omen, they must not live without rules. Something of the same sort of
artificial exactitude, of course, is obtained in an army; and an army
also has to be in many ways monastic; only that it has celibacy without
chastity. But these things do not apply to normal married men. These
have a quite sufficient restraint on their instinctive anarchy in the
savage common-sense of the other sex. There is only one very timid sort
of man that is not afraid of women.

*****

III. THE COMMON VISION

Now this masculine love of an open and level camaraderie is the life
within all democracies and attempts to govern by debate; without it the
republic would be a dead formula. Even as it is, of course, the spirit
of democracy frequently differs widely from the letter, and a pothouse
is often a better test than a Parliament. Democracy in its human sense
is not arbitrament by the majority; it is not even arbitrament by
everybody. It can be more nearly defined as arbitrament by anybody. I
mean that it rests on that club habit of taking a total stranger for
granted, of assuming certain things to be inevitably common to yourself
and him. Only the things that anybody may be presumed to hold have the
full authority of democracy. Look out of the window and notice the
first man who walks by. The Liberals may have swept England with an
over-whelming majority; but you would not stake a button that the man is
a Liberal. The Bible may be read in all schools and respected in all law
courts; but you would not bet a straw that he believes in the Bible. But
you would bet your week's wages, let us say, that he believes in wearing
clothes. You would bet that he believes that physical courage is a fine
thing, or that parents have authority over children. Of course, he might
be the millionth man who does not believe these things; if it comes
to that, he might be the Bearded Lady dressed up as a man. But these
prodigies are quite a different thing from any mere calculation
of numbers. People who hold these views are not a minority, but a
monstrosity. But of these universal dogmas that have full democratic
authority the only test is this test of anybody. What you would observe
before any newcomer in a tavern--that is the real English law. The first
man you see from the window, he is the King of England.

The decay of taverns, which is but a part of the general decay of
democracy, has undoubtedly weakened this masculine spirit of equality. I
remember th