120 MAN THE ANIMAL 



fashioning of the pattern of their sociality. The autocratic pattern 

 stems evolutionary from the patriarchal or matriarchal family 

 sociality. The democratic pattern was a slower growth that came 

 to full flower in human society as men progressed in intelligence 

 and power to reason, and in consequence developed the desire to 

 affirm the full essence of their being. The individualistic way 

 of life is a basic characteristic of the mammalian stem. To mould 

 it into practical consilience with the necessity for social organiza- 

 tion was a long, slow, and painful process. Actually the concept 

 that all men should have an equal share in making the group 

 pattern of law and government remained, with some exceptions, 

 largely a negative one so far as action was concerned until the 

 seventeenth century, though the abstract idea was much older. 

 Aristotle was perfectly familiar with it, and rightly held that its 

 denial was the most potent cause of revolutions. 



Actually the setting up and maintenance of an autocratic or 

 oligarchic form of government, as well as of any other form, 

 can happen only with the "consent of the governed," as the old 

 cliche has it. But there are two ways in which this consent can 

 be got. These are either through intimidation maintained by 

 force, or by voluntary agreement of the demos. Historically 

 and statistically the former technique has been by far the more 

 usual one, frequently camouflaged and sugar-coated, but not 

 less real underneath. The present autocratic dictatorships in 

 Europe, as everyone knows, insist loudly that they rest on the 

 voluntary consent of the people, but a lot of purging with 

 castor oil, gunpowder, and other even less pleasant pharmaceu- 

 ticals seems to be required to maintain such semblance of sweet- 

 ness and light as exists in the business. And the techniques of 

 the elections by which the popular will is supposed to be ex- 

 pressed in the dictated countries have their comic aspects, which 

 we can perhaps the better appreciate because they have such 

 marked resemblances to the modes open to the Negroes in our 

 deeper South to manifest their political and social' ideas. In short 

 Germany, and Italy, and Russia do not appear to ofl^er any real 



