Vll ON THE NATURAL INEQUALITY OF MEN 313 



asserted in words, but every moment denied by the 

 facts of nature, are things of which, as it seems 

 to me, we have rather too much already. If I 

 mistake not, one thing we need to learn is the 

 necessity of limiting individual freedom for the 

 general good ; and another, that, although decision 

 by a majority of votes may be as good a rough- 

 and-ready way as can be devised to get political 

 questions settled, yet that, theoretically, the des- 

 potism of a majority is as little justifiable and as 

 dangerous as that of one man ; and yet another, 

 that voting power, as a means of giving effect to 

 opinion, is more likely to prove a curse than a 

 blessing to the voters, unless that opinion is the 

 result of a sound judgment operating upon sound 

 knowledge. Some experience of sea-life leads me 

 to think that I should be very sorry to find myself 

 on board a ship in which the voices of the cook 

 and the loblolly boys counted for as much as those 

 of the officers, upon a question of steering, or 

 reefing topsails; or where the "great heart" of 

 the crew was called upon to settle the ship's 

 course. And there is no sea more dangerous than 

 the ocean of practical politics none in which 

 there is more need of good pilotage and of a single, 

 unfaltering purpose when the waves rise high. 



The conclusion of the whole matter, then, would 

 seem to be that the doctrine that all men are, in 

 any sense, or have been, at any time, free ;ui<l 

 equal, is an utterly baseless fiction. Nor does the 



