litical
arrangement from that generally assumed. We have already seen in the
discussion of the growth of great cities, that an analytical process may
absolutely invert the expectation based on the gross results up-to-date,
and I believe it will be equally possible to show cause for believing
that the development of Democracy also is, after all, not the opening
phase of a world-wide movement going on unbendingly in its present
direction, but the first impulse of forces that will finally sweep round
into a quite different path. Flying off at a tangent is probably one of
the gravest dangers and certainly the one most constantly present, in
this enterprise of prophecy.

One may, I suppose, take the Rights of Man as they are embodied in the
French Declaration as the ostentations of Democracy; our present
Democratic state may be regarded as a practical realization of these
claims. As far as the individual goes, the realization takes the form of
an untrammelled liberty in matters that have heretofore been considered
a part of social procedure, in the lifting of positive religious and
moral compulsions, in the recognition of absolute property, and in the
abolition of special privileges and special restrictions. Politically
modern Democracy takes the form of denying that any specific person or
persons shall act as a matter of intrinsic right or capacity on behalf
of the community as a whole. Its root idea is representation. Government
is based primarily on election, and every ruler is, in theory at least,
a delegate and servant of the popular will. It is implicit in the
Democratic theory that there _is_ such a thing as a popular will, and
this is supposed to be the net sum of the wills of all the citizens in
the State, so far as public affairs are concerned. In its less perfect
and more usual state the Democratic theory is advanced either as an
ethical theory which postulates an absence of formal acquiescence on the
part of the governed as injustice, or else as a convenient political
compromise, the least objectionable of all possible methods of public
control, because it will permit only the minimum of general
unhappiness.... I know of no case for the elective Democratic government
of modern States that cannot be knocked to pieces in five minutes. It is
manifest that upon countless important public issues there is no
collective will, and nothing in the mind of the average man except blank
indifference; that an electional system