† This truth is strikingly illustrated by the history of the Home Rule agitation in Ireland. Whether Home Rule would be advantageous for the British Empire or for Ireland is a very complicated question, and the demand for it consequently never became genuinely popular until it was identified with the simplest of all aspirations—the non-payment of rent. And here before pursuing the subject farther let us look back for a moment, and consider the point in our argument at which we have now arrived. We have seen, then, that in the domain of modern industrial activity the many, if we estimate the total produced in terms of value, produce only an insignificant portion of the total. We have seen that in the domain of intellectual and speculative progress the many literally produce or achieve nothing. We have seen that in the devising and administration of governmental measures the many are powerful in proportion as the issues are exceptionally simple—that is to say, in proportion as they are few and far between. Now the reader may think that this brings us to {224} the end of our inquiry; but it only brings us to the beginning of what is really the important part of it. For though these conclusions, so far as they go, are absolutely true, they by no means dispose of the whole question which is before us, nor do they really reduce the social power of the many to such small dimensions as they at first sight seem to do. Thus speculative knowledge, though the many contribute nothing to its progress, itself contributes nothing to progress until the many are affected by it, and respond somehow to its stimulus; economic production, when regarded merely as an affair of quantity or as an accumulation of values—a process in which the part played by the many is humble—does not represent that process in its true social entirety; nor is civil government wholly an affair of measures which are devised, discussed, amended, demanded, opposed, carried, or rejected from year to year. We shall find, accordingly, that, in spite of what has just been said, there is room in social life for the operation of the genuine will of the many—of pure, spontaneous, and unadulterated democracy. We shall find that the power of this will, though it is in certain directions incalculably less than it is at present generally believed to be, is paramount in domains where its action is not generally recognised at all; and the nature of its action here will throw a remarkable light on the nature of all action which is in a true sense democratic. Of the domains of activity here referred to, the most important are those of religion and family life. {225}