other directions and upon other
interests, is the subject of equal condemnation by the author. The
effect upon government, and the general tendency of the democratic
principle, are represented in such highly colored pictures as these:

'In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid to
real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things
throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power
among mankind.

* * * * *

'At present, individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is
almost a triviality to say that public opinion rules the world. The
only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of
governments, while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies
and instincts of masses. This is as true in the moral and social
relations of private life as in public transactions. Those whose
opinions go by the name of public opinions, are not always the same
sort of public; in America they are the whole white population; in
England, chiefly the middle class. But they are always a mass, that
is to say, collective mediocrity.

* * * * *

'Their thinking is done for them by one mind like themselves,
addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the
moment, through the newspapers. I do not assert that anything
better is compatible, as a general rule, with the present low state
of the human mind. But that does not hinder the government of
mediocrity from being mediocre government. No government by a
democracy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts,
or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters,
ever did or could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the
sovereign many may have let themselves be guided (which in their
best times they have always done) by the counsels and influence of
a more highly gifted and instructed One or Few. The initiation of
all wise or noble things comes and must come from individuals;
generally at first from some one individual.'

In all this there is too much truth; but it is truth which is wholly
unavoidable. Nor are the circumstances complained of peculiar to the
present age, or to the institutions which now generally prevail.
Democratic and representative forms of government have so