POLITICAL FORMS AND FORCES. 635 



not please them, to the present time, when, as we are told of Russia, 

 the desire of the army often determines the will of the Czar, there 

 have been many illustrations of the truth that an autocrat is politically 

 strong or weak according as many or few of the influential classes give 

 him their support ; and that even the sentiments of those who are po- 

 litically prostrate greatly affect the political action : instance the influ- 

 ence of Turkish fanaticism over the decisions of the Sultan. 



A number of facts must be remembered if we are rightly to esti- 

 mate the power of the aggregate will in comparison with the power of 

 the autocrat's will. There is the fact that the autocrat is obliged to 

 respect and maintain the great mass of institutions and laws produced 

 by past sentiments and ideas, which have acquired a religious sanction ; 

 so that, as in ancient Egypt, dynasties of despots live and die and leave 

 the social order essentially iinchanged. There is the fact that a serious 

 change of the social order, at variance with general feeling, is likely 

 afterward to be reversed, as when, in Egypt, Amenhotep IV, spite of 

 a rebellion, succeeded in establishing a new religion, which was abol- 

 ished in a succeeding reign ; and there is the allied fact that laws 

 much at variance with the general will prove abortive, as, for instance, 

 the sumj)tuary laws made by mediaeval kings, which, continually reen- 

 acted, continually failed. There is the fact that, supreme as he may 

 be, and divine as the nature ascribed to him, the all-powerful king is 

 yet shackled by usages which often make his daily life a slavery ; the 

 opinions of the living oblige him to fulfill the dictates of the dead. 

 There is the fact that if he does not conform, or if he otherwise pro- 

 duces by his acts much adverse feeling, his servants, civil and military, 

 refuse to act, or turn against him ; and in extreme cases there comes 

 an example of "despotism tempered by assassination." And there is 

 the further fact that habitually, in societies where an offending autocrat 

 is from time to time removed, another autocrat is set up ; the impli- 

 cation being that the average sentiment is of a kind which not only 

 tolerates but desires autocracy. That, which is by some called loyalty 

 and by others servility, both creates the absolute ruler and gives him 

 the power he exercises. 



But the cardinal truth, difficult adequately to appreciate, is that, 

 while the forms and laws of each society are the consolidated products 

 of the emotions and ideas of those who have lived throughout the past, 

 they are made operative by the subordination of existing emotions and 

 ideas to them. We are familiar with the thought of " the dead hand " 

 as controlling the doings of the living in the uses made of property ; 

 but the effect of " the dead hand," in ordering life at large through the 

 established political system, is immeasurably greater. That which, 

 from hour to hour, in every country, governed despotically or other- 

 wise, produces the obedience making political action possible, is the 

 accumulated and organized sentiment felt toward inherited institutions, 

 made sacred by tradition. Hence it is undeniable that, taken in its 



