The Cult of Incompetence Part 11

So the democracy receives no instruction that does not confirm and strengthen it in its errors.

For its good some one ought to teach it not to believe itself omnipotent, to have scruples as to its omnipotence, and to believe that this omnipotence should have defined limits; it is taught without reserve the dogma of the unlimited sovereignty of the people.

For its good it should believe that equality is so contrary to nature that we have no right to torture nature in order to establish real equality among men, and that the people which has established such a state of things, which is quite possible, must succ.u.mb to the fate of those who try to live exactly in opposition to the laws of nature.

Instead, it is taught, and it is true enough, that equality is not possible, if it is not complete, if it is not thorough, that it ought to be applied to differences of fortune, social position, intelligence, perhaps even to our stature and personal appearance, and that no effort should be spared to bring all things to one absolute level.

For its good, since it is natural enough that it should dislike heavy taxation, sentiments of patriotism should be reinforced; it is taught on the contrary that military service is a painful legacy left by a hateful and barbarous past, and that it ought to disappear very soon before the warming rays of a peaceful civilisation.

In a word, to use again the language of Aristotle, the pure wine of democracy is poured out to the people as it was by the demagogues to the Athenians; and from the quarter whence a remedy might have been expected there come only incitements to deeper intoxication.

Aristotle has made yet another wise and profound observation on the question of equality: "_We must establish equality_," he said, "_in the pa.s.sions rather than in the fortunes of men._" And he adds: "And this equality can only be the fruit of education derived from the influence of good laws." That is indeed the point. Education should have but one object; to reduce the pa.s.sions to equality, or rather to _equanimity_, and to a certain equilibrium of mind. The education given to modern democracy does not lead to this, but leads in the opposite direction.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DREAM.

What remedies can we apply to this modern disease, the worship of intellectual and moral incompetence? What is, as M. Fouillee puts it, the best way of avoiding the hidden rocks which threaten democracies? It is hard to say, for we have to do with an evil which can only be cured by itself, with an evil which is more than content with itself.

M. Fouillee (in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of November, 1909) proposes an aristocratic Upper Chamber, that is to say, one that would represent all the competence of the country, inasmuch as it would be appointed by everything which is based on some particular form of excellence, the magistracy, the army, the university, the chambers of commerce, and so on.

Nothing could be better; but the consent of the democracy would be necessary, and it is precisely these incorporations of efficiency that the democracy cannot abide, looking on them, not without reason, as being in a sense aristocracies.

He proposes also an energetic intervention on the part of the State to restore public morality, action for the suppression of alcoholism, gambling and p.o.r.nography.

Beyond the fact that his argument savours of reaction, for it recalls to us the programme of "moral order" of 1873, we must remark, as indeed M.

Fouillee himself acknowledges, that the democratic State can hardly afford to kill the thing which enables it to live, to destroy its princ.i.p.al source of revenue. Democracy, as its most authoritative representatives have admitted, is not a cheap form of government. It has always been inst.i.tuted with the hope, and partly with the expressed design, of being an economical government, and it has always been ruinous, because it requires a much larger number of partisans than other forms of government, and a smaller number of malcontents than other forms of government, and these partisans have to be remunerated in one fashion or another and the malcontents have to be silenced and bought in one way or another.

Democracy, whether ancient or modern, lives always in terror of tyrants who are always imminent or thought by it to be imminent. Against this possible tyrant who would govern with an energetic minority, the democracy requires an immense majority which it has to bind to it by the grant of many favours; it has also to detach from this tyrant the malcontents who would be his supporters if it did not disarm them by a still more lavish distribution of favours.

Democracy requires therefore plenty of money. It will find this by despoiling the wealthy as much as possible; but this is a very limited source of revenue, for the wealthy are not a numerous cla.s.s. It will find it more easily, more abundantly also, by exploiting the vices of all, for all is a very numerous group. Hence the complaisance shown to drinking shops, which, as M. Fouillee remarks, it would be more dangerous for the Government to close than to close the churches. As the needs of the Government increase, as M. Fouillee predicts, without much doubt it will claim a monopoly in houses of ill-fame and in the publication of indecent literature; enterprises in which there would be money. And after all, tolerating such things for the profit of certain traders and annexing them to be worked for the profit of the State, is surely much the same thing from a moral point of view. And the financial operation would be much more beneficent in the second case than in the first.

M. Fouillee also argues that reform must come "from above and not from below," and that "the movement for regeneration can come from above and not from below."

I ask nothing better, but I ask also how is it going to be done?

Inasmuch as everything depends upon the people, who, what, can influence the people except the people itself? Everything depends on the people, by what then can it be moved except by a force that is innate. We are here confronted--we are talking to a philosopher and can make use of scientific terms--with a {Kinetes akinetos} with a motive force which causes but does not receive motives.

A principle has disappeared, a prejudice if you like to call it so, the prejudice in favour of competence. We no longer think that the man who understands how to do a thing ought to be doing that thing, or ought to be chosen to do it. Hence, not only is everything mismanaged, but it seems impossible by any device to handle the matter effectually. We see no solution.

Nietzsche really has a horror of democracy; only like all energetic pessimists, who are not mere triflers, he used to say from time to time: "There are pessimists who are resigned and cowardly. We do not wish to be like them." When he would not take this view he persuaded himself to look at democracy through rose-coloured spectacles.

At times, looking at the matter from an aesthetic point of view, he used to say: "Intercourse with the people is as indispensable and refreshing as the contemplation of vigorous and healthy vegetation," and although this is in flagrant contradiction to all he has elsewhere said of the "b.e.s.t.i.a.l flock" and the "inhabitants of the swamp," the thought has a certain amount of sense in it. It signifies that instinct is a force, and that every force must be interesting to study; and further that, as such, it contains an active virtue, a principle of life, a nucleus of growth.

This, though vaguely expressed, is very possible. After all the crowd is only powerful by reason of numbers, and because it has been decided that numbers shall decide. It is an expedient; but an expedient cannot impart force to a thing that had it not before. Motive power, initiative, belongs to the man who has a plan, who makes his combination to achieve it, who perseveres and is patient and does not relinquish pursuit. If he is eliminated and reduced to impotence or to a minimum of usefulness, one does not see how the crowd, without him, can obtain its power of initiation. Further explanation is needed.

At another time, Nietzsche asks whether we ought not to respect the right, which after all belongs to the mult.i.tude, to direct itself according to an ideal--there are of course many ideals--and according to the ideal which is its own. Ought we to refuse to the ma.s.ses the right to search out truth for themselves, the right to believe that they have found it when they come upon a faith that seems to them vital, a faith that is to them as their very life? The ma.s.ses are the foundation on which all humanity rests, the basis of all culture. Deprived of them, what would become of the masters? It is to their interest that the ma.s.ses should be happy. Let us be patient; let us grant to our insurgent slaves, our masters for the moment, the enjoyment of illusions which seem favourable to them.

So Nietzsche argues, but more often, for he returns on various occasions to this idea, led thereto by his customary aristocratic leanings, he speaks of democracy as of a form of decadence, as a necessary prelude to an aristocracy of the future. "A high civilisation can only be built upon a wide expanse of territory, upon a healthy and firmly consolidated mediocrity." [So he wrote in 1887. Ten years earlier he held that slavery had been the necessary condition of the high civilisation of Greece and Rome.] The only end, therefore, which at present, provisionally of course but still for a long time to come, we have to expect, must be the decadence of mankind--general decadence to a level mediocrity, for it is necessary to have a wide foundation on which a race of strong men can be reared. "The decadence of the European is the great process which we cannot hinder, which we ought rather to accelerate. It is the active cause at work which gives us hope of seeing the rise of a stronger race, a race which will possess in abundance those same qualities which are lacking to the degenerate vanishing species, strength of will, responsibility, self-reliance, the power of concentration...."

But how, out of this mediocrity of the crowd, a mediocrity which, as Nietzsche says, is always increasing, by what process natural or artificial can a new and superior race be created? Nietzsche seems to be recalling the theory, very disrespectful and very devoid of filial piety, by which Renan sought to explain his own genius. "A long line of obscure ancestors," he says, "has economised for me a store of intellectual energy," and he jots down in his note book certain suggestions, a little immature but still emitting a ray of light. "It is absurd," he says, "to imagine that this victory or survival of values (that is low values, values, that is, that seem to be mediocrity) can be antibiological: we must look for an explanation in the fact that they are probably of some vital importance to the maintenance of the type 'man' in the event of its being threatened by a preponderance of the feeble-minded and degenerate. Perhaps if things went otherwise, man would now be an extinct animal. The elevation of type is dangerous for the preservation of the species. Why? _Strong races are wasteful, we find ourselves here confronted with a problem of economy._"

We perceive, in this train of reasoning, some inkling of what Nietzsche is trying to formulate as his solution of the difficulty. What is needed must be a natural process, a _vis medicatrix naturae_. In the process of declining and falling, races practise a sort of thrift; they save and they economise. Then, if we may suppose that the quant.i.ty of energy of intellectual and moral power, _i.e._, of "human values" at the disposal of the race is constant, the races that so act are creating in themselves a reserve which one day will irresistibly take shape in a chosen cla.s.s. They are creating in their own bosom an _elite_ which will one day emerge, they have conceived all unconsciously an aristocracy which will one day be born to be their ruler.

We always find in Nietzsche the theory of Schopenhauer, the theory of the great deceiver who leads the human race by the nose and who makes it do and, as if it liked it, that which it would never do if it knew where it was being led. It is very possible; still it remains that economy carried to an extreme, though it can lead to a reserve of force, may also lead, and perhaps much more surely, to a condition of anaemia; the annihilation of one set of competent people in order to prepare the way for races of competent people in the future, I do not know if this is a game inspired by the great deceiver, but it is a game which to me appears dangerous. We ought to be sure (and who is sure?) that the great deceiver does not abandon those who abandon themselves.

I have often said, without thinking of any metaphysical mythology, thinking indeed of the ambitious people whom we meet everywhere, and thinking only of giving them some good advice: "The best way to get there is to come down." Nothing could be more philosophical, Nietzsche would reply; it is even more true of peoples than of individuals: the best way for peoples to become one day great is to begin by growing smaller. I rather doubt it. There is no really solid reason to support the theory that feebleness cultivated with perseverance results in strength. Neither Greece nor Rome supply examples, nor did the democratic republic of Athens nor the democratic Caesarism of Rome ever succeed in giving birth to an aristocracy of competence by a prolonged economy of values.

--They did not have the time.--

Ah yes, there is always that to be said.

It would perhaps be better to try to put the brake on democracy than to encourage this process of degeneration on the chance of a favourable resurrection. At least this is the course which presents itself most naturally to our mind, and which seems most consonant with duty.

When I say put the brake on democracy, it must be understood that I mean that it should put the brake on itself, for nothing else can stop it, when once it has made up its mind. It must be persuaded or left alone, and even persuasion is a rash experiment, for it dislikes being persuaded of anything but of its own omnipotence. It must be persuaded or left alone, for every other method would be still more useless.

It must be reminded that forms of government perish from the abandonment and also from the exaggeration of the principle from which their merit is derived, though this is a very superannuated maxim; that they perish by an abandonment of their principle because that principle is the historical reason of their coming into existence, and they perish by carrying their principle to excess, because there is no such thing as a principle that is absolutely good and sufficient in itself for regulating the complexity of the social machine.

What do we understand by the principle of a government? It is not that which makes it be such and such a thing, but that "which makes it act"

in a particular way, as Montesquieu has remarked; that is, "the human pa.s.sions which supply the motive forces of life." It is clear then that the pa.s.sion for sovereignty, for equality, for incompetence, is not sufficient to give to a government a life which is at once complete and strong.

It is necessary to give to competence its part, or rather it is necessary to give competence one part, for I do not wish to argue that there is any question of right involved, I only affirm that it is a social necessity. It is necessary that competence, technical, intellectual, moral competence should be a.s.signed its part to play, even though the sovereignty of the people should be limited and the principle of equality be somewhat abridged thereby.

A democratic element is essentially necessary to a people, an aristocratic element also is essentially necessary to a people.

A democratic element is essentially necessary to a people in order that the people should not feel itself to be a mere onlooker, but should realise that it is a part and an important part of the body social, and that the words "You are the nation, defend it," have a meaning.

Otherwise the argument of the anti-patriot demagogues would be just.

"What is the good of fighting for one set of masters against another set, since it will make no difference, only a change of masters?"

A democratic element is required in the government of a people, because it is very dangerous that the people should be an enigma. It is necessary to know what it thinks, what it feels, what it suffers, what it desires, what it fears, and what it hopes, and as this can only be learnt from the people itself, it is necessary that it should have a voice which can make itself heard.

This should be done in one way or another, either by a Chamber of its own which should be endowed with great authority, or by the presence in a single chamber of a considerable number of representatives of the people, or by plebiscites const.i.tutionally inst.i.tuted as necessary for the revision of the const.i.tution and for laws of universal interest, or by the liberty of the press and the liberty of a.s.sociation and public meeting. This would not perhaps be enough, but it would be almost enough. It is necessary that the people should be able to make known its wants, and to influence the decisions of the Government, in a word its voice should be heard and considered.

An aristocratic element is also necessary in a nation and in the government of a nation so that all that admits of precision shall not be smothered by that which is confused; so that what is exact shall not be obscured by what is vague, and so that its firm resolves shall not be shaken by vacillating and incoherent caprice.

Sometimes history itself makes an aristocracy--a fortunate circ.u.mstance for a nation! This forms a caste more or less exclusive, it has traditions, traditions more conservative of the laws than the laws themselves, and it embodies in itself all that there is of life, and energy and growth in the soul of a people. Sometimes history has failed to give us an aristocracy or that which history has made has disappeared. It is then that the people ought to draw one out of itself, it is then its duty to appropriate and preserve the high qualities to be found in men who have rendered service to the State or whose ancestors have rendered service to the State, who have special qualifications for each particular office and a moral efficiency for every form of public service.

These qualities const.i.tute the acquired apt.i.tude of an aristocracy for taking a part in the government; these qualities const.i.tute its adaptation to its social environment, and to its special function in our social machinery and organisation. One might say that it is by these qualities that _it enters into and becomes part of the organism of which it is the material_. As John Stuart Mill has justly remarked, there cannot be an expert, well-managed democracy if democracy will not allow the expert to do the work which he alone can do.

What is wanted then and will always be wanted, even under socialism where, as I pointed out, there will still be an aristocracy though a more numerous one, is a blending of democracy and aristocracy; and here, though he wrote a long time ago, we shall find Aristotle is always right for he studied in a scientific spirit some hundred and fifty different const.i.tutions.

He is an aristocrat, without concealment, as we have seen, but his final conclusions, whether he is speaking of Lacedaemon, which he did not like, or of Carthage, or in general terms, have always been in favour of mixed const.i.tutions as ever the best. "There is," he says, "a manner of combining democracy and aristocracy--which consists in so arranging matters that both the distinguished citizens and the ma.s.ses have what they want. The right of every man to aspire to magisterial appointments is a democratic principle, but the admission of distinguished citizens only is an aristocratic principle."

This blending of democracy and aristocracy makes a good const.i.tution, but the union must not be one of mere juxtaposition which would serve only to put hostile elements within striking distance. I said a "blending" but the blending must be a real fusion. Our need is that in the management of public business aristocracy and democracy should be combined.