494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



side of life literature, art, science, philosophy, philanthropy. 

 Shall any one say, then, with Renan, that " the origin of all civili- 

 zation is aristocratic," that it is " the work of aristocrats "?* On 

 the contrary, its origin is democratic; it comes of freedom and 

 self-control ; it is the work of toil, so despised and oppressed in 

 every feudal land. 



Yet it is heard on every hand that, as civilization advances, 

 political government that is, the restraints of feudal despotism 

 must increase ; otherwise the world will stop, and its lights go 

 out. The cry is not from the throats of ignorant demagogues or 

 rapacious politicians; it is raised by the most studious and 

 thoughtful. "Law," said John Randolph Tucker, before the 

 American Bar Association, " must grow with civilization, or," he 

 added, showing that he had yet to learn what civilization means, 

 "progress will cease, and the achievements of a people will be 

 unworthy of their genius and their character." f Although Mr. 

 Lecky has declared that the tendency " in the midst of the many 

 and violent agitations of modern life to revert to archaic types of 

 thought and custom will hereafter be considered one of the most 

 remarkable characteristics of the nineteenth century," he, too, lie- 

 lie ves it to be " quite true that the functions of government must 

 inevitably increase with a more complicated civilization." t Even 

 Mr. Godkin, who says most truly that "the best thing in the 

 world is individual freedom," and that " a man who is compelled 

 to work by law ... is to all intents and purposes a slave," holds 

 that " the world, through the increase of its offices and activity, 

 needs far more regulation than it used to need." * But the growth 

 of law, the increase of functions and regulations, the creation of 

 officials to correspond with both, is not progress it is, as Mr. 

 Lecky himself hints, retrogression ; it does not point to the future 

 it points to the past ; it is not the dawn of a better day it is a 

 return to the curse of the middle ages. No tribute to the purpose 

 of official machinery can hide its kinship with feudalism. Nor 

 can any sophistry blot out the fact that such machinery is only an 

 attempt to fit the institutions of that hated and decadent- form of 

 social life, whose object was the prosecution of war, to modern 

 social life, whose object is the cultivation of peace and industry, 

 as well as self-control. The current belief that it will be more 

 successful in the future than in the past is the most amazing 

 delusion that ever lodged in the human mind. There is no magic 

 in the diffusion of the irresponsible power of the one among the 



* Caliban, pp. 77 and 91. Quoted by Maine, Popular Government, p. 42. 

 f Proceedings, Milwaukee, 1893, p. 203. 



\ Democracy and Liberty, vol. i, p. 335 ; vol. ii, p. 228. 



* Democratic Tendencies. Problems of Democracy, p. 195, and Atlantic Monthly, Feb- 

 ruary, 1897, p. 158. 



