XVI
MENACES OF DEMOCRACY
Since modern democracy is a new thing under the sun, so its menaces are new, or, if old, they take misleadingly new forms. For instance, the greatest danger in the path of our democracy is the world-old evil of selfishness, but it does take surprisingly new form. It is not aggressive selfishness that we have primarily to dread. There are those, it is true, who believe we may soon be endangered by the ambitions of some arrogant leader in the nation. The fear is unwarranted, for our people are still so devoted to the fundamental principles of democracy, that if any leader were to take one clear step toward over-riding the constitution and making himself despot, that step would be his political death-blow. No, we are not yet endangered by the aggressive ambitions of those at the front, but we are in grave danger from the negative selfishness of indifference, shown in its worst form by just those people who imagine they are good because they are respectable, whereas they may be merely good—for nothing.
Plato argued that society could never have patriotism in full measure until the family was abolished. A singular notion that any school boy to-day can readily answer, yet here is the curious situation. Family life, among ourselves, in its better aspects, has reached a higher plane than ever before in any people. More marriages are made on the only decent basts of any marriage. This is the woman's land. Children have their rights and privileges, even to their physical, mental and moral detriment. It is here that men most willingly sacrifice for their families, slaving through the hot summer in the cities, to send wife and children to the seashore or the mountains; yet it is just here that men most readily unhinge their consciences when they turn from private to public life.
Some cynic has said that there is not an American citizen who would not smuggle to please his wife. Of course the statement is not true, but if you have ever crossed the ocean on a transatlantic liner, and watched the devices to which ordinarily decent men—men who would be ashamed to steal your pocket handkerchief or to lie to you as an individual—will resort, in order to lie to the government or steal from the government, you begin to wonder if the cynic was not right. The law, obviously, may be unjust: if so, protest against it and seek to have it changed, but while it is the law, does it not deserve your respectful obedience, unless you would add to the dangerously growing disrespect for all law?
Next to the menace of selfishness is that of ignorance, and this, too, takes confusingly new form. It is not ignorance of scientific fact and law, dangerous as that is, that threatens, but ignorance of what our institutions mean, of what they have cost, of the ideal for which we stand among the nations. The celerity with which, even during the past two decades, the younger generation has abandoned old standards and ideals, is an ominous illustration. It is true:
"New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient goods uncouth; 'They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth."
Those words of Lowell's are as fully applicable to the present crisis, as to that for which Lowell wrote them; but to give up the past, without knowing that you are letting go, is surely not the part of wisdom.
A third menace shows in that fickleness of temper and false standard of life that cause us to admire the wrong type of leader. Probably one half of all the attacks on men of unusual wealth and success come from other men, who would like to be in the same situation with those they attack, and have failed of their ambition. Part of the attack is sincere, no doubt, but if you assumed that all the abuse heaped upon conspicuous men came from moral conviction, you would utterly misread the situation.
On the other hand, men of moral excellence make us ashamed. Now it takes a rarely magnanimous spirit to be shamed and not resent it. We are apt to feel that, if we can pull another down, we raise ourselves. To realize this, consider the growl of joy that comes from the worse sort of citizen and newspaper when some public leader is caught in a private scandal. As if pulling him down, raised us! We are all tarred with his disgrace. There are, indeed, two ways of stating the ideal of democracy: you can say, "I am just as good as any one else," which in the first place, is not true, and, in the second, would be unlovely of you to express, were it true. You can say, on the contrary, "Every other human being ought to have just as good a chance as I have," which is right; and yet you will hear the ideal of democracy phrased a dozen times the first way, where it is expressed once in the second form.
That democracies are fickle is one of the oldest criticisms upon them. We had thought that we were not subject to that criticism, and in the old days we were not. We had the country debating club and the village lyceum. We were an agricultural people, sober and slow-moving. We had few books, they were good books and we read them many times. We had few newspapers, we knew the men who wrote in them, and when we read an editorial, our mind was actively challenged by the sincere thinking of another mind.
To-day, everywhere, we have moved into the cities. The strength of the country-side is sobriety and slow incubation of the forces of life. Its vice is stupidity. The strength of the city is keen wittedness, versatility, quick response. Its vice is fickleness, morbidity, exhaustion. We have our great blanket sheet newspapers, representing a party, a clique, a financial interest, with writers lending their brains out, for money, to write editorials for causes in which they do not believe. We have the multitude of books, incessantly and hastily produced; we read much, and scarcely think at all. We have got rid of the old "three decker" novel, reduced it to a single volume, and then taken out the climax of the story, publishing it in the corner of the daily newspaper, as the short story of the day, so that he who runs may read. If he is a wise man he will run as fast as he can and not read that stuff at all. We have our ever increasing "movies," with their incessant titillation of the mind with swift passing impressions, as disintegrating to intellectual concentration, as they are injurious to the eyes. The result of it all is an increasing fickleness of temper, so that the same people who shout most loudly when the popular hero goes by, the next week cover his very name with vituperation and abuse, if he offends their slightest whim.
This evil breeds another: fickleness in the people means demagoguery in the leader, inevitably. We have said to our public men—not in words, but by the far more impressive language of our conduct—"get money, power, success, and we will give you more money, power and success, and not ask you how you got them nor what ends you serve in using them." That so many have refused the bribe is to their credit, not ours; we have done what we could to corrupt them.
Finally, we are the most irreverent people in the world. We believe in youth, we scorn age. We have splendid enthusiasm, we do not know what wisdom means. One hears college presidents say—half jokingly, of course—that there is no use appointing a man over thirty to the faculty these days. So one hears Christian ministers, in those denominations where the minister is called by the particular church, say there is no use trying to get another call after one is fifty! Of course, it is not true, but it is true enough to be a serious criticism upon us. For what other vocation is there where the mellowness that comes only from time and long experience, from presiding at weddings and standing beside open graves, sharing the joys and sorrows of innumerable persons, is so indispensable, as in the pastor, the physician of the spirit? Still, we will turn out some wise, shy, mellow old man, just ripened to the point of being the true minister to the souls of others, and replace him with a recent graduate of a theological school, because the latter can talk the language of the higher criticism or whatever else happens to interest us for the moment. Obviously, we pay the price, but think what it indicates of our civilization.