20 



ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book i 

 and the con- 



In M. de Lavelaye's utterances there is an 

 analogous misstatement and misconception of every 

 fact with which he deals. The promises of political 

 democracy, as he describes them, were never 

 are ludicrous. ac }dressed to " man" nor ever professed to be. The 

 whole point of them was that they were addressed 

 to certain classes of men only ; and that, as addressed 

 to other classes, they were not promises, but 

 threats. But a still graver confusion arises when 

 the ''Sovereign" is spoken of as starving. If by 

 the " Sovereign " M. de Lavelaye really means 

 " Man " as a whole, it is perfectly obvious that the 

 " Sovereign " never starves. The statement is 

 equally untrue if the Sovereign is taken to mean 

 not man as a whole, but the immense majority of 

 men ; and to ask why the Sovereign often does 

 something which it never does, is not to formulate 

 an actual problem loosely, but to convert an actual 

 problem into one that is quite imaginary. The 

 actual problem is not why the whole or the immense 

 majority of mankind often starves, but why there 

 are nearly always small sections of men who do so, 

 the majority all the while obtaining its normal 

 nutriment ; and the absurd result of confusing these 

 two very different things is seen in the second form 

 which M. de Lavelaye gives his question. "How 

 is it" he asks, "that those who are held to be the 

 source of power often cannot, even by hard work, 

 provide themselves with the necessaries of life ? " 

 The answer is that the particular groups of workers 

 who, at any given time, happen to be unemployed, 



