196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



self. 2. A power over others. 3. A public function exercised in the 

 name of the whole nation. Most democratic theorists see only the first 

 of these characteristics. The function of preserving individual liberty 

 within the state is, indeed, one of the ends of suffrage ; but, in voting, 

 I not only vote for myself, I also exercise a power over the domain 

 of other persons as they do over mine, just as much as though the 

 question were one of the conveyance of an estate, or the division of its 

 proceeds. This power over another, multiplied by the number of the 

 voters, or of the majority, may become something formidable. Hence 

 arises a second opinion that regards suffrage as a part of the power 

 allotted by a reciprocal contract to each associate in the great civil and 

 political society. Although this conception has a relative degree of 

 truth, it appears to us to rest on an incomplete idea of the state. The 

 state is not an arbitrary association, but one in which the members are 

 bound in an historical and organic solidarity. Suffrage further ac- 

 quires a third character, and appears as a social function, or a function 

 of the collective consciousness. By means of it, we may say, all the 

 cells of the political body are invoked to take their part in the intel- 

 lectual and voluntary life. But the idea of function involves the idea 

 of capacity to perform the function. 



To see in suffrage, as is nearly always done, only a single aspect — 

 whether it be the individual, or the contractual, or the social side — is to 

 lose sight of one of its three constituent relations ; the relation of the 

 individual to himself, that of the individual to other individuals as such, 

 or that of the individual to the state as an organic whole. In these 

 three pointsof view, the right supposes a capacity — 1. To govern one's 

 self ; 2. To exercise by the ballot a power over another ; and, 3. To 

 exercise a social function in the name of the state. This, if we are not 

 mistaken, is the real and complete conception that embodies in the 

 germ the whole philosophy of universal suffrage. 



The part of the state is not generally better comprehended than 

 that of the individual. The omnipotence of the state, falsely asserted 

 by the radical school, becomes in practice the omnipotence of majori- 

 ties. Actual democracies are simply the government of all by the 

 largest number, instead of the government of all by all. The confu- 

 sion which democrats here make of the universal right of suffrage with 

 the practical expedient of majorities involves grave consequences and 

 deserves to be examined. 



The ideal of a perfectly free society would be that every law in it 

 be the work of the unanimous will. Unanimity, the only adequate 

 form of general liberty, already exists upon a number of points. We 

 all desire to live in society, and to enter into the social contract ; and 

 we all prefer to live in that particular society which constitutes our 

 nationality. There are also some things within that nationality on 

 which unanimity exists. We all want roads and railroads ; and, ex- 

 cepting the thieves, we all want police and courts. But there is a 



