ernment by a few wise or noble people "aristocracy," is
evidently absurd, unless it were proved that rich people never could be
wise, or noble people rich; and farther absurd, because there are other
distinctions in character, as well as riches or wisdom (greater purity
of race, or strength of purpose, for instance), which may give the power
of government to the few. So that if we had to give names to every group
or kind of minority, we should have verbiage enough. But there is only
one right name--"oligarchy."

124. So also the terms "republic" and "democracy"[63] are confused,
especially in modern use; and both of them are liable to every sort of
misconception. A republic means, properly, a polity in which the state,
with its all, is at every man's service, and every man, with his all, at
the state's service--(people are apt to lose sight of the last
condition), but its government may nevertheless be oligarchic (consular,
or decemviral, for instance), or monarchic (dictatorial). But a
democracy means a state in which the government rests directly with the
majority of the citizens. And both these conditions have been judged
only by such accidents and aspects of them as each of us has had
experience of; and sometimes both have been confused with anarchy, as it
is the fashion at present to talk of the "failure of republican
institutions in America," when there has never yet been in America any
such thing as an institution, but only defiance of institution; neither
any such thing as a _res-publica_, but only a multitudinous
_res-privata_; every man for himself. It is not republicanism which
fails now in America; it is your model science of political economy,
brought to its perfect practice. There you may see competition, and the
"law of demand and supply" (especially in paper), in beautiful and
unhindered operation.[64] Lust of wealth, and trust in it; vulgar faith
in magnitude and multitude, instead of nobleness; besides that
faith natural to backwoodsmen--"lucum ligna,"[65]--perpetual
self-contemplation, issuing in passionate vanity; total ignorance of the
finer and higher arts, and of all that they teach and bestow; and the
discontent of energetic minds unoccupied, frantic with hope of
uncomprehended change, and progress they know not whither;[66]--these
are the things that have "failed" in America; and yet not altogether
failed--it is not collapse, but collision; the greatest railroad
accident on record, with fire cau