but a chronic raid, mitigated by the desire to
leave the inhabitants prosperous enough to be continually despoiled
afresh. Even this modicum of protection, however, can establish a
certain moral bond between ruler and subject; an intelligent government
and an intelligent fealty become conceivable.

[Sidenote: Ferocious but useful despotisms.]

Not only may the established regime be superior to any other that could
be substituted for it at the time, but some security against total
destruction, and a certain opportunity for the arts and for personal
advancement may follow subjugation. A moderate decrease in personal
independence may be compensated by a novel public grandeur; palace and
temple may make amends for hovels somewhat more squalid than before.
Hence, those who cannot conceive a rational polity, or a co-operative
greatness in the state, especially if they have a luxurious fancy, can
take pleasure in despotism; for it does not, after all, make so much
difference to an ordinary fool whether what he suffers from is another's
oppression or his own lazy improvidence; and he can console himself by
saying with Goldsmith:

How small, of all that human hearts endure,
The part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

At the same time a court and a hierarchy, with their interesting pomp
and historic continuity, with their combined appeal to greed and
imagination, redeem human existence from pervasive vulgarity and allow
somebody at least to strut proudly over the earth. Serfs are not in a
worse material condition than savages, and their spiritual opportunities
are infinitely greater; for their eye and fancy are fed with visions of
human greatness, and even if they cannot improve their outward estate
they can possess a poetry and a religion. It suffices to watch an
Oriental rabble at prayer, or listening in profound immobility to some
wandering story-teller or musician, to feel how much such a people may
have to ruminate upon, and how truly Arabian days and Arabian Nights go
together. The ideas evolved may be wild and futile and the emotions
savagely sensuous, yet they constitute a fund of inner experience, a
rich soil for better imaginative growths. To such Oriental cogitations,
for instance, carried on under the shadow of uncontrollable despotisms,
mankind owes all its greater religions.

A government's origin has nothing to do with its legitimacy; that is,
with its representative operation. An absolutism based on