We corrupt
childhood if we tell it that it cannot be mistaken, and that it knows
more than its elders. We corrupt the masses when we tell them that they
are wise and far-seeing and possess the gift of infallibility.
It is one of Montesquieu's subtle remarks, that the more wise men you
heap together the less wisdom you will obtain. Radicalism pretends that
the greater number of illiterate, passionate, thoughtless--above all,
young people, you heap together, the greater will be the enlightenment
resulting. The second thesis is no doubt the repartee to the first, but
the joke is a bad one. All that can be got from a crowd is instinct or
passion; the instinct may be good, but the passion may be bad, and
neither is the instinct capable of producing a clear idea, nor the
passion of leading to a just resolution.
A crowd is a material force, and the support of numbers gives a
proposition the force of law; but that wise and ripened temper of mind
which takes everything into account, and therefore tends to truth, is
never engendered by the impetuosity of the masses. The masses are the
material of democracy, but its form--that is to say, the laws which
express the general reason, justice, and utility--can only be rightly
shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.
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