204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



them, and while one continues a laborer, the other may become a great 

 light, a Laplace or a Faraday. Your equal instruction has freed the 

 latent forces of superiority. The same is the case in the political field. 

 Joined to a universal instruction, the effect of the equal right of suf- 

 frage will be, not to suppress the directive power of the whole, the 

 superior authority, but to constitute it by an intelligent selection. 

 While universal suffrage still leaves the door open for natural superi- 

 orities, these in their turn finally bring about a new equality with the 

 level higher than before. This is the principal difference between the 

 struggle for existence in the animal kingdom and competition in the 

 human kingdom. The animal, which, by selection, has acquired a bet- 

 ter dentary system, transmits its superiority to its own line, but not to 

 other animals. It produces a kind of aristocracy. With mankind, 

 however, a discovery made by one people is finally spread to other 

 peoples. The error of demagogism and socialism consists in their 

 not asking whether the present inequality, which raises certain supe- 

 rior individuals or classes above the crowd, when it is natural and not 

 factitious, may not be the germ of an equal advancement in the future 

 for all. True democracy aims at universal elevation, not universal 

 depression, and to make power accessible to all superiorities, whoever 

 may be the man or whatever class may have produced him. If our 

 people receive such a superior instruction as we have proposed, we 

 shall have Chambers composed of men versed in political economy, 

 politics, history, and jurisprudence. We can not in this matter rely 

 upon the spontaneity of individuals, any more than upon primary in- 

 struction. At present, the more easy classes are almost as deficient 

 in true social and political knowledge as the masses. We complain 

 of the incontestable mediocrity of our governments. It comes much 

 more from the governors than from the governed. It is due to the 

 defective education of those who have the duty of directing, to our 

 poverty in superior men. But they say democracy is jealous. Envy 

 is a vice of aristocracy as well as of democracy. Has democracy in 

 France ever held out long against genius and talents when they have 

 manifested themselves ? Did it repel M. Thiers while he was living ? 

 Where to-day are any great political talents to which universal suf- 

 frage has refused its commission ? Knowledge, justice, and truth, 

 exercise a natural and inevitable ascendency over all peoples who are 

 not composed of barbarians. Individuals and the masses only ask to 

 obey whenever a natural authority exists and manifests itself. Wher- 

 ever superior forces do not govern, it is because they do not exist ; 

 where ignoramuses make the law, it is most frequently because no men 

 versed in politics are at hand. Where vice is the master, it is because 

 the civic virtues described by Montesquieu are rare or have disappeared. 

 If universal suffrage supposes men at the base capable of choosing, it 

 still more supposes men at the top fit to be chosen. — Translated for 

 the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes. 



