t is interesting to note that the word
gerontocracy to which the ancients attached the most honourable meaning
is now only a term of ridicule, and is applied only to a government
which, because it is in the hands of old men, is therefore grotesque.

* * * * *

This disappearance of respect, noted as we have seen by Plato, Aristotle
and Montesquieu as a morbid system, is, regard it how we will, a fact of
the gravest import. Kant has asked the question, what must we obey? What
criterion is there to tell us what to obey? What is there within us
which commands respect, which does not ask for love or fear, but for
respect alone? He has given us the answer. The feeling of respect is the
only thing that we can trust, and that will never fail us.

In society the only feelings we obey are those which win our respect,
and the men to whom we listen, and whom we honour, are those who inspire
respect. This is the only criterion which enables us to gauge correctly
the men and things to whom we owe, if not absolute obedience, at least
attention and deference. Old men are the nation's conscience, and it is
a conscience at times severe, morose, tiresome, obstinate,
over-scrupulous, dictatorial, and it repeats for ever the same old saws;
in other words a conscience; but conscience it is.

The comparison might be carried further with results that would be
advantageous as well as curious. We degrade and finally vitiate our
conscience if we do not respect its behests. Conscience then itself
becomes small and timid and humble, shamefaced, and at length a mere
whisper. Absolutely silent it can never be made.

It becomes sophisticated, it begins to employ the language of passion,
not of the vilest passions of our nature, but still the voice of
passion; it ceases to use the categoric imperative and tries to be
persuasive. It no longer raises the finger of command, but it seeks to
cajole with caressing hand.

Then it falls still lower, it affects indifference and scepticism and it
puts on the air of the trifler in order to insinuate a word of wisdom
into the seductive talk that is heard around it, and it holds language
somewhat as follows: "Probably everything has its good points and there
is something to be said for both vice and virtue, crime and honesty, sin
and innocence, rudeness and politeness, licence and purity. These are
all simply different forms of an activity which cannot be wholly wrong
in