Are the modern ideas of untempered democracy--Carlyle’s “despair of finding any heroes to govern you”--compatible with real representation, as contrasted with the mechanism of elective systems or the shams of paper constitutions? Can these ideas ever prove expressive of true nationality--the _character_ of a united people--as opposed to the conflicting instincts of unreconciled races, or the factious claims of divergent groups? Is not the mechanical subordination to the “State” of Socialism hostile to an individual “nationality”? How, in the ferment of modern progress, can the new wine be prevented from bursting the old bottles? How can government and free action, independence and inter-dependence, be allied in living reality? How can opinion be organised into allegiance to leadership? How can traditions be rendered less formal? How can discipline and development, authority and elasticity, combine? How can the machinery of national custom be brought into real accord with popular aspirations, and the mainstay of character with the modern speed of movement? “Certainly,” as Carlyle insisted, “it is the hugest question ever heretofore propounded to mankind.” In the proem to the _Revolutionary Epick_, Disraeli says that the French Revolution marks the greatest political crisis since the Siege of Troy. The paroxysm of that Revolution produced two hollow fictions, the “Rights of Man” and “the Sovereignty of the People.” Before illustrating the train of Disraeli’s ideas, let me touch on these two doctrines. _The Rights of Man._ What is the real meaning of a dogma which annihilates the duties of citizens in declaring the licence of their “rights;” in affirming personal claims as distinguished from popular or legal privileges; in destroying the community by exalting the person? It was based on Rousseau’s figment of a “Return to Nature.” All “Returns to Nature” are, if we reflect, a harking back to chaos, a denial of the whole self-developing social state which God has ordained for man. They are the protests of instinct against order, of “the People” against “the Nation,” of isolation against fusion, of “naturalism” against “spiritualism.” One way or the other, they signify relapses into brute force and animal conflict.