ute, and
at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which
shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious
light. A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any
account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go;
that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on
one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the
influences which these words are evermore, however
imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might hope to
gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these
nicknames the prejudices and passions of the many.

The chief instrument of this base art is no longer the public speech
but the newspaper.

The psychology of the crowd has been much studied lately, by Le Bon and
other writers in France, by Mr. Graham Wallas in England. I think that
Le Bon is in danger of making The Crowd a mystical, superhuman entity.
Of course, a crowd is made up of individuals, who remain individuals
still. We must not accept the stuffed idol of Rousseau and the
socialists, 'The General Will,' and turn it into an evil spirit. There
is no General Will. All we have a right to say is that individuals are
occasionally guided by reason, crowds never.

3. Several critics of democracy have accused it not only of rash
iconoclasm, but of obstinate conservatism and obstructiveness. It seems
unreasonable to charge the same persons with two opposite faults; but it
is true that where the popular emotions are not touched, the masses will
cling to old abuses from mere force of habit. As Maine says, universal
suffrage would have prohibited the spinning-jenny and the power-loom,
the threshing-machine and the Gregorian calendar; and it would have
restored the Stuarts. The theory of democracy--_vox populi vox dei_--is
a pure superstition, a belief in a divine or natural sanction which does
not exist. And superstition is usually obstructive. 'We erect the
temporary watchwords of evanescent politics into eternal truths; and
having accepted as platitudes the paradoxes of our fathers, we
perpetuate them as obstacles to the progress of our children.'[1]

4. A more serious danger is that of vexatious and inquisitive tyranny.
This is exercised partly through public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent,
anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who
is not content to be the average man. But partly it is seen in constant
interference with the legislatu