Thus those who commit injustice, yet have the wit or the good fortune to escape the consequences of their actions, climb into the seats of the stronger and share their immunity from moral restrictions. Since, in the mere process of gratifying their tastes, they are enabled to give employment to large bodies of their fellows, they are accounted public benefactors whose wealth constitutes a social asset. And, should vestiges of the morality of the weaker, from whose ranks they have risen, assail them in the form of conscience, they discover that even the gods can be squared and that a liberal support of deserving charities, coupled with the occasional endowment of a church, are calculated――so they are assured――to procure for them as honoured a place in the hereafter as their own successful injustice has obtained for them in the present. Thus Thrasymachus’ phrase “morality is the interest of the stronger” has a double significance. In the first place, it defines the morality of the many as that kind of conduct which promotes the interest of the few; in the second, it assures to the successful few the honourable reputation, the social consideration and the good repute among their fellows, which are commonly supposed to be the rewards of morality. CHAPTER II HERD MORALITY AND THE NEW TYRANNY OF THOUGHT The statement of general principles in the preceding chapter was not undertaken solely for the pleasure of political and ethical speculation. My concern is a more practical one. If the principle that justice is the interest of the stronger is the explanation of what passes for morality, what, I wish to ask, is its application in the present and what is it likely to be in the immediate future? In order to answer these questions we must first consider a further one: Who in a modern community is the stronger? The fact that we are a democracy has not escaped notice. In our own day it is not kings, nobles, soldiers, prelates, politicians, or elected persons who are the stronger, but the common man, the plain man, the average man, the man in the street, whether city man or working man, and the crowd or herd of such men. He, or rather his female counterpart since she is more numerous even than he is, is the arbiter of morality, and the kind of conduct which is called moral is that which is convenient or pleasing to her.