nse. We might then discover that the common will is capable of being
grossly immoral. So far it has been impossible for us to make this
discovery because no organ exists for expressing the common will on the
human scale, and even those which express it on the national scale are
not perfect. I am far from saying the discovery would be made; but I
know of no line of argument which rules it out as impossible. Meanwhile
we are scarcely justified in regarding the common will as necessarily
moral until we know more than we do of what precisely it is that the
common will aims at and intends to achieve. To back the common will
through thick and thin, as some of our philosophers seem disposed to do,
is a dangerous speculation--it might perhaps be described as putting
your money on a dark horse.

This leads me to say a word concerning a phrase which has been much in
use of late--the Collective Wisdom of Mankind, or the Collective Wisdom
of the State. Progress is sometimes defined as a gradual approach to a
state of things where this collective wisdom rules the course of events.
And collective wisdom is sometimes represented as vastly wiser than that
possessed by any individual, even the wisest.

Now if this really is so it seems pretty obvious that, when the
collective wisdom speaks, no individual can have the right of appeal.
What are you, what am I, that either of us should set up our private
intelligence against the intelligence of forty million of our fellow
citizens? That surely would be a preposterous claim. The collective
wisdom must know best: at least it knows much better than you or I.

But is the collective wisdom of the State so immensely superior to that
of the individual, and of necessity so? Have we any means of bringing
the matter to the test? It is extremely difficult to do so. Not until
we make the experiment do we find how rare are the occasions of which we
can say that then and there the collective wisdom of the community
fairly and fully expressed itself. Acts of Parliament are not good
examples. They usually represent not the collective wisdom of the whole
community, but the wisdom of the majority after it has been checked,
modified, and perhaps nullified by the opposing wisdom of an almost
equal minority. Take as an example the history of the Irish Question.
How difficult it is to put one's finger on any moment in that tangled
story and say that then and there the collective wisdom of the community
knew w