1 84 ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book ii only have a will at all when their judgments with 



hapter 4 re g arc } to cer t a j n particular questions happen to be 



Opinions, to absolutely identical, and have thus a cumulative 



derive power 1-11 r i MI i 



from the num- force, like that or weights piled on one another 

 them W must be above some substance which it is desired to com- 

 press. Now, whatever may be the thoughts, wishes, 

 or opinions which spontaneously shape themselves in 

 the minds of any body of ordinary men men various 

 in training and temperament, and none of them 

 remarkable for wisdom these never take a shape 

 which will give them any cumulative power unless 

 amongst the ordinary men there is some man more 

 active than the rest, who weighs them, compares them, 

 eliminates what he thinks to be their discrepancies, 

 adds what is in his opinion necessary to their logical 

 completion, and clothes them in catching language, 

 which appeals both to the mind and to the memory. 

 Not till this is done do the mass of persons concerned 

 but they realise how identical their opinions on a given 



seldom are . 111 



identical till a question are ; and they then perceive them to be 

 manipulate^ identical for an exceedingly simple reason that the 

 exceptional man has made a mould for them, into 

 which they have all been run. 



It is then, for the first time, that the mass of 

 ordinary men become conscious of corporate power ; 

 for then they become, with regard to a given ques- 

 tion, conscious for the first time that their opinions 

 are absolutely identical, and that in a certain given 

 direction their power is consequently cumulative. 

 But the opinion of these men, whose numbers give 

 political force to it, is very far from representing 



