ing but heroism'! If too much is required of it, civic
virtue can be exhausted.

It is, then, very true that governments perish just as much from an
excess as from a neglect of their appropriate principle. Montesquieu
without doubt borrowed his general idea from Aristotle, who remarks not
without humour, "Those, who think that they have discovered the basis of
good government, are apt to push the consequences of their new found
principle too far. They do not remember that disproportion in such
matters is fatal. They forget that a nose which varies slightly from the
ideal line of beauty appropriate for noses, tending slightly towards
becoming a hook or a snub, may still be of fair shape and not
disagreeable to the eye, but if the excess be very great, all symmetry
is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all." This law of
proportion holds good with regard to every form of government.

* * * * *

Starting from these general ideas, I have often wondered what principle
democrats have adopted for the form of government which they favour,
and it has not required a great effort on my part to arrive at the
conclusion that the principle in question is the worship and
cultivation, or, briefly 'the cult' of incompetence or inefficiency.

Let us examine any well-managed and successful business firm or factory.
Every employee does the work he knows and does best, the skilled
workman, the accountant, the manager and the secretary, each in his
place. No one would dream of making the accountant change places with a
commercial traveller or a mechanic.

Look too at the animal world. The higher we go in the scale of organic
existence, the greater the division of labour, the more marked the
specialisation of physiological function. One organ thinks, another
acts, one digests, another breathes. Now is there such a thing as an
animal with only one organ, or rather is there any animal, consisting of
only one organ, which breathes and thinks and digests all at the same
time? Yes, there is. It is called the amoeba, and the amoeba is the
very lowest thing in the animal world, very inferior even to a
vegetable.

In the same way, without doubt, in a well constituted society, each
organ has its definite function, that is to say, administration is
carried on by those who have learnt how to administer, legislation and
the amendment of laws by those who have learnt how to legislate, justice
by