POLITICAL FORMS AND FORCES. 327 



or turn against him ; and in extreme cases there comes an 

 example of &quot; despotism tempered by assassination.&quot; And 

 there is the final fact that habitually in societies where 

 an offending autocrat is from time to time removed, another 

 autocrat is set up : the implication being that the average 

 sentiment is of a kind which not only tolerates but desires 

 autocracy. That which some call loyalty and others call 

 servility, both creates the absolute ruler and gives him the 

 power he exercises, 



But the cardinal truth, difficult adequately to appreciate, is 

 that while the forms and laws of each society are the consoli 

 dated products of the emotions and ideas of those who lived 

 throughout the past, they are made operative by the subordi 

 nation of existing emotions and ideas to them. We are 

 familiar with the thought of &quot; the dead hand &quot; as controlling 

 the doings of the living in the uses made of property ; but 

 the effect of &quot; the dead hand &quot; in ordering life at large through 

 the established political system, is iinmeasureably greater. 

 That which, from hour to hour in every country, governed 

 despotically or otherwise, produces the obedience making 

 political action possible, is the accumulated and organized 

 sentiment felt towards inherited institutions made sacred by 

 tradition. Hence it is undeniable that, taken in its widest 

 acceptation, the feeling of the community is the sole source of 

 political power : in those communities, at least, which are not 

 under foreign domination. It was so at the outset of social 

 life, and it still continues substantially so. 



470. It has come to be a maxim of science that in the 

 causes still at work, are to be identified the causes which, 

 similarly at work during past times, have produced the state 

 of things now existing. Acceptance of this maxim, and pur- 

 suit of the inquiries suggested by it, lead to verifications of 

 the foregoing conclusions. 



For day after day, every public meeting illustrates afresh 

 this same differentiation characterizing the primitive political 



