Before we knew socialism, we used to say that democracy tended naturally to despotism. The situation seems somewhat changed, and we might now say that it tends to socialism: really nothing has changed. For in tending towards socialism it is towards despotism that it tends. Socialism is not conscious of this, for it imagines that it is journeying towards equality, but out of these utopias of equality it is ever despotism that emerges. But this is a digression which refers to the future; let us return to the matter in hand. CHAPTER IV. THE COMPETENT LEGISLATOR. Democracy, in its modern form, encroaches first upon the executive and then upon the administrative authorities, and reduces them to subjection by means of its delegates, the legislators, whom it chooses in its own image, that is to say, because they are incompetent and governed by passion, just as in the words of Montesquieu, though he perhaps contradicts himself a little: "The people is moved only by its passions." What ought then the character of the legislator to be? The very opposite, it seems to me, of the democratic legislator, for he ought to be well informed and entirely devoid of prejudice. He ought to be well informed, but his information should not consist only of book learning, although an extensive legal knowledge is of the greatest use, as it will prevent him from doing, as so often happens, the exact opposite of what he intends to do. He should also understand intimately the temperament and character of the people for whom he legislates. For a nation should only be given the laws and commandments that it can tolerate, as Solon said: "I have given them the best laws that they could endure," and the God of Israel said to the Jews: "I have given you precepts which are not good," that is to say, they have only the goodness which your wickedness will tolerate. "This is the sponge," says Montesquieu, "which wipes out all the difficulties that can be raised against the laws of Moses." The legislator, then, ought to understand the temperament and genius of the people because he has to frame its laws. As the Germans say, he ought to be an expert on the psychology of races. Further, he ought to understand the temperament, peculiarities and character of the people, without sharing its temperament himself. For where the passions and inclinations are concerned, experience is not knowledge. On the contrary, experience prevents us from really knowing; and indeed one of the conditions of knowledge is absence of an experience which may be another word for bias. The ideal legislator, or indeed any legislator worthy of the name, ought to understand the general tendencies of his people, but he ought to be able to view them from a position of detachment and to be able to control them, because it is his business partly to satisfy and partly to combat these tendencies.