Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/122

 for contacts outside the bounds of professional politics is certainly not a common mark of American Presidents, nor, of American public officials of any sort. When the lamented Harding sat in Lincoln’s chair his hours of ease were spent with bootleggers, not with metaphysicians; his notion of a good time was to refresh himself in the manner of a small-town Elk, at golf, poker, and guzzling. The tastes of his successor are even narrower: the loftiest guests he entertains upon the Mayflower are the editors of party newspapers, and there is no evidence that he is acquainted with a single intelligent man. The average American Governor is of the same kidney. He comes into contact with the local Gelehrte only when a bill is up to prohibit the teaching of the elements of biology in the State university.

The judiciary, under the American system, sinks quite as low. Save when, by some miscarriage of politics, a Brandeis, a Holmes, a Cardozo or a George W. Anderson is elevated to the bench, it carries on its dull and preposterous duties quite outside the stream of civilized thought, and even outside the stream of enlightened juridic thought. Very few