l spread disaster.
Leadership is the spark that ignites the charge, is responsible for its
driving force. In the days of real intellectual leadership the mastery
of ideas prevailed and Public Opinion was considered as the triumph of
an idea. But in our days of so called democratic equality the centre
of gravity of this power has shifted from the leader to the multitude.
De Tocqueville in his book "Democracy in America" [1] has a remarkable
page, illustrating this point. "The nearer the people," he writes,
"are drawn to a common level of an equal and similar condition the less
prone each man becomes to place implicit faith in a certain man or
certain classes of men. But his readiness to believe the multitude
increases and opinion is more than ever the mistress of the world. Not
only is common opinion the only guide which private judgment retains
among democratic people, but amongst such a people it possesses a power
infinitely beyond what it has elsewhere. At periods of equality men
have no faith in one another by reason of their common resemblance; but
this very resemblance gives them almost unbounded confidence in the
judgment of the public; for it would not seem probable, as they are all
endowed with equal means of judging, but that the greater truth should
go with the greater number. The public has therefore among a
democratic people a singular power which aristocratic nations cannot
conceive of; for it does not persuade to certain opinions, but it
impresses them and infuses them in the intellect by a sort of enormous
pressure of the minds of all upon the reason of each."

To this prestige of vast numbers Bryce has given a name. "Out of the
mingled feelings that the multitude will prevail and that the
multitude, because it will prevail, must be right, there grows a
self-distrust, a despondency, a disposition to fall into line, to
acquiesce in the dominant opinion, to submit thought as well as action
to the encompassing powers of numbers."

"This tendency to acquiescence and submission, this sense of
insignificance of individual effort, this belief that the affairs of
men are swayed by large forces whose movements may be studied but
cannot be turned, I have ventured to call it "_The Fatalism of the
Multitude_." It is often confounded with the tyranny of the majority,
but is at the bottom different though, of course, its existence makes
tyranny by the majority easier and more complete. . . . In the
fatalism