crats set to work most vigorously on the
education of the people. The result is that the people is much better
educated than formerly, and I am one of those who regard this result as
excellent; but the further result is, that the people is saturated
with false ideas, and this is less comforting.

Ancient republics had their demagogues, their orators, who inflamed the
evil qualities of the people, by bestowing on them high-sounding names
and by flattery. The great democracy of modern times has its demagogues.
These are its elementary school teachers. They come of the people, are
proud to belong to it, for which of course no one can blame them, they
distrust everything that is not the people, they are all the more of the
people because among the people they are intellectually in the first
rank while elsewhere they are of secondary importance; and what men love
is not the group of which they form a part, but the group of which they
are the chief. They are, therefore, profoundly democratic.

So far nothing could be better. But it is a narrow form of democratic
sentiment which they hold, for they are only half-educated, or rather
(for who is completely educated or even well educated?), because they
have only received a rudimentary education. Rudimentary education may
perhaps make us capable of having one idea, it certainly renders us
incapable of having two. The man of rudimentary education is always the
man of one single idea and of one fixed idea. He has few doubts. Now the
wise man doubts often, the ignorant man seldom, the fool never. The man
of one idea is more or less impermeable to any process of reasoning that
is foreign to this idea. An Indian author has said: "You can convince
the wise; you can convince, with more difficulty, the ignorant; the
half-educated, never."

Now no one ever convinces the elementary schoolmaster. He is confirmed
in his convictions by defending, and still more by discussing them. He
is the slave of his opinion. He does not possess it always quite
clearly, but it possesses him. He loves it with all his soul, as a
priest his religion, because it is the truth, because it is beautiful,
because it has been persecuted, and because it means the salvation of
the world. He would enjoy its triumph but he yearns still more to be a
martyr in its cause.

He is a convinced democrat and a sentimental democrat. His conviction
forms a solid basis for his sentiment, and his sentiment kindles to a
white he