There is really no solid basis in fact or theory for the view that established democracy is the rule of an irresponsible crowd. If not true of America, it fails as a general principle; and no authoritative observer has found it to be the case here. Those who hold the crowd-theory seem to be chiefly writers, whether French or not, who generalize from the history of France. Without attempting any discussion of this, I may suggest one or two points that we are perhaps apt to overlook. It is, for one thing, by no means clear that French democracy has shown itself to lack the power of self-control and deliberate progress. Its difficulties—the presence of ancient class divisions, of inevitable militarism, and the like—have been immeasurably greater than ours, and its spirit one with which we do not readily sympathize. France, I suppose, is little understood in England or the United States, and we probably get our views too much from a school of French writers whose zeal to correct her faults may tend to exaggerate them. The more notorious excesses of the French or Parisian populace—such as are real and not a fiction of hostile critics—seem to have sprung from that exercise of power without training inevitable in a country where democracy had to come by revolution. And, again, a certain tendency to act in masses, and lack of vigorous local and private initiative, which appears to characterize France, is much older than the Revolution, and seems due partly to race traits and partly to such historical conditions as the centralized structure inherited from absolute monarchy. FOOTNOTES: [71] Scipio Sighele, La folla delinquente. French translation La foule criminelle. [72] Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie des foules. English translation The Crowd. The whole subject, including the question of “prophylactics” against the mob-mind, is well discussed in Professor E. A. Ross’s Social Psychology. [73] Whately in his note to Bacon’s essay on Discourse. [74] Attributed to the Earl of Roscommon. See Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Sir Thomas Browne characteristically describes the multitude as “that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.” Religio Medici, part ii, sec. 1. This is the very man that urged the burning of witches after the multitude was ready to give it up. CHAPTER XV DEMOCRACY AND DISTINCTION THE PROBLEM—DEMOCRACY SHOULD BE DISTINGUISHED FROM TRANSITION—THE DEAD-LEVEL THEORY OF DEMOCRACY—CONFUSION AND ITS EFFECTS—“INDIVIDUALISM” MAY NOT BE FAVORABLE TO DISTINGUISHED INDIVIDUALITY—CONTEMPORARY UNIFORMITY—RELATIVE ADVANTAGES OF AMERICA AND EUROPE—HASTE, SUPERFICIALITY, STRAIN—SPIRITUAL ECONOMY OF A SETTLED ORDER—COMMERCIALISM—ZEAL FOR DIFFUSION—CONCLUSION.