IMPOSSIBLE FREEDOM 379 



frequently used to indicate their specific nature Book iv 

 such phrases as "the emancipation'" and "the 

 economic freedom" of the labourer. These phrases, 

 if they have any meaning at all, can mean one thing 

 only the emancipation of the average man, 

 endowed with average capacities, from the control, 

 from the guidance, or, in other words, from the help, 

 of any man or men whose capacities are above the 

 average whose speculative abilities are exception- 

 ally keen, whose inventive abilities are exceptionally 

 great, whose judgments are exceptionally sound, 

 and whose powers of will, enterprise, and initiative 

 are exceptionally strong. That is to say, these 

 phrases, if they have any meaning at all, mean the 

 deliberate loss and rejection, by the less efficient 

 majority of mankind, of any advantage that might 

 come to it from the powers of the more efficient 

 minority. " Economic freedom" in fact, would mean 

 economic poverty; and the "emancipation' 1 '' of the 

 average man would merely be the emancipation 

 which a blind man achieves when he breaks away 

 from his guide. The human race progresses be- 

 cause and when the strongest human powers and 

 the highest human faculties lead it ; such powers 

 and faculties are embodied in and monopolised by 

 a minority of exceptional men ; these men enable 

 the majority to progress, only on condition that the 

 majority submit themselves to their control ; and 

 if all the ruling classes of to-day could be disposed 

 of in a single massacre, and nobody left but those 

 who at present call themselves the workers, these 



