believe in
youth, we scorn age. We have splendid enthusiasm, we do not know what
wisdom means. One hears college presidents say--half jokingly, of
course--that there is no use appointing a man over thirty to the faculty
these days. So one hears Christian ministers, in those denominations
where the minister is called by the particular church, say there is no
use trying to get another call after one is fifty! Of course, it is not
true, but it is true enough to be a serious criticism upon us. For what
other vocation is there where the mellowness that comes only from time
and long experience, from presiding at weddings and standing beside open
graves, sharing the joys and sorrows of innumerable persons, is so
indispensable, as in the pastor, the physician of the spirit? Still, we
will turn out some wise, shy, mellow old man, just ripened to the point
of being the true minister to the souls of others, and replace him with
a recent graduate of a theological school, because the latter can talk
the language of the higher criticism or whatever else happens to
interest us for the moment. Obviously, we pay the price, but think what
it indicates of our civilization.

XVII

THE DILEMMA OF DEMOCRACY

We have seen that the gravest menaces of democracy are the faults in
mind and character in the multitude. Selfishness, fickleness,
ignorance, irreverence in the people, with demagoguery in the leader--
these are the menaces of American democracy. How then can the people be
trusted, since democracy depends upon trusting them? This is an old
indictment, searching to the very heart of democracy. Plato made it of
ancient Athens, while, more recently and trenchantly, Ibsen has made it
for all modern society.

The argument runs thus: democracy means the rule of the majority. Well,
there are more fools than wise men in the world, more ignorant than
intelligent. Thus the rule of the majority must mean the rule of the
fools over the wise men, of the ignorant over the intelligent. Such is
the significant indictment, and we are compelled to admit that our
political life is filled with illustrations that would seem to
substantiate it. The ward bosses, the demagogues and grafters who are
given power by the multitude, one campaign after another, would seem to
justify the pessimism of Plato and Ibsen.

Is there not, however, a subtle fallacy in the very phrasing of the
indictment? The majority does not "rule": it elects re