Numbers make law, but goodness has nothing to do with figures.
Every fiction is self-expiating, and democracy rests upon this legal
fiction, that the majority has not only force but reason on its
side--that it possesses not only the right to act but the wisdom
necessary for action. The fiction is dangerous because of its flattery;
the demagogues have always flattered the private feelings of the masses.
The masses will always be below the average. Besides, the age of
majority will be lowered, the barriers of sex will be swept away, and
democracy will finally make itself absurd by handing over the decision
of all that is greatest to all that is most incapable. Such an end will
be the punishment of its abstract principle of equality, which dispenses
the ignorant man from the necessity of self-training, the foolish man
from that of self-judgment, and tells the child that there is no need
for him to become a man, and the good-for-nothing that self-improvement
is of no account. Public law, founded upon virtual equality, will
destroy itself by its consequences. It will not recognize the
inequalities of worth, of merit, and of experience; in a word, it
ignores individual labor, and it will end in the triumph of platitude
and the residuum. The _regime_ of the Parisian Commune has shown us what
kind of material comes to the top in these days of frantic vanity and
universal suspicion.
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