222 



A RISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book III 

 Chapter 2 



Now in any 

 civilised 

 country few 

 governmental 

 measures are 

 really simple. 



Exceptional 

 men must 

 simplify them 

 for the many. 



activity and exceptional sharpness would be required 

 to rouse the sufferers to a perception of what caused 

 their suffering. In other words, democracy, the 

 many, or the faculties possessed by the many, are 

 incapable of initiation in any complex matter, or of 

 carrying out any course of complex action when 

 initiated ; and we may sum up the case by saying 

 that all corporate action in politics is less and less 

 purely democratic in proportion as the questions 

 dealt with are less and less simple. 



Now, as a matter of fact, in any civilised country 

 the majority of the measures which the Government 

 has to devise and carry out, however simple in 

 appearance, are very far from simple in reality. 

 Even when their details are few, the good or the 

 bad effects of them are certain to depend on a great 

 variety of circumstances, with regard to which 

 ordinary faculties can form no independent judg- 

 ment ; and if ordinary men are to express any judg- 

 ment on such measures at all which is not put into 

 their mouths by others and then uttered by rote, 

 these measures must be placed before them by 

 talented interpreters and advocates, who will reduce 

 the details to a real or apparent simplicity and 

 invest their alleged results with charm and an air of 

 certainty. 1 Accordingly, when we approach the 



1 This truth is strikingly illustrated by the history of the Home 

 Rule agitation in Ireland. Whether Home Rule would be advan- 

 tageous for the British Empire or for Ireland is a very complicated 

 question, and the demand for it consequently never became 

 genuinely popular until it was identified with the simplest of all 

 aspirations the non-payment of rent 



