Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/827

 COLLECTIVE TELESIS 8ll

influential individual. Great generals in war, inspired by per- sonal ambition, have often expressed the social will of their own country by brilliant feats of strategy and generalship, and famous statesmen like Richelieu have represented a whole nation by strokes of diplomacy that called out the same class of talents in a high degree. Even monarchs like Peter the Great, Frederick the Great, and Charles XII, not to mention Caesar and Alexander, have made their own genius in a sense the genius of their country. In fact a ruling class in times when the people were supposed to exist for them, when a king could say "I am the state," and when revenues were collected for their personal use, often devised very cunning schemes of a national application for their own aggrandizement. But as the world threw off these yokes, and nations grew more and more demo- cratic, the telic element declined, and the most democratic gov- ernments have proved the most stupid. They have to rely upon brute force. They are shortsighted and only know how to lock the door after the horse is stolen. They are swayed by impulse. They swarm and "enthuse," and then lapse into a state of torpor, losing all that was gained, and again surge in another direction, wasting their energies. In fact they act pre- cisely like animals devoid of intelligence.

All this is what we ought to expect if the principles I have enunciated are sound, and is, indeed, one of the clearest proofs of their soundness. And yet republics have not proved wholly devoid of a directive agent. Under exceptional circumstances they have displayed signs of collective intelligence. But most of the cases that can be cited have cither concerned their national independence or the equally vital question of raising revenue. Nearly all the examples nu-il in Dy mimic Sociology and Psychic Factors belong to these classes in which, in a 1 sense, necessity has been the mother of invention. Anyone who watches the inane flounderings of a large "deliberative" (!) body like the American house of ntatives, working at

cross purposes and swayed 1>\ a thousand conflicting motives, can see how little reason has to do with democratic legislation.