Page:Philosophical Review Volume 5.djvu/567

551 has a strong aversion to the socialistic programme, mainly because he erroneously thinks there is an essential antagonism between Liberalism and Socialism. He brings against Socialism the charge that, under the plan proposed by its advocates, the good and the bad the industrious and the indolent would share equally well in the distribution of goods. Vorländer urges in reply that no sensible socialist desires that the indolent should enjoy the fruits won by the labor of others. All he maintains is, that the good fortune of the minority of mankind should not be regarded as grounded on justice, so long as it results from the misery and subjection of the majority. Spencer's dream of a state in which men will voluntarily coöperate and assist one another, is only a pious hope.

Lincoln's utterance, 'for the people and by the people,' is the formula of democracy. It states the democratic end and the democratic means. But there appears a contradiction between the end and the means. Both the general principles of evolution and the more recent and special investigations of sociological psychology (e.g., Psychologie des foules, by M. Le Bon) indicate (1) that the collective judgment of an assembly is far inferior in intelligence to the average judgment of the individuals taken separately; (2) that the collective will is invincible. Democracy unites these two factors, and democracy has come to stay. What is the solution? Education of individuals seems to give no assistance. For, though the collective judgment might advance in intelligence from one decade to another, action, as determined by it, will always be determined by a relatively low degree of intelligence. Nor can any attempt to separate between the means ('by the people') and the end ('for the people') succeed, since the means here constitute part of the content of the end. The author himself offers no solution.

The religious consciousness has always insisted that, in addition to the certainty of knowledge, there is a certainty peculiar to Belief,