At all events, even if this need is only a small contributory cause, it is serious enough and cannot be lightly passed over. It is for fear lest this need may be something more serious than a small contributory cause, that the author has suggested the remedy of re-definition outlined both in precept and example in this book. If his pioneer effort, however limited in range, may lead others to produce more thorough examples of his method, he will consider that his pains have been more than adequately repaid. Anthony M. Ludovici. _London, August, 1921._ [p. 11] THE FALSE ASSUMPTIONS OF “DEMOCRACY.” INTRODUCTION. THE CONFUSION OF LANGUAGE AND ITS RELATION TO REVOLUTION. “Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last.” Tennyson (_Locksley Hall--Sixty Years After_). Nothing on earth leads more certainly to disunion than a division of tongues. When it became necessary to disperse the iniquitous builders of the Tower of Babel, we know the expedient to which the Lord resorted, and how effective it proved to be. But whereas unity is a desirable condition, and a common tongue is one of the most potent means of realising it, people not infrequently forget that a common tongue presupposes a common uniform culture. It depends upon a common view of human life and the world. This common culture provides the frame, so to speak, to the design of life, in which every word of a language fits like a piece of mosaic. Remove the frame, disturb the arrangement, and the odd pieces of mosaic fall all about you and lose their significance and their necessary association. They can be used only as--missiles. [p12] Whatever weight the usual arguments against the Middle Ages may possess, at least this is plain, that in mediæval times a common culture prevailed among the leading nations of Europe. Indeed, if we wished to sum up the effect of the Middle Ages in one sentence, we could not express ourselves more clearly than by saying, that in those days the leaders of men attempted to convert Europe into a single nation. This effort, though only partially successful, at least led to the magnificent result that most men, of what nation soever, understood one another--understood one another particularly in their use of abstract or general terms. For that is the test. In the end the names of things remain. The words representing common objects are usually as permanent as those objects themselves. Fashion may destroy the object and thus render the word obsolete; but for hundreds of years none will dispute the proper connotation of the word “chair,” “table,” “basket,” for instance; while in the realm of abstract and general terms such severe fluctuations may have taken place as to make the same word mean something different to each generation.