252 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



lucidity, inquires into the ruling principle of democracy. He 

 notes that in the lower animal kingdom, and in the world of 

 business men, division of labour according to ability obtains. 

 In an ordinary business house, so he affirms, " each one does 

 what he has learnt to do, that which he is most capable of 

 doing best." The very opposite of this wise principle operates, 

 according to him, in a democracy : "it gave me little trouble 

 to discover that its principle is the cult of incompetence." 

 Not its failing, mark, but its principle. He reminds us of 

 that Athenian tribunal which condemned Socrates, adding 

 the biting comment that if his death were regrettable, at least 

 " the principle, the sovereignty of incompetence was saved." 

 Humorously, he describes how in the beginning the French 

 people, deciding that not every one of them could claim legis- 

 lative capacity, chose some of their number to select legislators. 

 Seemingly they did not hold the view which Protagoras attri- 

 buted to the Athenians, that " every man ought to share in 

 political virtue." This quaint French remedy he dubs com- 

 petence par collation — a phrase which his translator only once 

 attempts to anglicise. He glosses it with the remark, " the 

 crowd, or rather the constitution, imagined that legislators 

 elected by the crowd are more competent to make laws than 

 the crowd itself." With illustrative irony, he observes that 

 while a university may legitimately settle that a particular 

 non-graduate deserves a degree, only adverse circumstances 

 having prevented him from gaining it in the ordinary way, 

 yet if the whole crowd of non-graduates decide that one of 

 their number shall be decorated with a doctorate in mathe- 

 matics, " it seems paradoxical and not a little humorous." 

 He makes a qualification, declaring that the crowd should have 

 some power of choice, because though such choice does not 

 indicate " what the crowd is thinking, since the crowd never 

 thinks," it is a guide to popular feeling or passion, an element 

 which he claims should at least be represented in the high 

 places of the social organism. He seems partly to overlook, 

 or, at least, to underrate another valid qualification. When 

 we have unreservedly admitted the dangers of ignorance, cor- 

 ruption, and party passion, may we not also concede that 

 uneducated simple people, if they be straightforward, may 

 possess intuition for capacity and integrity in other men ? 

 For integrity? yes, says M. Faguet, but not for capacity nor 



