362 



The Journal of Heredity 



I do not know to what extent Prof. 

 O. F. Cook and Mr. Robert Carter 

 Cook find themselves in agreement with 

 Professor Conkhn's scathing indictment 

 of the present state of American dem- 

 ocracy ; but they have, in their article 

 in the Journal for June, 1919, launched 

 an indictment of their own against 

 democracy as it is, which, though much 

 shorter than Professor Conkhn's, is 

 more comprehensive and more formid- 

 able. They say: "The need is to give 

 special ability or usefulness a selective 

 value, to preserve and increase the fam- 

 ily stock, but our system works gen- 

 erally in the opposite direction of using 

 up and exterminating talent as rap- 

 idly as possible." and, in another con- 

 nection, "our tendency is to restrict 

 ourselves further and further toward 

 mediocrity and inferiority." 



The authors of these observations 

 reach a conclusion not less astonishing 

 than that reached by Professor Conklin 

 from his observations, namely, "Our 

 experiment in democracy is very differ- 

 ent from any that preceded it, in being 

 aimed toward scientific government." 



It is not incumbent upon me, I am 

 glad to say, to reconcile this statement 

 with Professor Conkhn's statement 

 about our contempt for specialists and 

 experts of every sort, or with his 

 declaration that "almost every citizen 

 thinks that he could solve complex 

 problems of government ranging all 

 the way from international relations 

 to parochial affairs better than those 

 who have devoted years of study to 

 them." 



I may dismiss this phase of the dis- 

 cussion by asking the reader to judge 

 in what measure the observations of 

 Professor Conklin. of Professor Cook, 

 and of Mr. Robert Carter Cook, when 

 considered in relation to the judgments 

 they found on them, justify the follow- 

 ing paragraph in my first article : 



"Those who assume the task of recon- 

 ciling the facts of democratic control 

 with its theory adopt an expedient 

 which places the whole issue beyond 

 the reach of reason. They lay down 

 the rule that democracy must not be 

 judged by its yesterday or by its today. 



but by its tomorrow, and that so fast 

 as tomorrows become yesterdays even 

 so fast must all adverse evidence be 

 discarded as worthless. Just below the 

 ever-receding horizon of time there lies, 

 almost in sight of those who accept this 

 rule, the pleasant land where education 

 and dietetics shall have made the ma- 

 jority of mankind into political units 

 from which there can be built up a 

 government of benevolence, righteous- 

 ness, and efficiency." 



It is when my critics, my supporters, 

 and myself seek to account for the exist- 

 ence of those evils which we unite in 

 deploring that we separate into two 

 camps, one affirming that the causes 

 lie fundamentally in the operation of 

 biological law, the other that they do 

 not, the negative position being taken 

 by the biologists. 



The real issue, when stripped of all 

 dialectical trappings, is whether good 

 government (however it may be de- 

 fined) depends ultimately upon good 

 human qualities or upon good political 

 machinery. If it depends chiefly upon 

 the former, all discussions of govern- 

 ment must be founded in biology ; if 

 upon the latter, the discussion must 

 center around constitutional law and 

 political technique. 



My own view is that since govern- 

 ment forms are merely the instruments 

 through which men administer their 

 public afifairs, the essence of govern- 

 ment is to be sought not in the shape 

 of the instrument — still less in its 

 name — but in the character of those 

 who employ it. 



Viewed from this standpoint the dis- 

 tinguishing mark of modern specula- 

 tions on government seem to me to be 

 a constant efl^ort to find in political ma- 

 chinery a substitute for human char- 

 acter, and a persistent determination to 

 attribute all failure in government to 

 any cause rather than to the widespread 

 distribution of stupidity and corruption 

 in man. 



It is a most curious circumstance that 

 Professor Conklin, Professor Cook and 

 Mr. Robert Carter Cook should de- 

 scribe the present state of democracy 

 in terms which imply a widespread dis- 



