OCTOBEB 16, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



501 



of a continent. In the second place, democ- 

 racy has not until lately joined itself with 

 the educated classes for the promotion of 

 scholarship, because it has distrusted 

 scholars and scholarship for the reason that 

 in the past they have been the allies of 

 aristocracy. They have, in large measure, 

 vtralked hand in hand with the oppressors 

 of the people. The educated classes have 

 chosen to identify themselves with the 

 propertied classes rather than with the 

 propertyless classes. 



The truth is that most of the criticisms 

 of democracy are founded on a miscon- 

 ception of its character and of its mode of 

 declaring its will. Certainly, its most re- 

 cent critics, like Mr. Leeky, Mr. Maine 

 and Mr. Mallock, have confounded democ- 

 racy with universal suffrage, which is a 

 condition of democracy, but is not all of 

 democracy; and then have misinterpreted 

 the nature and effect of universal suffrage. 

 "One of the great divisions of politics in 

 our day," says Mr. Lecky, "is coming to 

 be whether, as the last resort, the world 

 should be governed by its ignorance or by 

 its intelligence. According to the one 

 party the preponderating power should be 

 with education and property. According 

 to the other the ultimate source of power, 

 the supreme right of appeal and of control, 

 belongs legitimately to the majority of the 

 nation told by the head— or, in other 

 words, to the poorest, the most ignorant, 

 the most incapable, who are necessarily the 

 most numerous." I deny that either ex- 

 perience or theory drives us to any such 

 conclusion. I assert that universal suf- 

 frage does not make necessary the pre- 

 dominance of ignorance, nor democracy in- 

 sistence upon intellectual equality. As 

 Professor Giddings has truly put it: "It 

 is not true that control by the ignorant 

 implies the rule of ignorance." The ex- 

 pression of the will of a democratic people 

 is the expression of a consensus of opinion. 



It is not simply the sum, or the difference 

 between two sums, of single individual 

 opinions each formed without reference to 

 any other. The vote of a democratic 

 people reflects a consensus of opinion and 

 judgment originated and molded by their 

 leaders. Hence, even if we should grant 

 that democracy means the decision of mat- 

 ters by the mass of ignorant voters, it does 

 not follow that their decision would be an 

 ignorant decision. 



Democracy may be either a form of gov- 

 ernment, or a form of the state, or a form 

 of society. As a form of government it 

 places direct control of all government 

 matters in the hands of the whole body of 

 voters, and no such government exists on a 

 large scale. As a form of the state, de- 

 mocracy acts through representatives and 

 its government is republican, like our own. 

 As a form of society, democracy lodges 

 ultimate power in all matters of soeietary 

 character and interest in the hands of the 

 whole body of the people. There is no 

 need of a discussion of these differences 

 here. For our present purpose we are con- 

 cerned with democracy as a form of society 

 and as a form of the state. 



Democracy implies equality, but not 

 necessarily equality of condition or statiis 

 in all directions. It implies equality of 

 civil and political rights. It may claim a 

 closer approximation than we now have 

 to social and economic equality. But it is 

 not true, even in the United States, as De 

 Toequeville thought, that "the theory of 

 equality is in fact applied to the intellect 

 of man." 



The observations of De Toequeville were 

 made at a time when democracy in this 

 country was socially and economically 

 homogeneous. At that time the economic 

 condition of one citizen was approximately 

 the same as that of another, and equality 

 assumed the aspect of identity or sameness 

 of condition in all respects. In a highly 



