The forms and modes by which government is carried on are the record of things to which people have consented, and hence become important, become symbols so identified with power that almost all historical writing deals with them as entities. The power of the symbols in any case varies inversely to the power of the people for self-government, that is, to the average differentiation between individuals; or to put the thing the other way, the extent to which a man will permit another to rule him depends upon his incapacity to rule himself. The great unifying forces have always been regarded as dangers to free government. War makes a nation a unit. It cannot be conducted by individualism. Religion condenses power. That is the reason why our ancestors were so afraid of a State church. Commerce has generally been thought a blessing because commerce gives scope to individualism. It enriches and educates. Yet commerce itself may bring in tyranny. Witness Venice. Commerce has centralized our government. Anything that affects everybody’s mind with the same appeal strengthens government and makes for unity. A nation only exists by virtue of such general appeals. It is inside of and subordinate to this general unity of feeling that individualism must go on. The rulers of mankind are men who have got control of the symbols, of the institutions, which stood in the imagination of the people as most important, and who by manipulating them extended their range over the popular imagination. Or to put the thing a little differently, the passions of the people are reflected in ever-changing institutions. The people seize a man and force him to do their bidding and rule them in such manner as to assuage their passions. They make a saint out of Lincoln, and a devil out of Torquemada. If a man seems to be a great man, and seems to be leading the people, it is because he knows the people better than they know themselves. There was never a people yet that did not in this sense govern themselves, being themselves governed by the resultant of their dominant passions. The Southern Pacific Railroad has for years owned the State of California as completely as if it had bought it from a tyrant who ruled over a population of slaves. It was done by the purchase of votes. In so far as virtue shall regain predominance in the breast of the voter and set him free, virtue will replace money in the voting, and set free the State. Universal suffrage is a mode and a symbol. Under certain conditions of education people must have it. Under others they cannot have it. But whether they have it or not, they will be ruled by their ruling passion, and if this renders them alike in character, their government will be a tyranny. If the reign of the passion be tempered, the reign of the tyrant will be tempered. Express the thing in terms of human feeling (and what else is there?) and universal suffrage is seen as a _quantité négligeable_.