This fact has greatly struck Emile ***uet.``Almost all the thinkers of the nineteenth century,'' he says, ``were not democrats.When I was writing my Politiques et moralistes du XIXe siecle this was my despair.I could not find one who had been a democrat; yet I was extremely anxious to find one so that I could give the democratic doctrine as formulated by him.''
The eminent writer might certainly have found plenty of professional politicians, but these latter rarely belong to the category of thinkers.
2.Natural Inequalities and Democratic Equalisation.
The difficulty of reconciling democratic equalisation with natural inequalities constitutes one of the most difficult problems of the present hour.We know what are the desires of democracy.Let us see what Nature replies to these demands.
The democratic ideas which have so often shaken the world from the heroic ages of Greece to modern times are always clashing with natural inequalities.Some observers have held, with Helvetius, that the inequality between men is created by education.
As a matter of fact, Nature does not know such a thing as equality.She distributes unevenly genius, beauty, health, vigour, intelligence, and all the qualities which confer on their possessors a superiority over their fellows.
No theory can alter these discrepancies, so that democratic doctrines will remain confined to words until the laws of heredity consent to unify the capacities of men.
Can we suppose that societies will ever succeed in establishing artificially the equality refused by Nature?
A few theorists have believed for a long time that education might effect a general levelling.Many years of experience have shown the depth of this illusion.
It would not, however, be impossible for a triumphant Socialism to establish equality for a time by rigorously eliminating all superior individuals.One can easily foresee what would become of a people that had suppressed its best individuals while surrounded by other nations progressing by means of their best individuals.
Not only does Nature not know equality, but since the beginning of the ages she has always realised progress by means of successive differentiations--that is to say, by increasing inequalities.These alone could raise the obscure cell of the early geological periods to the superior beings whose inventions were to change the face of the earth.
The same phenomenon is to be observed in societies.The forms of democracy which select the better elements of the popular classes finally result in the creation of an intellectual aristocracy, a result the contrary of the dream of the pure theorists, to beat down the superior elements of society to the level of the inferior elements.
On the side of natural law, which is hostile to theories of equality, are the conditions of modern progress.Science and industry demand more and more considerable intellectual efforts, so that mental inequalities and the differences of social condition which spring from them cannot but become accentuated.
We therefore observe this striking phenomenon: as laws and institutions seek to level individuals the progress of civilisation tends still further to differentiate them.From the peasant to the feudal baron the intellectual difference was not great, but from the working-man to the engineer it is immense and is increasing daily.
Capacity being the principal factor of progress, the capable of each class rise while the mediocre remain stationary or sink.
What could laws do in the face of such inevitable necessities?
In vain do the incapable pretend that, representing number, they also represent force.Deprived of the superior brains by whose researches all workers profit, they would speedily sink into poverty and anarchy.
The capital role of the elect in modern civilisation seems too obvious to need pointing out.In the case of civilised nations and barbarian peoples, which contain similar averages of mediocrities, the superiority of the former arises solely from the superior minds which they contain.The United States have understood this so thoroughly that they forbid the immigration of Chinese workers, whose capacity is identical with that of American workers, and who, working for lower wages, tend to create a formidable competition with the latter.Despite these evidences we see the antagonism between the multitude and the elect increasing day by day.At no period were the elect more necessary, yet never were they supported with such difficulty.
One of the most solid foundations of Socialism is an intense hatred of the elect.Its adepts always forget that scientific, artistic, and industrial progress, which creates the strength of a country and the prosperity of millions of workers, is due solely to a small number of superior brains.
If the worker makes three times as much to-day as he did a hundred years ago, and enjoys commodities then unknown to great nobles, he owes it entirely to the elect.
Suppose that by some miracle Socialism had been universally accepted a century ago.Risk, speculation, initiative--in a word, all the stimulants of human activity--being suppressed, no progress would have been possible, and the worker would have remained as poor as he was.Men would merely have established that equality in poverty desired by the jealousy and envy of a host of mediocre minds.Humanity will never renounce the progress of civilisation to satisfy so low an ideal.
