EQ UALITY OF PO WER NON-EXISTENT 1 89 



selves, yet they can never continue to do anything Book n 

 of which their masters do not actually approve. 

 Now even were this representation of the case true, 

 it would leave untouched that broad and fundamental 

 truth on which it is the primary purpose of the 

 present work to insist. It would leave untouched Even were 



i 111 r i i this wholly true, 



the truth that the great mass of human beings are the current 



helpless without the assistance of a minority more 



efficient than themselves. If ninety-nine average f VOuld te f f lse> 



* o for unequal 



men, through the aid of a hundredth man who is men would ^ 



i j i i rr 11 essential to 



exceptional, can develop and give effect to a collec- executing the 

 tive will, which is altogether their own, and Tquais. 

 originates entirely with themselves, but if they can 

 neither develop it nor give effect to it unless the 

 hundredth man lent them his services, the power 

 of this one man is as essential to the power of the 

 ninety-nine, as it would be if the orders which he 

 executes had been largely originated by himself ; 

 just as a lens is essential to the photographer's camera 

 though its function is solely to focalise, not to colour, 

 the rays transmitted by it. Accordingly, even on 

 the above hypothesis, the modern democratic 

 formula, which makes each man count for one, and 

 nobody count for more than one, would, if judged 

 scientifically, be absolutely and fundamentally false ; 

 for the power ascribed by it to the accumulated 

 faculties of equals would be really the power of 

 equals united with the power of a superior ; and the 

 difference between the equals and the superior 

 would be at once apparent from this that if one of 

 the equals were subtracted, the power of the whole 



