reaching innovation. Laziness is not one of the motives recognized in
textbooks on political theory, because all ordinary knowledge of human
nature is considered unworthy of the dignity of these works; yet we
all know that laziness is an immensely powerful motive with all but a
small minority of mankind.

Unfortunately, in this case laziness is reinforced by love of power,
which leads energetic officials to create the systems which lazy
officials like to administer. The energetic official inevitably
dislikes anything that he does not control. His official sanction
must be obtained before anything can be done. Whatever he finds in
existence he wishes to alter in some way, so as to have the
satisfaction of feeling his power and making it felt. If he is
conscientious, he will think out some perfectly uniform and rigid
scheme which he believes to be the best possible, and he will then
impose this scheme ruthlessly, whatever promising growths he may have
to lop down for the sake of symmetry. The result inevitably has
something of the deadly dullness of a new rectangular town, as
compared with the beauty and richness of an ancient city which has
lived and grown with the separate lives and individualities of many
generations. What has grown is always more living than what has been
decreed; but the energetic official will always prefer the tidiness of
what he has decreed to the apparent disorder of spontaneous growth.

The mere possession of power tends to produce a love of power, which
is a very dangerous motive, because the only sure proof of power
consists in preventing others from doing what they wish to do. The
essential theory of democracy is the diffusion of power among the
whole people, so that the evils produced by one man's possession of
great power shall be obviated. But the diffusion of power through
democracy is only effective when the voters take an interest in the
question involved. When the question does not interest them, they do
not attempt to control the administration, and all actual power passes
into the hands of officials.

For this reason, the true ends of democracy are not achieved by state
socialism or by any system which places great power in the hands of
men subject to no popular control except that which is more or less
indirectly exercised through parliament.

Any fresh survey of men's political actions shows that, in those who
have enough energy to be politically effective, love of po