DEMO CRA CY IS DISG UISED OLIGAR CHY 187 



village meeting is never got together without the Book n 

 agency of some one who is slightly more efficient 

 than the rest. He need not be wiser than they. 

 He very frequently is not ; but he has some gift or 

 other which qualifies him for taking the lead. His 

 temperament is more active, his words flow more 

 freely, or he is hampered by less insight into his 

 own ignorance or imbecility ; and his opinions are 

 the nucleus round which those of the rest form 

 themselves, and which generally imparts to them 

 something of its own character, as a vinegar plant 

 does to the liquor in which it is immersed. 



Without some such nuclei afforded to the many Popular 

 by the few, popular thought is nebulous, and popular requires excep- 

 will unborn. An exceptional few are essential even nuc 



to those revolutionary movements which have the? 1 * 06 * 1 



destruction of the power of the few for their 



object. It is impossible for the many to attack 



one set of superiors, except by submitting them- 



selves to the leadership or dictatorship of another 



set ; and although these last may to a certain 



extent represent the multitude, it is usually just as 



true that the multitude represent them. The multi- 



tude cannot even unite to influence those excep- 



tional persons to whom is entrusted the official work 



of government without placing themselves under 



the influence of another set of exceptional persons ; 



and thus the extremest democracy will be found, if 



we only look below the surface, to be neither more 



nor less than an oligarchy disguised. It is, no doubt, 



true that those who actually govern do in a certain 



