For this peculiarity in politics there are three reasons. One is that the connection between measures and the general welfare of the community is by no means so close or immediate as the connection between a watchmaker’s tool and the wheel or pinion to which he applies it. Social effects follow on measures slowly, and the tendencies of bad measures are neutralised by other causes. The second reason is that, as Mr. Spencer rightly insists—agreeing in this judgment with the wisdom of Dr. Johnson—the social ills which governments “can cause or cure” are far less numerous than many thinkers imagine; and the third reason is one with which we are already familiar, that the power of the many in determining what measures shall be adopted is, although not an illusion, less considerable than it appears to be. But whatever their power in this respect, the great point to remember is that it cannot exert itself or exist for any practical purpose unless the few provide it with the means of doing so, any more than a rudder has power to guide a ship unless some other power shall have set the ship in motion. The popular demand for measures, or the popular {248} choice between them, alike presupposes the few who will make the supply a possibility. And if the power of the many over supply is thus limited even in the domain of politics, in the domain of economic production it is more limited still, and in the domain of intellectual progress it is absolutely non-existent. Their true power is in their demand for completed results—for knowledge which they can assimilate, for dogmas logically stated, which reveal to them clearly what they already believe dimly, for food they can enjoy, for clothes that please their eyes, for commodities and appliances that minister to their comfort and convenience, for social security, for freedom, and for personal and national prosperity. In other words, the truth, when properly understood, is a truism. The many are all powerful in determining the quality of progress and civilisation because it is their own tastes and wants to which civilisation must minister, and their own qualities which civilisation must draw out; but of initiating civilisation, of advancing it, or even maintaining it, the many are absolutely incapable unless they have the few to guide them. They contain within themselves the things that have to be developed, but they cannot themselves provide themselves with the conditions of their own development. Without the few to assist them they could no more progress than a train of railway carriages could progress in the absence of the locomotive.