ARISTOTLE ON THE AVERAGE MAN 259 



But not only is the normal man the type of what Book m 

 is interesting and important in humanity. He is 

 also the type of wise conduct in life, and secures 

 amongst men in general a conformity to this 

 conduct, not by means of advice given by exception- 

 ally excellent individuals, but by the purely demo- 

 cratic pressure of cumulative class opinion. The 

 force which this opinion exercises is commonly 

 called " The World." The details of its injunctions Average 



, ,.,.. i // i rr i opinion also on 



and prohibitions are different in different classes ; social matters 

 and when it is called "The World," reference is 



usually being made to the pressure exercised by it P inion : 

 in the highest classes only. But this limitation of 

 meaning is altogether arbitrary. Every class is 

 " The World," so far as regards itself. It has 

 its own standards of manners, honour, prudence, 

 dress, and also of moral judgment as applied to 

 social conduct ; and it is in respect of all of them 

 incalculably wiser than most individuals who differ 

 from it. In social life even the greatest genius 

 is ridiculous, in so far as he is unusual in anything 

 except his greatness. 



It is, moreover, the same cumulative common and the 

 sense, the same spontaneous identity of perception faSJ shared 

 on the part of ordinary men, that forms, as Aristotle oL^ense the 

 says, the fundamental test of what is real. The test of truth - 

 world of reality is distinguished from the world of 

 dreams because the former is the same for all men. 

 It is o Trdcri So/cet. The same fact is the foundation 

 and the justification of trial by jury an institution 

 in which, as Sir Henry Maine has observed, we 



