The official also is incompetent, though less and less often, in respect of moral worth. By the exercise of intellectual obedience, he has been trained to moral obedience also and he is little disposed to assert his independence. Observe how everything tends to this end. This method of co-opting officials by means of elimination, as I have said, operates only, as I have also shown, at the outset of the official's career. From this moment onwards the functionary must depend on the Government only, his whole preparation during ten years of education has been calculated to ensure his absolute dependence on his official directors. So far good, perhaps a little too good. It would have been well if the education of the functionary had left him, together with a little originality of mind, a little originality of character as well. * * * * * We have sought, very conscientiously also, and, I may even say, with an admirable enthusiasm, yet another remedy for the faults of democracy, another remedy for its incompetence. It is said: "The crowd is incompetent, so be it, it is necessary to enlighten it. Primary education, spread broadcast, is the solution of every difficulty, and provides an answer to every question." From this argument aristocrats have derived some little amusement. "How is this?" they exclaimed, "what is the meaning of this paradox? You are democrats and that means that you attribute political excellence, 'political virtue,' as we used to say, to the crowd, that is to ignorance. Why then do you wish to enlighten the crowd, that is to destroy the very virtue which, on your own showing, is the cause of its superiority?" The democrats reply that the crowd, even as it is, is already very preferable to aristocracy, and that it will be still more so when it has received instruction. They resolve the apparent contradiction by the argument _a fortiori_. At all events, the democrats set to work most vigorously on the education of the people. The result is that the people is much better educated than formerly, and I am one of those who regard this result as excellent; but the further result is, that the people is saturated with false ideas, and this is less comforting. Ancient republics had their demagogues, their orators, who inflamed the evil qualities of the people, by bestowing on them high-sounding names and by flattery. The great democracy of modern times has its demagogues. These are its elementary school teachers. They come of the people, are proud to belong to it, for which of course no one can blame them, they distrust everything that is not the people, they are all the more of the people because among the people they are intellectually in the first rank while elsewhere they are of secondary importance; and what men love is not the group of which they form a part, but the group of which they are the chief. They are, therefore, profoundly democratic.