2. CHAPTER II
THE RESULTS OF DEMOCRATIC EVOLUTION
1. The Influence upon Social Evolution of Theories of
no Rational Value.
WE have seen that natural laws do not agree with the
aspirations of democracy. We know, also, that such a statement
has never affected doctrines already in men's minds. The man led
by a belief never troubles about its real value
The philosopher who studies a belief must obviously
discuss its rational content, but he is more concerned with its
influences upon the general mind.
Applied to the interpretation of all the great beliefs of
history, the importance of this distinction is at once evident.
Jupiter, Moloch, Vishnu, Allah, and so many other divinities,
were, no doubt, from the rational point of view, mere illusions,
yet their effect upon the life of the peoples has been
considerable.
The same distinction is applicable to the beliefs which
prevailed during the Middle Ages. Equally illusory, they
nevertheless exercised as profound an influence as if they had
corresponded with realities.
If any one doubts this, let him compare the domination of
the Roman Empire and that of the Church of Rome. The first was
perfectly real and
tangible, and implied no illusion. The second, while its
foundations were entirely chimerical, was fully as powerful.
Thanks to it, during the long night of the Middle Ages, semi-barbarous peoples acquired those social bonds and restraints and
that national soul without which there is no civilisation.
The power possessed by the Church proves, again, that the
power of certain illusions is sufficiently great to create, at
least momentarily, sentiments as contrary to the interests of the
individual as they are to that of society—such as the love of
the monastic life, the desire for martyrdom, the crusades, the
religious wars, &c.
The application to democratic and socialistic ideas of the
preceding considerations shows that it matters little that these
ideas have no defensible basis. They impress and influence men's
minds, and that is sufficient. Their results may be disastrous
in the extreme, but we cannot prevent them.
The apostles of the new doctrines are quite wrong in
taking so much trouble to find a rational basis for their
aspirations. They would be far more convincing were they to
confine themselves to making affirmations and awakening hopes.
Their real strength resides in the religious mentality which is
inherent in the heart of man, and which during the ages has only
changed its object.
Later on we shall consider from a philosophical point of
view various consequences of the democratic evolution whose
course we see accelerating. We may say in respect of the Church
in the Middle Ages that it had the power of profoundly
influencing the mentality of men. Examining certain results of
the
democratic doctrines, we shall see that the power of these is no
less than that of the Church.
2. The Jacobin Spirit and the Mentality created by
Democratic Beliefs.
Existing generations have inherited, not only the
revolutionary principles but also the special mentality which
achieves their success.
Describing this mentality when we were examining the
Jacobin spirit, we saw that it always endeavours to impose by
force illusions which it regards as the truth. The Jacobin
spirit has finally become so general in France and in other Latin
countries that it has affected all political parties, even the
most conservative. The bourgeoisie is strongly affected
by it, and the people still more so.
This increase of the Jacobin spirit has resulted in the
fact that political conceptions, institutions, and laws tend to
impose themselves by force. Syndicalism, peaceful enough in
other countries, immediately assumed in France an uncompromising
and anarchical aspect, which betrayed itself in the shape of
riots, sabotage, and incendiarism.
Not to be repressed by timid Governments, the Jacobin
spirit produces melancholy ravages in minds of mediocre capacity.
At a recent congress of railway men a third of the delegates
voted approval of sabotage, and one of the secretaries of
the Congress began his speech by saying: “I send all
saboteurs my fraternal greeting and all my
admiration.”
This general mentality engenders an increasing anarchy.
That France is not in a permanent state of anarchy is, as I have
already remarked, due to
the fact that the parties by which she is divided produce
something like equilibrium. They are animated by a mortal hatred
for one another, but none of them is strong enough to enslave its
rivals.
This Jacobin intolerance is spreading to such an extent
that the rulers themselves employ without scruple the most
revolutionary tactics with regard to their enemies, violently
persecuting any party that offers the least resistance, and even
despoiling it of its property. Our rulers to-day behave as the
ancient conquerors used; the vanquished have nothing to hope from
the victors.
Far from being peculiar to the lower orders, intolerance
is equally prominent among the ruling classes. Michelet remarked
long ago that the violence of the cultivated classes is often
greater than that of the people. It is true that they do not
break the street lamps, but they are ready enough to cause heads
to be broken. The worst violence of the revolution was the work
of cultivated bourgeoisie—professors, lawyers, &c.,
possessors of that classical education which is supposed to
soften the manners. It has not done so in these days, any more
than it did of old. One can make sure of this by reading the
advanced journals, whose contributors and editors are recruited
chiefly from among the professors of the University.
Their books are as violent as their articles, and one
wonders how such favourites of fortune can have secreted such
stores of hatred.
One would find it hard to credit them did they assure us
that they were consumed by an intense passion for altruism. One
might more readily
admit that apart from a narrow religious mentality the hope of
being remarked by the mighty ones of the day, or of creating a
profitable popularity, is the only possible explanation of the
violence recommended in their written propaganda.
I have already, in one of my preceding works, cited some
passages from a book written by a professor at the College of
France, in which the author incites the people to seize upon the
riches of the bourgeoisie, whom he furiously abuses, and
have arrived at the conclusion that a new revolution would
readily find among the authors of such books the Marats, Robes-pierres, and Carriers whom it might require.
The Jacobin religion—above all in its Socialist form—has
all the power of the ancient faiths over feeble minds Blinded by
their faith, they believe that reason is their guide, but are
really actuated solely by their passions and their dreams.
The evolution of democratic ideas has thus produced not
only the political results already mentioned, but also a
considerable effect upon the mentality of modern men.
If the ancient dogmas have long ago exhausted their power,
the theories of democracy are far from having lost theirs, and we
see their consequences increasing daily. One of the chief
results has been the general hatred of superiority.
This hatred of whatever passes the average in social
fortune or intelligence is to-day general in all classes, from
the working-classes to the upper strata of the
bourgeoisie. The results are envy, detraction, and a love
of attack, of raillery, of persecution, and a habit of
attributing all actions to low motives, of refusing to believe in
probity, disinterestedness, and intelligence.
Conversation, among the people as among the most
cultivated Frenchmen, is stamped with the craze for abasing and
abusing everything and everyone. Even the greatest of the dead
do not escape this tendency. Never were so many books written to
depreciate the merit of famous men, men who were formerly
regarded as the most precious patrimony of their country.
Envy and hatred seem from all time to have been
inseparable from democratic theories, but the spread of these
sentiments has never been so great as to-day. It strikes all
observers.
“There is a low demagogic instinct,” writes M.
Bourdeau, “without any moral inspiration, which dreams of
pulling humanity down to the lowest level, and for which any
superiority, even of culture, is an offence to society. . . it is
the sentiment of ignoble equality which animated the Jacobin
butchers when they struck off the head of a Lavoisier or a
Chénier.
This hatred of superiority, the most prominent element in
the modern progress of Socialism, is not the only characteristic
of the new spirit created by democratic ideas.
Other consequences, although indirect, are not less
profound. Such, for example, are the progress of
“statism,” the diminution of the power of the
bourgeoisie, the increasing activity of financiers, the
conflict of the classes, the vanishing of the old social
constraints, and the degradation of morality.
All these effects are displayed in a general
insubordination and anarchy. The son revolts against the
father, the employee against his patron, the soldier
against his officers. Discontent, hatred, and envy reign
throughout.
A social movement which continues is necessarily like a
machine in movement which accelerates its motion. We shall
therefore find that the results of this mentality will become yet
more important. It is betrayed from time to time by incidents
whose gravity is daily increasing—railway strikes, postmen's
strikes, explosions on board ironclads, &c. A propos of
the destruction of the Liberté, which cost more
than two million pounds and slew two hundred men in the space of
a minute, an ex-Minister of Marine, M. de Lanessan, expresses
himself as follows:—
The evil that is gnawing at our fleet is the same as that
which is devouring our army, our public administrations, our
parliamentary system, our governmental system, and the whole
fabric of our society. This evil is anarchy—that is to say,
such a disorder of minds and things that nothing is done as
reason would dictate, and no one behaves as his professional or
moral duty should require him to behave.”
On the subject of the catastrophe of the
Liberté, which followed that of the
Iéna, M. Felix Roussel said, in a speech delivered
as president of the municipal council of Paris:—
“The causes of the evil are not peculiar to our day.
The evil is more general, and bears a triple name:
irresponsibility, indiscipline, and anarchy.”
These quotations, which state facts with which everyone is
familiar, show that the staunchest upholders of the republican
system themselves recognise the progress of social
disorganisation.12 Everyone
sees it, while he is conscious of his own impotence to change
anything. It results, in fact, from mental influences whose
power is greater than that of our wills.
3. Universal Suffrage and its
Representatives.
Among the dogmas of democracy perhaps the most fundamental of
all and the most attractive is that of universal suffrage. It
gives the masses the idea of equality, since for a moment at
least rich and poor, learned and ignorant, are equal before the
electoral urn. The minister elbows the least of his servants,
and during this brief moment the power of one is as great as the
others.
All Governments, including that of the Revolution, have
feared universal suffrage. At a first glance, indeed, the
objections which suggests themselves are numerous. The idea that
the multitude could usefully choose the men capable of governing,
that individuals of indifferent morality, feeble knowledge, and
narrow
minds should possess, by the sole fact of number, a certain
talent for judging the candidate proposed for its selection is
surely a shocking one.
From a rational point of view the suffrage of numbers is
to a certain extent justified if we think with Pascal.
“Plurality is the best way, because it is visible and
has strength to make itself obeyed; it is, however, the advice of
the less able.”
As universal suffrage cannot in our times be replaced by
any other institution, we must accept it and try to adapt it. It
is accordingly useless to protest against it or to repeat with
the queen Marie Caroline, at the time of her struggle with
Napoleon: “Nothing is more dreadful than to govern men in
this enlightened century, when every cobbler reasons and
criticises the Government.”
To tell the truth, the objections are not always as great
as they appear. The laws of the psychology of crowds being
admitted, it is very doubtful whether a limited suffrage would
give a much better choice of men than that obtained by universal
suffrage.
These same psychological laws also show us that so-called
universal suffrage is in reality a pure fiction. The crowd, save
in very rare cases, has no opinion but that of its leaders.
Universal suffrage really represents the most limited of
suffrages.
There justly resides its real danger. Universal suffrage
is made dangerous by the fact that the leaders who are its
masters are the creatures of little local committees analogous to
the clubs of the Revolution. The leader who canvasses for a
mandate is chosen by them.
Once nominated, he exercises an absolute local power, on
condition of satisfying the interests of his committees. Before
this necessity the general interest of the country disappears
almost totally from the mind of the elected representative.
Naturally the committees, having need of docile servants,
do not choose for this task individuals gifted with a lofty
intelligence nor, above all, with a very high morality. They
must have men without character, without social position, and
always docile.
By reason of these necessities the servility of the deputy
in respect of these little groups which patronise him, and
without which he would be no one, is absolute. He will speak and
vote just as his committee tells him. His political ideal may be
expressed in a few words: it is to obey, that he may retain his
post.
Sometimes, rarely indeed, and only when by name or
position or wealth he has a great prestige, a superior character
may impose himself upon the popular vote by overcoming the
tyranny of the impudent minorities which constitute the local
committees.
Democratic countries like France are only apparently
governed by universal suffrage. For this reason is it that so
many measures are passed which do not interest the people and
which the people never demanded. Such were the purchase of the
Western railways, the laws respecting congregations, &c. These
absurd manifestations merely translated the demands of fanatical
local committees, and were imposed upon deputies whom they had
chosen.
We may judge of the influence of these committees when we
see moderate deputies forced to
patronise the anarchical destroyers of arsenals, to ally
themselves with anti-militarists, and, in a word, to obey the
most atrocious demands in order to ensure re-election. The will
of the lowest elements of democracy has thus created among the
elected representatives manners and a morality which we can but
recognise are of the lowest. The politician is the man in public
employment, and as Nietzsche says:—
“Where public employment begins there begins also the
clamour of the great comedians and the buzzing of venomous
flies. . . . The comedian always believes in that which makes
him obtain his best effects, in that which impels the people to
believe in him. To-morrow he will have a new faith, and the day
after to-morrow yet another. . . . All that is great has its
being far from public employment and glory.”
4. The Craving for Reforms.
The craze for reforms imposed suddenly by means of decrees is
one of the most disastrous conceptions of the Jacobin spirit, one
of the formidable legacies left by the Revolution. It is among
the principal factors of all the incessant political upheavals of
the last century in France.
One of the psychological causes of this intense thirst for
reforms arises from the difficulty of determining the real causes
of the evils complained of. The need of explanation creates
fictitious causes of the simplest nature. Therefore the remedies
also appear simple.
For forty years we have incessantly been passing reforms,
each of which is a little revolution in itself. In spite of all
these, or rather because of them, the
French have evolved almost as little as any race in Europe.
The slowness of our actual evolution may be seen if we
compare the principal elements of our social life—commerce,
industry, &c.—with those of other nations. The progress of
other nations—of the Germans especially—then appears enormous,
while our own has been very slow.
Our administrative, industrial, and commercial
organisation is considerably out of date, and is no longer equal
to our new needs. Our industry is not prospering; our marine is
declining. Even in our own colonies we cannot compete with
foreign countries, despite the enormous pecuniary subventions
accorded by the State. M. Cruppi, an ex-Minister of Commerce,
has insisted on this melancholy decline in a recent book.
Falling into the usual errors, he believed it easy to remedy this
inferiority by new laws.
All politicians share the same opinion, which is why we
progress so slowly. Each party is persuaded that by means of
reforms all evils could be remedied. This conviction results in
struggles such as have made France the most divided country in
the world and the most subject to anarchy.
No one yet seems to understand that individuals and their
methods, not regulations, make the value of a people. The
efficacious reforms are not the revolutionary reforms but the
trifling ameliorations of every day accumulated in course of
time. The great social changes, like the great geological
changes, are effected by the daily addition of minute causes.
The economic history of Germany
during the last forty years proves in a striking manner the truth
of this law.
Many important events which seem to depend more or less on
hazard—as battles, for example—are themselves subject to this
law of the accumulation of small causes. No doubt the decisive
struggle is sometimes terminated in a day or less, but many
minute efforts, slowly accumulated, are essential to victory. We
had a painful experience of this in 1870, and the Russians have
learned it more recently. Barely half an hour did Admiral Togo
need to annihilate the Russian fleet, at the battle of Tsushima,
which finally decided the fate of Japan, but thousands of little
factors, small and remote, determined that success. Causes not
less numerous engendered the defeat of the Russians—a
bureaucracy as complicated as ours, and as irresponsible;
lamentable material, although paid for by its weight in gold; a
system of graft at every degree of the social hierarchy, and
general indifference to the interests of the country.
Unhappily the progress in little things which by their
total make up the greatness of a nation is rarely apparent,
produces no impression on the public, and cannot serve the
interests of politicians at elections. These latter care nothing
for such matters, and permit the accumulation, in the countries
subject to their influence, of the little successive
disorganisations which finally result in great downfalls.
5. Social Distinctions in Democracies and Democratic
Ideas in Various Countries.
When men were divided into castes and differentiated chiefly
by birth, social distinctions were
generally accepted as the consequences of an unavoidable natural
law.
As soon as the old social divisions were destroyed the
distinctions of the classes appeared artificial, and for that
reason ceased to be tolerated.
The necessity of equality being theoretical, we have seen
among democratic peoples the rapid development of artificial
inequalities, permitting their possessors to make for themselves
a plainly visible supremacy. Never was the thirst for titles and
decorations so general as to-day.
In really democratic countries, such as the United States,
titles and decorations do not exert much influence, and fortune
alone creates distinctions. It is only by exception that we see
wealthy young American girls allying themselves to the old names
of the European aristocracy. They are then instinctively
employing the only means which will permit a young race to
acquire a past that will establish its moral framework.
But in a general fashion the aristocracy that we see
springing up in America is by no means founded on titles and
decorations. Purely financial, it does not provoke much
jealousy, because every one hopes one day to form part of it.
When, in his book on democracy in America, Toqueville
spoke of the general aspiration towards equality he did not
realise that the prophesied equality would end in the
classification of men founded exclusively on the number of
dollars possessed by them. No other exists in the United States,
and it will doubtless one day be the same in Europe.
At present we cannot possibly regard France as a
democratic country save on paper, and here we feel the necessity,
already referred to, of examining the various ideas which in
different countries are expressed by the word
“democracy.”
Of truly democratic nations we can practically mention
only England and the United States. There, democracy occurs in
different forms, but the same principles are observed—notably, a
perfect toleration of all opinions. Religious persecutions are
unknown. Real superiority easily reveals itself in the various
professions which any one can enter at any age if he possesses
the necessary capacity. There is no barrier to individual
effort.
In such countries men believe themselves equal because all
have the idea that they are free to attain the same position.
The workman knows he can become foreman, and then engineer.
Forced to begin on the lower rungs of the ladder instead of high
up the scale, as in France, the engineer does not regard himself
as made of different stuff to the rest of mankind. It is the
same in all professions. This is why the class hatred, so
intense in Europe, is so little developed in England and America.
In France the democracy is practically non-existent save
in speeches. A system of competitions and examinations, which
must be worked through in youth, firmly closes the door upon the
liberal professions, and creates inimical and separate classes.
The Latin democracies are therefore purely theoretical.
The absolutism of the State has replaced monarchical absolutism,
but it is no less severe. The
aristocracy of fortune has replaced that of birth, and its
privileges are no less considerable.
Monarchies and democracies differ far more in form than in
substance. It is only the variable mentality of men that varies
their effects. All the discussions as to various systems of
government are really of no interest, for these have no special
virtue of themselves. Their value will always depend on that of
the people governed. A people effects great and rapid progress
when it discovers that it is the sum of the personal efforts of
each individual and not the system of government that determines
the rank of a nation in the world.
