Yes, the Democrat concluded, his country was best described as a democracy, even though the few ruled over the many in matters of substance, and the many ruled over the few in art and manners, and both were tyrants. He remembered Plato's definition—Plato the blasphemer—and it seemed applicable to his own time: "Democracy, a charming form of government, full of variety and diversity, and dispensing equality to equals and unequals alike." It was marvellous how men believed in their equality with other men, what self-confidence they possessed, and what assurance came to them from the oft repeated word liberty. "This is a free country, and I'm just as good as you" could be said by anyone, and was said by everyone, and as a result his back was a little stiffer and his head a degree or two more erect. Foreigners learned to say it before they learned to speak the language. The very animals seemed to understand it; it was Plato over again: "And the horses and asses had come to have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of free men; and they would run at anybody whom they met in the street if he did not get out of their way: and all things were just ready to burst with liberty."
The Democrat, you see, through his habit of looking at Things as They Are, had come to possess a lively sense of the ridiculous side of democracy—its inconsistencies, its unconscious enjoyment of words, its silly self-deception and placid self-satisfaction.
Now that you have seen the workings of his mind, you will easily understand, too, how the expression of his thoughts might provoke those who were always on the lookout for the red rag of aristocracy. And the fact is, that on occasion he did express his thoughts with great frankness and no little vehemence; and, as no one likes to be told his faults by even a friendly critic, he often brought the angry hornets of democracy about his ears.
Yes, and by your smiling you seem to say that he deserved it. And yet I assure you now, as I did in the beginning, that he was really a democrat. You must not mistake realization of the faults of democracy in operation for hostility to democracy itself. He had seen something of life in aristocratic countries, and was thankful above all things that there was something in the atmosphere of his own land which had the effect of making men look up. This virtue alone covered a multitude of the sins of democracy. There was something in his country more than the mere form of democratic society. Whether men got their rights or not, they knew they had rights, and anyone who wanted to make them consent to injustice had at least to take the trouble of giving it the appearance of justice. And not only were they possessed of a lively sense of their own rights, but the air was full of talk about other people's having their rights. Generosity and benevolence were abroad in the land. It was, to be sure, something of the sort of Sidney Smith's benevolence—the feeling which A experienced when he thought B ought to do something to relieve C's necessities; but even that kind was better than none. It was vastly important whether large classes of human beings acquiesced in being regarded as cattle—as they seemed to in the Old World—or not.
But if he had a vivid sense of the desirability of the democratic ideal, he had just as vivid a sense of the dangers of democratic practice. It was not difficult to see that the universal talk about making all men equal, vapid as it might be, was having an effect which could but make the judicious grieve. It was pulling excellence from her lofty seat to set her on a level with mediocrity. Democracy aimed at equality. But equality on a high plane was impossible. Certain men—most men—could not rise to a high plane, or would not. Those therefore who could climb were not to keep on climbing, but to remain at the lower level, or return from the heights, or assist those who were at the lowest of all. Not all could reach the mountain top; therefore let those who were able to make the ascent engage in assisting the great majority to attain the middle space of the incline. Not all could take a college degree; therefore let the college degree be brought within the reach of all. Not all could be gentlemen; therefore reconstruct and democratize the definition of the gentleman. In scholarship, religion, manners, in literature, in all the arts—in everything except the art of making money—democracy seemed in danger of fostering the mediocre, and discouraging the excellent. In its effort for breadth, it was encouraging shallowness. It might be that for the poorest, the meanest, and the stupidest, democracy meant individualism and opportunity; but for the brightest and most ambitious, it seemed to partake of the nature of tyranny. The main idea in Plato's Republic was the sacrifice of the individual to the whole. In the Modern Republic it seemed something like the sacrifice of the best to the good, the leveling down of the highest as well as the raising up of the lowest. Certain kinds of talent and effort were in great danger of neglect—the kind of talent and effort which had made nations live in history. If there was anything in the record of the past, if civilization was not on the wrong track, and if literature and religion and the arts were indeed the supremely worth while, it seemed plain that the encouragement of uniformity beyond limits was a crime against the race. The atoms of Democritus, streaming forever downward in parallel lines, would never have accomplished a world. It needed an Epicurus and a Lucretius to recognize that they must have swerved from their deadly course of uniformity. It took friction and collision to beget a universe. The democratic passion for freedom and equality and uniformity once fully realized, what deadness and monotony! And as for the boasted educating power of responsibility, there was as little chance for it in the frictionless machine of perfect democracy as under despotism itself.
Democracy certainly did savor of the machine; just as the object of machinery was to insure a uniform product without personal handling of each individual piece, so the object of democracy seemed to be in such wise to regulate the affairs of men that justice would be automatic.
The fact was, human laziness occupied great space in the foundations of the democratic spirit. There were other qualities also, of course. There was misapprehension. The democratic poor imagined ideal possession on the part of those more prosperous than themselves, and the democratic rich imagined the extreme of unpossession on the part of those poorer than themselves; and both forgot, or had never discovered, what Horace knew two thousand years ago, that the poor man was seasick in the hired skiff the same as the rich man in his private trireme. And there was the spirit of restlessness—the everlasting desire of the human animal for new things, and his perennial ignorance of the fact that a change of sky did not necessarily mean a change of heart. And of course there was human sympathy, the greatest of them all.
But the place of human laziness was great. Men shrank from responsibility; uniformity and automatic justice appealed to them. Democracy was a labor-saving device. The meting out of justice by and to individuals was difficult, and took time, and, what was worse, thought. It was much easier to legislate a form of equality, and have done with it—to press a button, have a uniform product, and not bother with hand-made goods.
Not that equality and uniformity were undesirable. The trouble with the popular democratic ideal consisted only in its exaggeration. The democracy of the enthusiastic multitude was an extreme. Aristocracy went to the extreme of inequality and diversity, and democracy went to the extreme of equality and uniformity. Both extremes were vicious; for vices are only exaggerated virtues. And vices are easier than virtue, extremes easier than the golden mean. To proceed on the assumption that all men could be treated as free and equal was easier by far than to recognize and study their inequalities and limitations, and to attempt the best for each individual; but the result was only a vicious approximation.
Let democracy recognize that there were two sides to the shield. The Democrat sympathized with the ignorant and needy, and believed that the more fortunate should make cheerful sacrifice to help them rise. As for himself, he would regulate his conduct among men on the basis of worth, not wealth or blood,