Читать книгу The Reign of Gilt онлайн

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In face of any and all obstacles, in face even of the determination of a whole people, confused by false education, refusing to be free and rallying to the defense of some beloved tradition of caste, Democracy marches on hardly more hindered than an epidemic by the incantations of a “medicine man.”

Inertia is characteristic of the great mass of human beings, whatever their stage of development. And if the combat against the instinctive, all but universal reluctance to change had no stronger weapons than the tongues and pens of “reformers,” men would still be huddled in caves, gnawing bones. It is by no effort of its own that a race or a nation moves. It is in obedience to conditions that cannot be resisted and that now gently and now rudely compel man to readjust himself or to perish.

Democracy does not appreciably advance by the energy and enthusiasm of those who believe in it any more than it greatly lags because of the machinations of those who secretly or openly oppose it. Energy and enthusiasm may hasten its formal recognition, its formal embodiment in written laws. On the other hand, adroitness may obtain a lease of formal existence for the outgrown institutions. But in neither case is the great essential fact of the progress of Democracy altered. This progress depends upon the diffusion of intelligence; and intelligence is not a matter of individual choice or even of formal education. If the eyes and the ears are open, if the mental faculties are normal, then wherever intelligence is diffusing, there the mind must be drinking it in. A sponge thrown into the water must become saturated. When intelligence permeates the masses, then out of the action and reaction of the common and the conflicting interests of an ever-increasing multitude of intelligent men there must begin to issue a democratic compromise self-government.