gs that Aristotle
saw better than any one. He comments frequently upon the essential and
fundamental distinction between the two, and explains how it is as
dangerous to misunderstand as to ignore it. I quote the passage in which
he brings this out most forcibly: "A fifth form of democracy is that in
which not the law but the multitude has the supreme power, and
supersedes the law by its decrees. This is a state of affairs brought
about by the demagogues. For in democracies which are subject to the
law, the best citizens hold the first place and there are no demagogues;
but where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up. For the
people becomes a monarch and is many in one; and the many have the power
in their hands, not as individuals but collectively.... And the people,
who is now a monarch, and no longer under the control of law, seeks to
exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot; the flatterer is
held in honour; this sort of democracy being relatively to other
democracies what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy.

"The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule
over the better citizens. The decrees of the Demos correspond to the
edicts of the tyrant, and the demagogue is to the one what the flatterer
is to the other. Both have great power--the flatterer with the tyrant,
the demagogue with democracies of the kind which we are describing. The
demagogues make the decrees of the people override the laws, and refer
all things to the popular assembly. And therefore they grow great,
because the people has all things in its hands and they hold in their
hands the votes of the people, who is too ready to listen to them. Such
a democracy is fairly open to the objection that it is not a
constitution at all; for _where the laws have no authority there is no
constitution_. The law ought to be supreme over all. So that if
democracy be a real form of government, _the sort of constitution in
which all things are regulated by decrees is clearly not a democracy in
the true sense of the word_, for decrees relate only to particulars."

This distinction between true law, that is to say, venerable law, framed
to endure, part of a co-ordinate scheme of legislation, and an emergency
law which is merely a decree like the wishes of a tyrant, constitutes
the whole difference, if we could realise it, between the sociologists
of antiquity and those of to-day. By the term Law, the ancient and the
mod