Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/162

  the dignity of man, is something. Certain apparent realities grow out of it: the peasant no longer pulls his forelock when he meets the baron, he is free to sue and be sued, he may denounce Huxley as a quack. But the thing, alas, works both ways. As one pan of the scale goes up, the other comes down. If democracy really loves the dignity of man, then it kills the thing it loves. Where it prevails, not even the King can be dignified in any rational sense: he becomes Harding, jabbering of normalcy, or Coolidge, communing with his preposterous Tabakparlement around the stove. Nor the Pope: he becomes a Methodist bishop in a natty business-suit, and with a toothbrush moustache. Nor the Generalissimo: he becomes Pershing, haranguing Rotary, and slapping the backs of his fellow Elks.

2.

The Democrat as Moralist

Liberty gone, there remains the majestic phenomenon of democratic law. A glance at it is sufficient to show the identity of democracy and Puritanism. The two, indeed, are but different