millions of his fellow citizens, the tendency is to destroy personal initiative. Uniformity in language, social customs, political institutions, education, and art combine with the sheer geographical expanse of his native land to coerce the individual American, to put him in the strait-jacket of uniformity. "On all sides ", says Bryce, "there stretches round him an illimitable horizon; and beneath the blue vault which meets that horizon there is everywhere the same busy multitude with its clamor of mingled voices which he hears close by. In this multitude his own being seems lost. He has the sense of insignificance which overwhelms us when at night we survey the host of heaven, and know that from even the nearest fixed star this planet of ours is invisible." Thus there arises the fatalistic attitude born of the overmastering sense of the multitude. The legitimate and necessary democratic conviction that the majority must rule comes in time to mean that its decisions are eternally right and any revolt against them is, therefore, morally reprehensible.

The psychological effects of this regard for the opinions of the multitude on American thought and life are simply incalculable in their subtlety and power. Respect for public opinion has become so thoroughly ingrained into our national life that it is little short of a fetish. The deliverances of the majority have gradually taken on for us much of the indefectible character of the laws of nature. To challenge the intelligence or the finality of the will of the majority is as futile as to get into an argument with gravitation or to dispute the precession of the equinoxes. This is unquestionably the most powerful because the most subtle form of the tyranny of the average man. Through this fatalistic regard for the will of the multitude the average man becomes for all practical purposes our democratic apotheosis of wisdom. His power lies in his very intangibleness. We never meet him face to face; we can never corner him in an argument. He is a spiritual entity and dwells only in the souls of men, and yet his omnipotent, ubiquitous hand shapes our individual destinies. The sheer massiveness and pervasiveness of his influ

ence school us into a belief in his infallibility. No moral alternatives can possibly transcend the scope of his consciousness. His inclusiveness is our guarantee of the ultimate triumph of the right. Because of this naïve religious trust in the wisdom of the average man the American citizen goes to the polls, casts his vote, and then takes a "moral holiday". His peace of soul is seldom disturbed by the fact that he may have been hopelessly in the minority. His mental attitude is aptly paralleled by that of the mediaeval theologian who was willing to be damned for the glory of God.

In his loyal allegiance to the will of the majority the American is merely giving expression to a deeply human characteristic. For the vast majority of men it is far more natural to obey than to rebel. Furthermore, it is well in a great community still earnestly seeking to understand itself and distraught by the strident voices of conflicting interests to have a final court of appeal. Men cannot live by controversy and argument alone. The danger, however, lies not in the repudiation of all authority but in too much acquiescence. Bryce remarks that Americans take the lateness of a railroad train or the delay of a street car by a dray in front of a warehouse door far more complacently than Englishmen. This is but one illustration of the countless ways in which the habit of constant acquiescence to the will of the majority tends to discourage initiative in matters of public concern and to place the average American at the mercy of the status quo.

Theoretically we have a free press, dedicated to the untrammelled expression of the opinions of a free people. But in industrial centers where the controlling forces are largely economic our great dailies either voice the mind of the prevailing economic interests or are content for the most part to play the rôle of simple purveyors of the news. If we wish critical enlightenment upon these questions we must seek it in scientific journals or in the columns of the independent weekly and monthly periodicals. In strongly Protestant communities objection is often raised to the appointment of

Catholics as instructors in high schools and state institutions. The popular revivalist in a community mainly Protestant and Roman Catholic pours out his religious billingsgate upon the higher critic on the one hand and the outcast Unitarian on the other, knowing full well that both are personae non gratae to the majority of his hearers. Educators are familiar with the protest against the teaching of evolution and similar "heretical" doctrines in institutions of learning on the ground that they are contrary to the prevailing religious convictions of the community. Respect for the belief of the majority is thus allowed to tyrannize over the thought of the minority, violating our most precious traditions of spiritual freedom.

§ 5. DEMOCRACY AND THE EXPERT

In connection with the death of John Purroy Mitchel, who gave to New York City as mayor a most efficient administration and yet was defeated for reëlection, it was remarked, "It has been the weakness of democracy that it has held clean workmanship in contempt, especially in public service. Laziness has sometimes appeared to rise to the glory of a democratic ideal; slipshod and dishonest workmanship to the fantastic dignity of a democratic privilege. The great man has too often been the man who by hook or crook got enough money salted away to live in idleness ever after. The attempt is constantly made among us to make efficiency synonymous with autocracy. We have failed to see that the difference between autocracy and democracy is not necessarily in the instrument, but in the control of the instrument, that if democracy fails to forge and use instruments at least equally well adapted to the ends of public service as the instruments devised and used by autocracy, it will jeopardize its own existence". To this may be added the words of President Lowell: "Whether popular government will endure or not depends upon its success in solving its problems, and among these none is more insistent than the question of its capacity both to use and control the experts, a question 1 The New Republic, July 20, 1918.

closely interwoven with the nature, the expression, and the limitation of public opinion ".1

For his own moral salvation as well as for that of the community the average man, therefore, must make his peace with the expert. If cleanliness is next to godliness, efficiency is next to public morality. In the eternal struggle of our municipalities against the encroachments of public service corporations what avails the righteousness of their cause or the vague moral sentiments of the community when that sentiment lacks able leadership and can lay its hands upon no effective machinery for giving it expression? The patient and oppressed municipality with its poorly paid solicitor who holds his position at the will of politicians is no match for the brilliant galaxy of the best legal talent which serves the corporation.

The average man in American democracy is afraid of the expert for several reasons. (a) The fear of bureaucracy inherited from the days of revolt from England still colors our thinking. The use of the expert is natural for a monarchy and for all forms of absolutism but arouses the suspicions of traditional democracy. There is a latent fear of the loss of liberty through the introduction of the specialist. (b) The expert is distrusted because, being a specialist and removed from the life of the masses, he is suspected of losing touch with those fundamental human values dear to the average man. This is perhaps, from the standpoint of radical democracy, the most justifiable criticism of the expert. The political expert understands how to parry this criticism by mingling with the people and creating the impression that he is in thorough sympathy with them. (c) The note of egalitarianism, which Faguet has shown to be so antagonistic to efficiency, has been prominent in American democracy from the days of Jackson and DeTocqueville. It insists that every man is inherently capable of administering the affairs of the people. The principle of rotation in office is a tacit recognition of every individual's right to share in public affairs in so far as possible. Such a policy is obviously incompatible with efficiency in public serv1 Op. cit., p. 303.

ice. (d) The universal preference for the "good" man, that is, the man who embodies the prevailing conventional ethical sentiments of the community as opposed to the intelligent and skilful man, has probably done as much as anything else to dull the popular mind to the importance of the expert.

The demand that the man in touch with the general sentiments of the social conscience be preferred to the man who has the technical knowledge necessary to solve social problems but lacks these general sentiments is natural in a democracy. It is obvious, however, that by placing the merely good" but otherwise inefficient man in positions of responsibility demanding special knowledge we may defeat the very ends sought by the public. For the furthering of public welfare demands, especially in our highly complex modern life, not only the right ethical attitude but the requisite technical equipment to make the ideal effective in the situation concerned. It is the lack of this special equipment that has brought the merely "good" man into distinct disrepute as a social reformer.

It is asserted, however, that the expert savors of collectivism and that collectivism and democracy are fundamentally incompatible. "The ideal of democracy", says Dicey, "is government for the good of the people by the people, and in accordance with the wish of the people; the ideal of collectivism is government for the good of the people by experts, or officials who know, or think they know, what is good for the people better than either any non-official person or than the mass of the people themselves" (op. cit., p. LXXIII). The expert emphasizes science and a more or less thought-out social philosophy. The democratic average man emphasizes action based on common sense which if short-sighted is apparently feasible and easy of apprehension. Where the expert tries to force upon a citizenship trained in democratic traditions, laws or ideas that do not have the sanction of the social conscience, conflict is inevitable.

Democracy, we are told, furthermore, is constantly doing things that no expert would sanction. The recent socialistic