It is the fool thing, the insincere thing, that more commonly happens in matters social and political. The adjustment reached is not often a solution of a social problem worked out deliberately on the "greatest-happiness" principle. It is commonly a status quo, or balance of power among contending crowds, each inspired by the fiction of its own importance, by self-idealization, and desire to rule. It is an unstable equilibrium usually held in place for the time by a dominant crowd. This dominant crowd may itself be composed of quarreling factions, but these parties, so long as they share enough of the supremacy to keep up their self-feeling, so long, in fact, as their members may even be able to make themselves believe that they, too, are in the upper set, or so long as they continue to hope for success in the social game as now played, unite in repeating the catchwords which justify their crowd in its supremacy. The dominant group identifies its own interests with the general welfare. And in the sense that some sort of order, or any at all, is to be preferred to social chaos, there is an element of truth in this identification.
The fact remains, however, that the dominant crowd possesses always much of the crowd-spirit which originally secured for it its enviable position. Its ideas, like those of all crowds, are devices for sustaining the self-feeling of its members, for protecting itself, for keeping the group together, for justification. They are only secondarily, if at all, instruments for dealing with new and perplexing social situations. It cannot be denied that a certain set of opinions, prejudices, mannerisms, ceremonies "go with" the social position which corresponds to them. They are the ready-made habits of the "set" or class. They are badges by which the "gentleman" is distinguished, the evening clothes of the psyche, as it were. Many of these crowd-forms represent true values of living, some of them are useful in our dealings with reality; if this were not so, if such spiritual tattooings or ceremonial forms were wholly harmful, the crowd which performed them would be at such a disadvantage that it could not hold its own. But that considerations of utility—other than the function which such ceremonialism is known to have for the unconscious always—do not directly govern these forms of thought and behavior is seen in the fact that so many of them, as Sumner says of "folkways," are either harmful or useless in dealing with matters of fact.
The dominant crowd, therefore, in just so far as it must remain a crowd in order to secure its own position of supremacy, must strive to force all social realities into the forms of its own conflicts and dilemmas. Inevitably the self-feeling of a great many people, who are forced by the dominant crowd to conform and labor with no compensation, is hurt. They cannot but contrast their own lot with that of their more fortunate neighbors. Of all things, people probably resist most the feeling of inferiority. Any suggestion that the difference in social position is due to a similar difference in personal worth or in ability is hotly resented. The resentment is in no wise abated by the fact that in some cases this suggestion may be true. Compensations are at once created by the unconscious. In mediæval times "all men were brothers and were equal before the altars of the Church and in heaven." Thus distinctions of merit, other than those which prevailed in the social order, were set up in the interest of the common man.
As the influence of the Renaissance directed general attention from the realm of the spiritual to practical affairs of earth, these compensations changed from thoughts of the future world to dreams of the future of this world. The injured self-feeling dwells upon the economic or political inequalities which flow from the dominance of the ruling crowd. The injustices and acts of exploitation, which are certainly neither new nor rare occurrences in human relations, are seized upon as if it were these things, not the assumption to superiority, which were the issue at stake.
At the time of the French Revolution the Third Estate, or Bourgeois, which showed itself quite as capable of exploiting the poor as ever were the older aristocrats, saw itself only as part of the wronged and exploited "people." The sufferings of the poor, which it was frequently even then profiting in quite as heartily, to say the least, as the titled nobility, were represented as the grievance of all mankind against the hated nobility. That the ideas of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" which these good tradesmen preached may easily become the sort of compensatory ideas we have been discussing is shown by the fact of the genuine astonishment and indignation of the burghers when later their employees made use of this same phrase in the struggles between labor and capital. Sans-culottism had quite as many psychological motives as economic behind it.
How pompous, hateful, and snobbish were those titled folk with their powdered wigs, carriages, fine clothes, and their exclusive social gatherings to which honest citizens, often quite as wealthy as themselves, were not invited. If the "people"—that is, the burghers themselves—only had a chance they would be just as fine ladies and gentlemen as those who merely inherited their superiority. Down with the aristocrats! All men were equal and always had been. There must be fraternity and the carier ouvert les talents, in other words, brotherhood and free competition.
I am sure, from all I have ever seen or read of social revolt and unrest, that this injured self-feeling, or defense against the sense of personal inferiority, while not the only motive, is the most powerful one at work. It crops out everywhere, in the laymans hatred of the clergy during the Reformation, in that curious complex of ideas whereby the uneducated often look upon a college diploma as something little short of magical, and defend their ego against this ridiculously exaggerated mark of distinction and accompanying feeling of self-reproach by a slur at "high-brows." Few people realize how general this feeling is; the trick of making fun of the educated is one of the commonest forms of crowd-humor in America, both in vaudeville and in popular oratory. I have previously pointed out the fact that the religious revival in our day is to a great extent characterized by a popular resistance to scholars. No one can read Mr. Sundays sermons and deny this fact. The City of New York gave the largest majority in its history to the candidate for the office of mayor who made opposition to "experts" the main issue in his campaign. Scores of times I have heard popular speakers resort to this trick to gain favor with their audiences, and I cannot remember ever having known such sentiments to fail to gain applause—I am not speaking now of strictly academic groups, but of general gatherings.
The point of interest here is that these same people have a most extravagant notion of the value of the academic training which they encourage the crowd speaker in ridiculing. I have made it a practice of talking with a great many people personally and drawing them out on this point, and I have found that this is almost uniformly the case. F. B., a cigar maker by trade, says, "Oh, if I had only had sense enough to go on to school when I had the opportunity!" E. L., a mechanic, says, "I might have been somebody, if I had been given any chance to get an education." R., a sort of jack-of-all-trades, says, "If I only had N.s education, Id be a millionaire." B., a farmer with limited intellectual interests, says, "I tell you, my boys are not going to be like me; they have got to go to college." G., a waiter, says, "I dont know much," and then proceeds to impress me with the latest bit of academic information which he has picked up. C., a printer, who has been moderately successful, says: "Id give ten thousand dollars right this minute if I knew Greek; now there is —— and there is ——, neighbors of mine, theyre highly educated. When Im with them Im ashamed and feel like a dub."
When, on such occasions, I repeatedly say that the average academic student really learns hardly anything at all of the classic languages, and cite the small fruits of my own years of tedious study as an example, the effect produced is invariably comforting—until I add that one need not attend a university seven years or even four to become educated, but that nearly everyone with ability to learn and with genuine intellectual interests may achieve a remarkable degree of learning. The answer of the perplexed person is then often an extenuation. "Well, you see, a busy person or a working man is so tired after the days work that he has no energy left for study," or it is, "Wait till the working class have more leisure, then they, too, can be cultivated." Passing over this extenuation, which ignores the fact that some of the best informed and clearest thinking people one meets are working people, while the average university graduate leads anything but an intellectual life, it can hardly be denied, I think, that our crowd cult of anti-"highbrowism" is really a defense mechanism against an inner feeling of inferiority. Now the interesting thing about this feeling of inferiority is the exaggerated notion of the superiority of the college-trained, which is entertained chiefly by the uneducated themselves. What appears here is in fact nothing other than a cheapening of the idea of superiority. Personal excellence is something which anyone may attain; it is not something congenital, but something to be added on; one "gets an education," possesses something of advantage, merely by a few years of conventional study of books. Anyone might do that, therefore. "I, too, if I only cared to, or had been given opportunity, might now be famous." "The difference between myself and the worlds greatest genius is not a spiritual chasm which I could not myself, at least hypothetically, cross." "It is rather an acquired character, a mere fruit of special opportunity—which in a few cases it doubtless may be—but it is something external; at bottom we are all equal."
Many facts may be advanced to corroborate the results of our analysis here. The crowd always resents the Carlyle, William James, Nietzsche, Goethe theory of genius. Genius is not congenital superiority. It is the result of hard work. The genius is not a unique personal fact, he is a "representative man." He says just what his age is thinking. The inarticulate message of his contemporaries simply becomes articulate in some one, and behold a genius. In other words, I suppose, all Vienna, messenger boys and bootblacks especially, were suddenly fascinated by Schillers "Ode to Joy" and went about whistling improvised musical renderings of the theme of this poem, till the deaf Beethoven heard and wrote these whistlings down in the form of the Ninth Symphony.