Well, I will tell you. In the first place, by nominating officials it is already far on the road to controlling them, for it infuses into the body of the permanent civil service the spirit of the people to the exclusion of every other source of inspiration, and effectually prevents the civil service from becoming an aristocracy as otherwise it has always a tendency to do. Next, the people does not confine itself to electing its administrators, it watches and spies on them, keeps them in leading strings, and just as the popular representatives dictate to ministers the details of government, so also they dictate to administrators the details of administration. A _prefet_, a _procureur-general_, an engineer-in-chief under democratic rule is a much harassed man. He has to play his own hand against his ministerial chief and the deputies of his district. He ought to obey the minister, but he has also to obey the deputies of the district which he administers. In this connection curious points arise and situations not a little complicated. The _prefet_ owes obedience to the deputies and to the minister, and the minister obeys the deputies, and it might therefore have been supposed that there was only one will, the will which the _prefet_ obeyed. But what the minister has to obey is the general will of the popular representatives, and it is this will that he transmits for the allegiance of the _prefet_; but then the _prefet_ finds himself colliding against the individual wills of the deputies of his district. The result is what we may call conflicts of obedience which have extraordinary interest for the psychologist, but which are less agreeable for the _prefet_, the engineer-in-chief, or the _procureur-general_.