that the few shall not deal with the many as though the many, in asserting themselves, were rebels, nor the many attack the few, as though the powers of the few were usurpations. What is necessary is that each should recognise its own position and its own functions, and the position and the functions of the other, as being, in a general sense, all equally unalterable, and although admitting of indefinitely improved adjustment, not admitting of any fundamental change. And what is true of the social forces that are involved in the production of wealth, is true of those that are involved in political government. In political government, just as in the production of wealth, the power of the few has a root in the nature of things as indestructible as has that of the many; and though the few can produce progress only when the many can co-operate with them, it is not from the many that their power is primarily derived. In the domain of speculative knowledge this is self-evident. The ordinary brains are pensioners of the few brains that are superior to them; and yet the superior brains are powerless to produce social results, except in so far as the ordinary brains respond to what their superiors {375} teach them. So it is in economic production, so it is in political government. The power of democracy is not only an actual power; it is a power from which no society can ever wholly escape; but never—not even when nominally it reaches its extreme development—is it, or can it be, or does it ever tend to be, a power which is self-existent. It always implies and rests upon the corresponding power of the few, as one half of an arch implies and rests upon the other. The whole object of the democratic formulas popular to-day is to deny or to obscure this fundamental truth; and no greater obstacle to general progress exists than the prevalence of the spirit which the acceptance of these formulas engenders. If there is anything sacred in the rights of the poorest wage-earners, there is something equally sacred in those of the greatest millionaires; and if the latter are capable of abusing their power, so also are the former; but nothing will tend to prevent their abuse of it so much as the recognition that such an abuse on either side is possible. If there is any wisdom and power in the cumulative opinions of ordinary men, there is another kind of wisdom and another kind of power in the ideas, the insight, the imagination, and strength of will which belong to exceptional men; and these last, though they may give effect to what the many wish, do so only because they represent what the many do not possess. What is required to bring our political philosophy—and not only our political philosophy but our political temper—into correspondence with facts is not to {376} deny the power that has been claimed during this century for the many, but to recognise that this power does not stand alone, and that those other