Causes and Consequences

by John Jay Chapman

A multiplication of institutions then serves two contradictory purposes. It limits the individual, creates black spots of prejudice and unreason in him; but on the other hand it encourages a free development of the individual outside of those spots. It creates types, and types are mutually protective. This is only another way of saying that free government results from a segregation of the government into provinces, which cannot all be captured, at one time, by one force.

The highly intelligent and artificial separation of our government into the branches of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial was in a sense an attempt to get free government by the erection of independent institutions. But these were never strong enough to create types (we have hardly the type of judge among us); and certainly no attachment to any part, but the sacredness of the entire system, has preserved it. It was the sentiment attaching to the single idea of a central government.

It is to institutions that the consent to be governed is given. The consent is always a highly complex affair. It implies a civilization. It is qualified, limited, infinitely diversified, and is in every case regulated by historic fact. For instance, under a limited monarchy, it is a consent to be governed by a particular dynasty after special ceremonies, tempered by some priesthood, subject to such and such customs,—each and all existing in the imagination of the subject. For government is entirely a matter of the imagination, and it is inconceivable that it should ever be anything else. The English have spent two centuries in impressing the imagination of India with the vision of English power. A violation by the government, no matter how strong, of the popular imagination, an assumption of power in a field not yet subdued, always brings on riots. The Persians resented furiously the creation of a tobacco monopoly. The Sultan had to rescind it. The Americans threw the tea into the harbor.

The forms and modes by which government is carried on are the record of things to which people have consented, and hence become important, become symbols so identified with power that almost all historical writing deals with them as entities. The power of the symbols in any case varies inversely to the power of the people for self-government, that is, to the average differentiation between individuals; or to put the thing the other way, the extent to which a man will permit another to rule him depends upon his incapacity to rule himself.

The great unifying forces have always been regarded as dangers to free government. War makes a nation a unit. It cannot be conducted by individualism. Religion condenses power. That is the reason why our ancestors were so afraid of a State church. Commerce has generally been thought a blessing because commerce gives scope to individualism. It enriches and educates. Yet commerce itself may bring in tyranny. Witness Venice. Commerce has centralized our government. Anything that affects everybody’s mind with the same appeal strengthens government and makes for unity. A nation only exists by virtue of such general appeals. It is inside of and subordinate to this general unity of feeling that individualism must go on. The rulers of mankind are men who have got control of the symbols, of the institutions, which stood in the imagination of the people as most important, and who by manipulating them extended their range over the popular imagination. Or to put the thing a little differently, the passions of the people are reflected in ever-changing institutions. The people seize a man and force him to do their bidding and rule them in such manner as to assuage their passions. They make a saint out of Lincoln, and a devil out of Torquemada.

If a man seems to be a great man, and seems to be leading the people, it is because he knows the people better than they know themselves. There was never a people yet that did not in this sense govern themselves, being themselves governed by the resultant of their dominant passions. The Southern Pacific Railroad has for years owned the State of California as completely as if it had bought it from a tyrant who ruled over a population of slaves. It was done by the purchase of votes. In so far as virtue shall regain predominance in the breast of the voter and set him free, virtue will replace money in the voting, and set free the State.

Universal suffrage is a mode and a symbol. Under certain conditions of education people must have it. Under others they cannot have it. But whether they have it or not, they will be ruled by their ruling passion, and if this renders them alike in character, their government will be a tyranny. If the reign of the passion be tempered, the reign of the tyrant will be tempered. Express the thing in terms of human feeling (and what else is there?) and universal suffrage is seen as a quantité négligeable.

It is thus apparent that there is no institution that cannot easily be made to operate to a contradictory end. The criminal courts here have been used to collect debt. There is no wickedness to which the enginery of the Christian Church has not at one time or another been lent. The passions of a period run its institutions as easily as a stream turns any sort of a mill. To-day the United States Senate is a millionaires’ club. To-morrow the Stock Exchange may become a church.

Now what is an institution?

It is a custom which receives an assent because it is a custom. Man has always been ruled by custom. The notion that there was a time when disputes were settled by fighting, and that arbitration came in as a matter of convenience, stands on the same sort of footing as Rousseau’s social contract. It is an academic jeu d’esprit. In looking back over history all we see is custom, and farther back, still custom. All the fighting of savages is regulated by custom and always has been regulated by custom. Nay, the bees and the ants are ruled by custom. The idea of custom is the one idea that the genius of Kipling led him to see in the jungle.