ative offered to the
civic mind, that the civic mind is not, generally speaking, conscious of
these other possibilities. The civic mind is not free or alert enough
to feel how much it has the world before it. There are at least ten
solutions of the Education question, and no one knows which Englishmen
really want. For Englishmen are only allowed to vote about the two
which are at that moment offered by the Premier and the Leader of the
Opposition. There are ten solutions of the drink question; and no one
knows which the democracy wants; for the democracy is only allowed to
fight about one Licensing Bill at a time.

So that the situation comes to this: The democracy has a right to answer
questions, but it has no right to ask them. It is still the political
aristocracy that asks the questions. And we shall not be unreasonably
cynical if we suppose that the political aristocracy will always be
rather careful what questions it asks. And if the dangerous comfort and
self-flattery of modern England continues much longer there will be less
democratic value in an English election than in a Roman saturnalia of
slaves. For the powerful class will choose two courses of action, both
of them safe for itself, and then give the democracy the gratification
of taking one course or the other. The lord will take two things so much
alike that he would not mind choosing from them blindfold—and then
for a great jest he will allow the slaves to choose.

THE MAD OFFICIAL

Going mad is the slowest and dullest business in the world. I have very
nearly done it more than once in my boyhood, and so have nearly all
my friends, born under the general doom of mortals, but especially of
moderns; I mean the doom that makes a man come almost to the end of
thinking before he comes to the first chance of living.

But the process of going mad is dull, for the simple reason that a man
does not know that it is going on. Routine and literalism and a
certain dry-throated earnestness and mental thirst, these are the very
atmosphere of morbidity. If once the man could become conscious of his
madness, he would cease to be man. He studies certain texts in Daniel
or cryptograms in Shakespeare through monstrously magnifying spectacles,
which are on his nose night and day. If once he could take off the
spectacles he would smash them. He deduces all his fantasies about the
Sixth Seal or the Anglo-Saxon Race from one unexamined and invisible
first princi