That which more than anything else inclined John to fear the power of the masses, was the fact noted by De Tocqueville that they tyrannised over freedom of thought.
"When one tries to ascertain," he says, "how much freedom of thought there is in the United States it becomes apparent how much the tyranny of the masses transcends any despotism known to Europe. I know no country where there is, generally speaking, less independence of opinion and real freedom of discussion than America. The majority draw a terribly narrow circle round all thought. Within that circle an author may say what he likes, but woe to him if he step across the limit. He has no auto-da-fé to fear, but he is made the mark for all kinds of unpleasantness and daily persecutions. Every good quality is denied him, even honour. Before he published his views, he thought he had adherents; after he has made them known to all the world he sees that he no longer has any, for his critics have raised an outcry, and those who thought as he did, but lacked the courage to express themselves, are silent and withdraw. He gives way; he finally collapses under the strain of daily renewed effort, and resumes silence, as though he regretted having spoken the truth,
"In democratic republics, tyranny lets the body alone and attacks the soul. In them the dominant power does not say, 'You must think as I do, or die;' it says, 'You are free to differ from me in opinion; your life and property will remain untouched, but from the day that you express a different view from mine, you will be a stranger among us. You will retain your rights and privileges as a citizen, but they will be useless to you. You will remain among men, but be deprived of all a man's rights. When you approach your equals they will flee you as though you were a leper; even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they should be themselves abandoned. Go in peace! I grant you life, but a life which shall be harder and bitterer than death!'"
That is the true and credible picture which the noble De Tocqueville, friend of the people and tyrant-hater as he was, has drawn of the tyranny of the masses, those masses whose feet John had felt trampling on him at home, at school, in the steamer and the theatre, those masses whom he had satirised in the play Sinking Hellas, and whom he had described as throwing the first stone at Olaus Petri just at the moment when he was preaching to them of freedom! If it is thus in America, how can one expect anything better in Europe. He found himself in a cul-de-sac. His hereditary disposition prevented his becoming an aristocrat, nor could he come to terms with the people. Had he not himself suffered lately from an ignorant theatre-management behind which stood the uncultivated public, and found the way blocked for his new and liberal ideas. There was then already a mob-despotism in Sweden, and the director of the Theatre Royal was only their servant.
It was all absurdity! And even suppose society were ruled by those who knew most. Then they would be under professors with their heads full of antiquarian ideas. Even if the director had put his drama on the stage, it would have certainly been hissed off by the tradesmen in the stalls, and no critics could have helped him!
His thoughts struggled like fishes in a net, and ended by being caught. It was not worth the trouble of thinking about and he tried to banish the thought, but could not. He felt a continual trouble and despair in his mind that the world was going idiotically, majestically and unalterably to the devil. "Unalterably," he thought, for as yet a large number of strong minds had not attacked the problem, which was soluble after all. Ten years later it was provisionally solved, when knowledge on the subject of this sphinx-riddle had been so widely spread that even a workman had obtained some insight into it, and in a public meeting had declared that equality was impossible, for the block-heads could not be equal to the sharp-sighted, and that the utmost one could demand was equality of position. This workman was more of an aristocrat than John dared to be in the year 1872, though he belonged to no party which claimed the right to muzzle him.
Prévost-Paradol had dealt with the same theme as Tocqueville, but he suggested a secret device against the tyranny of the masses—the cumulative vote or the privilege of writing the same name several times on the ballot-paper. But John considered this method, which had been tried in England, doubtful.
He had set great hopes on his drama, and borrowed money on the strength of them, and now felt much depressed. The disproportion between his fancied and his real value galled him. Now he had to adopt a rôle, learn it, and carry it out. He composed one for himself, consisting of the sceptic, the materialist and the liar, and found that it suited him excellently. This was for the simple reason that it was a sceptical and materialistic period, and because he had unconsciously developed into a man of his time. But he still believed that his earlier discarded personality, ruled indeed by wild passions, but cherishing ideals of a higher calling, love to mankind and similar imaginations, was his true and better self which he hid from the world. All men make similar mistakes when they value sickly sentimentality above strong thought, when they look back to their youth and think they were purer and more virtuous then, which is certainly untrue. The world calls the weaker side of men their "better self," because this weakness is more advantageous for the world and self-interest seems to dictate its judgment. John found that in his new rôle he was freed from all possible prejudices—religious, social, political and moral. He had only one opinion,—that everything was absurd, only one conviction,—that nothing could be done at present, and only one hope,—that the time would come when one might effectively intervene, and when there would be improvement. But from that time he altogether gave up reading newspapers. To hear stupidity praised, selfish acts lauded as philanthropic, and reason blasphemed,—that was too much for a fanatical sceptic. Sometimes, however, he thought that the majority were right in just being at the point of view where they were, and that it was unnecessary that some few individuals, because of a specialised education, should run far ahead of the rest. In quiet moments he recognised that his mental development which had taken place so rapidly, without his ever seeing an idea realised, could be a pattern for such a slowly-working machine as society is. Why did he run so far ahead? It was not the fault of the school or university, for they had held him back equally with the majority.
Yes, but those already out in the world, by their own hearths, had already reached the stage of Buckle's scepticism as regards the social order, so that he was not so far ahead after all. The slow rate of progress was enough to make one despair. What Schiller's Karl Moor had seen a hundred years previously, what the French Revolution had actually brought about were now regarded as brand-new ideas. After the Revolution, social development had gone backwards; religious superstitions were revived, belief in a better state of things lost, and economic and industrial progress was accompanied by sweating and terrible poverty. It was absurd! All minds that were awake at all had to suffer,—suffer like every living organism when hindered in growth and pressed backward. The century had been inaugurated by the destruction of hopes, and nothing has such a paralysing effect on the soul as disappointed hope, which, as statistics show, is one of the most frequent causes of madness. Therefore all great spirits were, vulgarly speaking, mad. Chateaubriand was a hypochondriac, Musset a lunatic, Victor Hugo a maniac. The automatic pygmies of everyday life cannot realise what such suffering means, and yet believe themselves capable of judging in the matter.
The ancient poet is psychologically correct in representing Prometheus as having his liver gnawed by a vulture. Prometheus was the revolutionary who wished to spread mental illumination among men. Whether he did it from altruistic motives, or from the selfish one of wishing to breathe a purer mental atmosphere, may be left undecided. John, who felt akin to this rebel, was aware of a pain which resembled anxiety, and a perpetual boring "toothache in the liver." Was Prometheus then a liver-patient who confusedly ascribed his pain to causes outside himself? Probably not! But he was certainly embittered when he saw that the world is a lunatic asylum in which the idiots go about as they like, and the few who preserve reason are watched as though dangerous to the public safety. Attacks of illness can certainly colour men's views, and every one well knows how gloomy our thoughts are when we have attacks of fever. But patients such as Samuel Oedmann or Olaf Eneroth were neither sulky nor bitter, but, on the contrary, mild, perhaps languid from want of strength. Voltaire, who was never well, had an imperturbably good temper. And Musset did not write as he did because he drank absinthe, but he drank from the same cause that he wrote in that manner, i.e. from despair. Therefore it is not in good faith that idealists who deny the existence of the body, ascribe the discontent of many authors to causes such as indigestion, etc., the supposition of which contradicts their own principles, but it must be against their better knowledge, or with worse knowledge. Kierkegaard's gloomy way of writing can be ascribed to an absurd education, unfortunate family relations, dreary social surroundings, and alongside of these to some organic defects, but not to the latter alone.