Nowhere is the impossibility of such changes more clearly indicated than in the phrases now most {379} frequently used to indicate their specific nature—such phrases as “the emancipation” and “the economic freedom” of the labourer. These phrases, if they have any meaning at all, can mean one thing only—the emancipation of the average man, endowed with average capacities, from the control, from the guidance, or, in other words, from the help, of any man or men whose capacities are above the average—whose speculative abilities are exceptionally keen, whose inventive abilities are exceptionally great, whose judgments are exceptionally sound, and whose powers of will, enterprise, and initiative are exceptionally strong. That is to say, these phrases, if they have any meaning at all, mean the deliberate loss and rejection, by the less efficient majority of mankind, of any advantage that might come to it from the powers of the more efficient minority. “Economic freedom,” in fact, would mean economic poverty; and the “emancipation” of the average man would merely be the emancipation which a blind man achieves when he breaks away from his guide. The human race progresses because and when the strongest human powers and the highest human faculties lead it; such powers and faculties are embodied in and monopolised by a minority of exceptional men; these men enable the majority to progress, only on condition that the majority submit themselves to their control; and if all the ruling classes of to-day could be disposed of in a single massacre, and nobody left but those who at present call themselves the workers, these {380} workers would be as helpless as a flock of shepherdless sheep, until out of themselves a new minority had been evolved, to whose order the majority would have to submit themselves, precisely as they submit themselves to the orders of the ruling classes now, and whose rule, like the rule of all new masters, would be harder, and more arbitrary, and less humane than the rule of the old.

THE END

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Original spelling and grammar have been generally retained, with some exceptions noted below. The original sidenotes have been removed, being redundant with the Table of Contents. I produced the cover image and hereby assign it to the public domain. Original page images are available from archive.org; search for “b21508343”.