no discrepancy. How could there be, when these facts are the consequences of natural laws which are superior to our desires, and of which we cannot, therefore, escape the effects ?
When we come to consider what is the true nature of a democracy we shall see if it does not in reality favour superiority of all kinds, including that of birth, and whether it must not be as necessarily aristocratic, that is to say, as favourable to the formation of a superior class, as the forms of government that have preceded it. If this be so its contradiction of the laws of evolution is only apparent.
For this purpose let us put on one side the words by which people define democracies and consider what their spirit is. I find it admirably presented in the following lines of Paul Bourget's : --
" If you try to define to yourself what is really meant by these two terms, aristocracy and democracy, you will find that the first designates a system of manners which aims at the production of a small number of superior individuals. It is the application of the adage, humanum paucis vivit genus. The second, on the contrary, designates a system of manners which aims at the well-being and culture of the greatest possible number of individuals.
(284) The point of excellence of an aristocratic society, its consummation, is the exceptional personage, the supreme result and flower of thousands of destinies occupied in sustaining this one rare being. The point of excellence of a democratic society is a community in which work and enjoyment are distributed in indefinite fractions among a great number. We do not require great powers of observation to perceive that the modern world, and in particular our French world, is tending altogether toward this second form of life. That which constitutes the novelty of modern society is the substitution of the organised mass for personal initiative, the advent of crowds, and the disappearance, or at least the diminution, of the power of the superior class."
Such are undoubtedly the theoretical tendencies of democracies. Let us see if the realities agree with them.
Democracy proposes as its fundamental principle the equality of the rights of all men and free competition. But who will triumph in this competition, if not the most capable,-that is to say, those who possess certain aptitudes more or less due to heredity, and always favoured by fortune ? We reject the rights of birth to-day, and we have reason in rejecting them in order not to exaggerate them by adding social privileges thereto. In practice they always preserve all their power, and even a greater power than they possessed formerly, for free competition, coming to add itself to the intellectual gifts bestowed by birth, can only be yet further in favour of hereditary selection. Democratic institutions are always advantageous to aristocracies of every sort, for which reason these aristocracies must always defend them and prefer them to any other.
Can we deny that democracies give rise to castes having powers very nearly analogous to those of the old aristo-
(285) -cratic castes ? This is what AI. Tarde has to say on the subject :
" In every democracy like our o-,vii, we may be certain to find a social hierarchy, either established or establishing itself, of persons of recognised superiority, either hereditary or selective. It is not difficult to see by whom the old nobility has been replaced in France. Firstly, the administrative hierarchy has been growing more and more complex, has been growing upwards by increasing the number of its degrees, and outwards by increasing the number of its functionaries ; the military hierarchy has been doing the same, by reason of the causes which constrain the modern European states to universal armament. Secondly, the prelates and princes of the blood, the monks and gentlemen, the monasteries and chateaux, have been suppressed only to the immense profit of journalists and financiers, artists and politicians, theatres, banks, ministries, great shops, huge barracks, and other monuments all gathered together in one quarter of the same capital. All the celebrities foregather; and what are these various species of notoriety and glory, in all their unequal degrees, if not a hierarchy of brilliant positions, occupied or to let, of which the public alone disposes, or thinks it disposes ? Now, far from simplifying or abating itself, this aristocracy of self-gratifying situations, this dias of shining thrones, is incessantly growing more grandiose by the very fact of the transformations of democracy."
So we must fully recognise that democracies give rise to castes just as aristocracies do. The only difference is this : in a democracy these castes do not seem to be closed ; every one can enter them, or thinks he can. But he can enter them only it he possess certain intellectual aptitudes which birth alone can give, and which give those who possess them a crushing superiority over
(286) their less fortunate rivals. From this it results that superior classes are favoured by democratic institutions, and they may congratulate themselves that these institutions are becoming so prevalent. The time is still distant when the masses will turn away from them. It will come eventually, for reasons I shall presently give. But in the meantime democracy is exposed to other dangers, which arise from its essential nature, and which we must now consider.
The first of these inconveniences is that democracies are very expensive. It is already a long time since Leon Say pointed out that democracy is destined to become the most costly of all systems of government. One of our journals has recently published the following very well-reasoned remarks on this subject :
" Formerly indignation was justly excited by the prodigalities of the monarchical power, and by the courtiers, who incited the prince to magnificences which returned on them in a rain of favours and pensions. But have the courtiers disappeared now that the people is king ? On the contrary, has not their number grown with the fantasies of the multiple and irresponsible master they have to serve ? No longer are the courtiers at Versailles, where their gilded persons were gathered all together. They swarm in our towns, in the country, in the humblest chief towns of our arrondissements or cantons, wherever universal suffrage bestows a writ, and can confer a morsel of power. They carry their pledges with them ; pledges of ruinous bounties, the creation of superfluous employments, the unconsidered development of public works and services, all the means of facile popularity, and all the electoral dodges. I n Parliament they dispense the promised largess, occupying themselves by benefiting their electorate at the expense of the budget ; it is the triumph of close local competition over the
(287) interest of the State, the victory of the arrondissement over France."
The exactions of the elector are sometimes singularly excessive ; none the less the legislator who wishes to be re-elected must respect them. Too often he has to obey the orders of wine-merchants, or of dander-headed petty merchants who compose his chief electoral agents. The elector demands the impossible, and it has to be promised. Hence these premature reforms, undertaken with never a suspicion of their indirect effects. A party that wishes to arrive in power knows that it can do so only by out-doing the promises of its rivals.
"Under every party we see another party rise up, which stings, insults, and denounces the former. In the time of the Convention there was la Montague, under the Convention, threatening to spring; and la Montagne on his side feared the Commune, and the Commune was afraid of seeming too lukewarm towards the bishops. Down to the very depths of demagogy this law reigns and makes itself known. But we find, however, in this exploration of the ' extremes' a troubled and ambiguous region where we can no longer very clearly distinguish one party from another ; it is there we find the most ardent souls, the most `pure,' the most bloodysuch as were Fouché, Tallien, Barras -- fit to be purveyors to the guillotine, fit valets for a Caesar. This also, this confusion of parties at their extreme limits, is a constant political law. We have just emerged from an experience which was very conclusive on that point.
This intervention of crowds in democratic governments constitutes a serious danger, not merely by reason of the exaggerated expenses which result therefrom, but more especially on account of this redoubtable popular delusion-that all ills can be remedied by laws. The Chambers are thus condemned to enact an immense
(288) number of laws and regulations of which nobody foresees the consequences, and which have scarcely any other result than to surround the liberty of the citizen with a thousand fetters, and to increase the ills they should remedy.
"The institutions of the State," writes an eminent Italian economist, Signor Luzzati, "cannot change our poor human nature, nor imbue our souls with virtues they lack, nor raise the rate of wages so that we can save more, because we are dependent on the universal and inexorable conditions of national economy."
This will seem a very elementary proposition to the philosopher, but there is no chance of its being understood by the public till after a century of wars, and bloody revolution, and wasted millions. But then the greater number of elementary truths have been established in the world only by these means.
Another consequence of democratic institutions is a very great ministerial instability ; but in this there are advantages that often balance its inconveniences. It places the real power in the hands of the administrations of which every minister has need, and of which he has no time to change the old organisation and traditions which make their strength. Besides which, every minister, knowing that his existence will be ephemeral, and desirous of leaving something behind him, is accessible to a great number of liberal propositions. Without these frequent changes of ministers many a desirable undertaking would have been impossible in France.
It must also be remembered that this facility of change, one of the consequences of democratic institutions, renders revolutions useless, and consequently very rare. To the Latin People,; this should count as no small advantage.
more serious inconvenience of democracies is the
289) increasing mediocrity of the men who govern them. These need little but one essential quality : they must be ready to speak at a moment's notice on any subject whatever, and to find immediate arguments, plausible, or at least blustering, with which to reply to their adversaries. Such superior minds as would reflect before delivering themselves, were they Pascals or Newtons, would cut a sorry figure in Parliament. This necessity of speaking without reflecting eliminates a number of men of solid worth and impartial judgment from Parliament.
Such men are kept out of Parliament by other considerations, and notably by this-that democracies cannot put up with superiority in those that govern them. Those elected, in direct contact with the crowd, can only please it by flattering its least elevated passions and cravings, and by making it the most unlikely promises. By that very natural instinct which forever bids men to seek after their likes, the crowd runs after the men of chimerical or mediocre mind, and more and more does it plant them in the very heart of democratic governments. I quote from a recent Revue politique et parlementaire :
"The masses naturally prefer men of vulgar mind to men of cultured mind, and give their allegiance to the agitated and the voluble rather than to the tranquil and the thinkers. And they make it difficult for the latter to be heard or be elected, by dint of making it disagreeable. The standard is thus being almost continuously lowered of the preoccupations which arise in politics, of the considerations which determine them, of the affairs undertaken, of the personnel of those elected, and of the motives that move them. This is what we see at present, and unless we wish to fall into a still lower and more unhappy state we must look into the matter.[1] We have
290) arrived at such a point that to curry favour with the crowd even our men of letters and men of talent find it best to hold before it, as an end, the suppression of acquired fortune, and one hardly dares to rebuke it."
And what would seem to show that this vice is inherent in all democracies, and is not merely a racial defect, is that this phenomenon which we observe in France is also to be observed, and even in a far higher degree, in the United States. The decline of the intellectual and moral level of the specially qualified class of politicians is becoming more evident every day, at a rate which bodes ill for the future of the Great Republic. Again, as political functions are utterly disdained by capable men, they are exercised only by the déclassés of all parties. The inconvenience is not so great as it would be in Europe, for as the rôle of the Government is very small the quality of the political Personnel does not matter so much.
It is in America also that we find one of the greatest dangers of democracies-venality. Nowhere has it reached such a development as in the United States. There corruption exists in every degree of the public services, and there is hardly an election, a concession, a privilege, which cannot be obtained for money. According to a recent article in the Contemporary Review a presidental election costs £8,000,000, which is advanced by the American plutocracy. The party which gets in is repaid besides this largely. The first thing done is to discharge all the functionaries and officials at one blow, and their place are given to the electors of the new party. The numerous partisans whom the party is unable to place receive: pensions, which are
(291) charged to the fund for pensions for those who took part in the war of secession, although the greater number of the survivors of that war have long ago disappeared. These electoral pensions now reach the annual figure of nearly £32,000,000.
As for the party chiefs, their appetites are much greater. The large speculators especially, who figure prominently in every election, feather their nests royally. Twenty years ago, at the end of an election, it was decreed that they might change metallic silver for gold, on the old basis of exchange, at the Treasury. This meant simply that on depositing in the Treasury a weight of silver bought in the market for £12 they received gold to the value of £20. This measure was so ruinous to the State that it soon became necessary to limit the present which the Government made to a privileged few to the sum of £10,000,000 per annum. When the Treasury was almost exhausted, and bankruptcy threatened, the execution of the Bill was suspended. This colossial piracy had poured such fortunes into the laps of these speculators that they did not trouble to protest very much. We made a tremendous uproar in France over the Panama affair, and the desperate imbecility of a few certain magistrates did all that could be done to dishonour us in the eyes of the world, all on account of a few thousand-franc bills accepted by a few needy deputies. The Americans could not by any means understand the matter, for there was not a politician of theirs that had not done the same thing, with the sole difference that none of them would have been satisfied with such an insignificant recompense. Compared with the American houses, our Parliament rejoices in a Catonian virtue. It is all the more meritorious in that the salaries of our legislators are hardly enough to meet the demands of their position. Moreover, in
292) supporting the Panama scheme, for which they were so bitterly reproached, they did no more than obey the unanimous demands of their electors. The Suez Canal, which made its creator a demigod, was not made in a different way to the Panama Canal, and could not have been made otherwise. The purses of financiers were never filled by proceedings of austere virtue.
There is plainly no possible excuse for the financial manners of the United States. They are a disgrace to the country. However, since the Americans accommodate themselves to them very well and do not find them in the least dishonouring, it must be because they correspond to a certain ideal, which we must try to comprehend. The love of wealth is at least as widespread in Europe as in America, but we have preserved certain ancient traditions, so that even though our shady promotors and slippery financiers are envied when they succeed, they are none the less despised, and regarded much in the light of fortunate pirates. They are tolerated, but we should never think of comparing them with our scientists, artists, soldiers, and sailors-with men, that is, who lead careers that are often ill-paid, but that demand a certain elevation of thought or sentiment of which the greater number of financiers are completely destitute.
In a country such as America, a country without traditions, almost exclusively devoted to commerce and industry, in which a perfect-equality reigns, and in which no social hierarchy exists, since all employments of any importance, including those of the magistracy, are filled by holders who are incessantly being renewed, and, for the rest, enjoy no more distinction than the smallest of shopkeepers ; in such a country, I say, only one distinction can exist-that of fortune. The worth of an individual, his power, and his social position are con-
(293) -sequently measured solely by the number of dollars he possesses. The pursuit of dollars, accordingly, becomes the ideal which is constantly kept in sight, and all means are good means to realise it. The importance of a career is measured only by what it brings in. Politics are regarded as a simple trade which ought largely to remunerate those who engage in it. Although this conception is plainly very dangerous and very base, the public accepts it in entirety, since it does not scruple to give its voice to politicians who are most notorious for their habits of pillage.
Politics considered as a matter of commerce implies the formation of syndicates to exploit it. Only thus can we conceive of the power, so mysterious at first to Europeans, of associations such as the famous Tammany Hall of New York, which has been exploiting the finances of that city on a large scale for more than fifty years. It is a sort of freemasonry, which nominates the servants of the municipality, the magistrates, the police agents, the contractors, and, in short, the whole staff of the municipality. This staff is devoted to it body and soul, and obeys blindly the orders of the supreme head of the association. Once only, in 1894, the association failed to keep itself in power. The inquiry then held on its doings revealed the most incredible depredations. Under one of its chiefs only, the famous William Tweed, the total sum stolen and divided between the associates, according to the commission of inquiry, amounted to -£32,000,000. After a short eclipse the syndicate regained all its power. It is said that at the last elections it spent £1,400,000 to nominate its candidate mayor of New York. This sum will easily be paid back to the associates, since the mayor disposes of an annual budget of £16,000,000.
Any other nation than the Americans would be quickly
(294) disorganised by such a state of morals. We know what has been their result in the Latin republics of America. But the population of the United States possesses that sovereign quality, energy, which triumphs over all obstacles. As the danger of allowing the intervention of financiers in public affairs has not yet become too conspicuous, the public does not trouble about the matter. When this danger does appear, which will probably happen before very long, the Americans will employ their usual energy in remedying the evil. In such matters their proceedings are abrupt but efficient. We know how they rid themselves of Chinese and negroes who embarrass them. When their financiers and prevaricators embarrass them too much they will have no scruples in lynching a few dozen of them in order to make the others reflect on the utility of virtue.
The demoralisation we have just been considering has hitherto affected only the special class of American politicians, and has but slightly touched the commercial and industrial classes. And I repeat that the effects of this state of things are also narrowly limited by the fact that in the United States, as in all Anglo-Saxon countries, the intervention of the Government in business of all kinds is very slight, instead of being almost universal, as with the Latin nations.
This is a very important point, and explains the vitality of the American democracy compared to the feeble vitality of the Latin democracies. Democratic institutions cannot prosper except among nations having sufficient initiative and force of will to enable them to conduct their affairs without the constant intervention of the Government. The corruption of the State has but few evil consequences when the influence of the public powers is extremely limited. On the contrary, when this influence is great, the corruption spreads everywhere,
(295) and disorganisation is imminent. We have the terrible example of the Latin republics of America to show us the fate which lies in wait for democracy in nations without either strength of will, morality, or energy. The love of authority, intolerance, contempt of the law, and ignorance of practical questions rapidly develop themselves, along with an inveterate taste for pillage. Then anarchy quickly follows, and to anarchy always succeeds dictatorship.
Such has been the end that has always threatened democratic governments. Much more would it threaten an entirely popular government based on Socialism.
But in addition to the dangers we have just considered, which arise from the condition of morals, democracies have still other difficulties to contend with, which arise from the state of mind of the popular classes, who do all they can to increase them.
The real adversaries of democracy are by no means to be found where people insist on looking for them. It is threatened not by the aristocracy, but by the popular classes. As soon as the crowd suffers from the discord and the anarchy of its governors, it immediately begins to think of a dictator. It was always so at the troubled periods of history among those nations that had not, or had no longer, the qualities necessary to support free institutions. After Sylla, Marius, and the civil wars, came Caesar, Tiberius, and Nero. After the Convention, Bonaparte ; after the '48, Napoleon III. And all these despots, sons of the universal suffrage of all ages, were always adored by the crowd. How could they have kept in power if the heart of the people had not been with them ?
" Let us have the courage to say it, and to repeat it," wrote one of the firmest defenders of democracy, M. Scherer, "we are condemned absolutely to misunderstand
(296) the most characteristic instincts of universal suffrage, at any rate in France, if we refuse to take into account the four plebiscites which raised Louis-Napoleon to the Presidency of the Republic, ratified the outrage of the 2nd of December, created the Empire, and, in 1870, renewed the pact of the nation with the lamentable adventurer."
Only a few years have elapsed since the time when the same pact was to be renewed with another adventurer, who had not even the authority of a name, and had no prestige but that of his general's plume. The judges who have arraigned kings are many; very few are those who have dared to arraign the people.
3. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA AND THE ASPIRATIONS OF THE SOCIALISTS.
Such are the advantages and the inconveniences of democratic institutions. They suit admirably strong and energetic races, of which the individual is accustomed to rely only on his own efforts. They have not in themselves the power to establish any kind of progress, but they constitute an atmosphere admirably adapted to all sorts of efforts. From this point of view nothing equals them, and nothing could replace them. No other system gives the most capable such liberty of development, or gives them such chances to succeed in life. Thanks to the liberty they permit to every individual, and the equality which they proclaim, they favour the development of superiority of every kind, and above all that of intelligence ; that is to say, the superiority of which all important progress is born.
But do this equality, and this liberty, in a struggle in which the competitors are unequally endowed, place those who are favoured by an intellectual heredity, and the host
297) of mediocre persons whose mental aptitudes are but little developed, on the same footing ? Do they leave these ill-equipped competitors much chance, not of triumphing over their rivals, but merely of not being too far crushed by them ? In a word, can the weak, without energy and without courage, find in free institutions the support they are incapable of finding in themselves ? It seems plain that the answer is a negative, and it seems evident also that the more we have of equality and liberty the more complete is the servitude of the incapable, or even of the half-capable. To remedy this servitude is perhaps the most difficult problem of modern times. If we set no limit to liberty, the situation of the disinherited can only grow worse every day ; if we limit it-and evidently the State alone can undertake such a task-we arrive at State Socialism, the consequences of which are worse than the ills they pretend to heal. The only means remaining is to appeal to the altruistic sentiments of the stronger ; but hitherto religions alone, and then only at periods of faith, have been able to awaken such sentiments, which even then have constituted very fragile bases of society.
We must thoroughly realise that the lot of feeble and ill-adapted individuals is certainly far harder in a country of perfect liberty and equality, such as the United States, than in countries whose constitutions are aristocratic. Speaking of the United States in his work on popular government, the English historian, Maine, expresses himself thus :
"There has hardly ever before been a community in which the weak have been pushed so pitilessly to the wall, in which those who have succeeded have been so uniformly (lie strung, and iii which in so short a time there has arisen so great an inequality of private fortune and domestic luxury."
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These are, evidently, the necessary inconveniences of any régime having liberty as its base, and they are nevertheless the inevitable conditions of progress. The only question we can ask ourselves is this : Are we to sacrifice the necessary elements of progress, are we to consider only the immediate and visible interest of the multitudes, and are we to combat, incessantly, and with all manner of arbitrary means, the consequences of the inequality which Nature continues to repeat in every generation ?
"Which is right," says M. Fouquier, " aristocratic individualism or democratic solidarity ? Which is most favourable to the progress of humanity? Which is worth the most, a Molière or two hundred worthy schoolteachers ? Which renders the greater service, a Fulton or a Watt, or a hundred mutual aid societies ? Evidently individualism raises and democracy lowers ; evidently the human flower grows from a human dunghill. Only these useless, mediocre creatures, with low instincts, often with envious hearts, with minds empty and conceited, often dangerous, and always stupid, are still human beings ! "
We may theoretically admit the inversion of the laws of nature, and sacrifice the strong, who are in the minority, to the weak, who constitute the majority. Such, when rid of empty formula;, is the ideal pursued by the Socialists.
Let us for a moment admit the realisation of such an ideal ; let us suppose the individual to be imprisoned in the close network of limits and regulations proposed by the Socialists. Suppress capital, intelligence, and competition. In order to satisfy the theory of equality, let us place a nation in such a state of weakness that it would be at the mercy of the first invasion. Would the masses gain anything by it, even for a moment ?
Alas, no ! They would gain nothing, even at the
299) beginning, and very soon they would lose everything. The progress which enriches the workers is effected only by superior minds, and only such minds can direct the complicated machinery of civilisation. Without superior minds a country would soon become a body without a soul. The workshop could not keep running long without the engineer who builds it and directs it. It would soon be what a ship is deprived of its officers ; a wreck at the mercy of the waves, which will founder on the first rock it approaches. Without the great and the strong the future of the mediocre would apparently be more miserable than it has ever been yet.
Such are the conclusions clearly pointed out by reason. But the proof is not accessible to every mind, because the matter has not been put to the test of experience. The disciples of the Socialist faith are not to be convinced by arguments.
Democracy, by its very principles, favours the liberty and competition which of necessity lead to the triumph of the most capable, while Socialism, on the contrary, aims at the suppression of competition, the disappearance of liberty, and a general equalisation, so that there is evidently an insuperable opposition between the principles of Socialism and those of democracy.
Modern Socialists have finally become aware of this fact, at least instinctively ; for they cannot, with their pretensions that all men have equal capacities, openly recognise the opposition. Of this instinct, most often confused and unconscious, but nevertheless very real, is born the hatred of the Socialists for the democratic system, a hatred far more intense than was felt by the men of the Revolution for the ancien régime. Nothing could be less democratic than their desire to destroy the effects of liberty and natural inequality by an absolutely despotic régime, which would suppress all competition,
(300) give the same salary to the capable and the incapable, and incessantly destroy, by means of administrative measures, the social inequalities which arise from natural inequalities.
There is to-day no lack of flatterers ready to persuade the masses that the realisation of such an ideal is easy. These dangerous prophets know they wilt live long enough to reap the fruits of their popularity, but not long enough for events to expose them as impostors, so that they have nothing to lose.
This conflict between the democratic idea and the aspirations of the Socialists is so far invisible to superficial minds, and most people consider Socialism only as the necessary development and foreseen consequence of the democratic idea. In reality no two political conceptions are separated by deeper gulfs than Socialism and democracy. A pure atheist is in many respects far more nearly related to a devotee than is a Socialist to a democrat faithful to the principles of the Revolution. The divergency bet-,veers the two doctrines is as yet hardly beginning to show itself, but it will soon be glaring, and then there will be a violent disruption.
It is not between democracy and science that there is and will be a real conflict, but between Socialism and democracy. Democracy has indirectly given rise to Socialism, and by Socialism, perhaps, it will perish.
We must not dream, as some have done, of allowing Socialism to attempt its object in order to prove its, weakness, for Socialism would immediately give birth to Caesarism, which would promptly suppress all the institutions of democracy. To-day, and not the future, is the time for the democrats to encounter with their formidable enemy Socialism. IL constitutes a danger against which all parties without exception must league themselves, and with which none, and least of all the
(301) republican party, must ever ally itself. We may contest the theoretical value of the institutions which govern us, we may wish that the march of events had been otherwise, but such avowals must remain platonic. Before the common enemy all parties, whatever be their aspirations, must unite. They would have none but the slightest chances of gaining anything by a change of régime, and they would expose themselves to the risk of losing all.
It is true that the democratic ideas have not, from a theoretical point of view, a base any more solid than that of religious ideas, but this defect, which formerly had no sort of influence over the fate of the latter, will no more be able to hinder the destiny of the former. The taste for democracy is to-day universal throughout all the nations, whatever be the form of their governments. We are, then, in the presence of one of those great social movements to seek to stem which would be futile. The principal enemy of democracy at the present time, and the only one which could possibly overthrow it, is Socialism.
