N tudes who reflect on the ease with which 20,000 signatures may adro be obtained for the reprieve of a murderer in these days, is the or the howl which is raised in certain party circles on the execution of an Irish rebel, may doubt whether we are not following in our sedate fashion on the track trodden already by the French and the Americans. Abra of th 200 be But It is d foole nds edg Ower op emo un o dver ecau emo early COLOU i po ears nach In pursuing this theme we are getting near the border of another democratic failing, that which may called (though Lord Bryce does not, we think, use the actual word) the danger of 'mob-psychology.' generally acknowledged that the impulses and acts of a multitude are something quite different from those which would be displayed by its individual members. When a mob is a political body deciding the fortunes of a state, this fact may have no small importance. We are not alluding to wild explosions of hysterical massrage, such as those which made the Athenian assembly decree the atrocity at Mitylene, or commit the judicial murder of the generals who had won the battle of Arginusæ. Nor do we refer to the corybantic proceedings of an American National Convention choosing a presidential candidate by means of flag-wagging, prancing, and systematic bellowing, in which no sane delegate would indulge save in the midst of a mob. Undoubtedly, these are typical phenomena in a democratic state. But they are short and exceptional, and the sufferers next day find themselves in a more sober mood, like the Athenians of B.C. 427 who counter-ordered the massacre at Mitylene within twenty-four hours. much less transient and more dangerous failing in a st mob, whether assembled in one place and swayed by an orator, as of old, or scattered over a continent and absorbing its demagogy through newspapers, as in these heir days, is that it is liable to be hypnotised, by constant bold and unscrupulous declamation and ruthless propaganda, into accepting unproved and untested party statements as established truths. A bow af 'L onter tron Tery reso nder COW ld d he tran viol To speak with an air of positive assurance, especially to be a half-educated crowd already predisposed to assent, is better than to reason with them. A prominent statesman of our day on being asked by a member of his party what argum ments he had better use on behalf of the cause they were thir advocating, replied, "I sometimes think that bold assertion is the best kind of argument" (II, 608). ; No doubt the reiteration of terminological inexactiitudes' has its nemesis in the end. You may,' as Abraham Lincoln observed, 'fool all the people for some of the time, and some of the people for all of the time but you cannot fool all the people for all the time.' But during the space for which the majority has been fooled' there may have been one of those political y landslides by which states have been wrecked; a party pledged to a ruinous policy may have been placed in power, or legislation with disastrous consequences put in operation. We cannot get over the fact that a democracy is more liable to be hoodwinked by suppression of the truth, or deafened by loud and blatant selfadvertisement than other ruling bodies-more especially because, as Lord Bryce owns, on page 584 of vol. II, democracies do not enlist in the service of the state nearly so many of their most capable or of their most honourable citizens as could be desired. The sordid side of politics frightens away the self-respecting man, who fears to find himself caught in the toils of a party machine. He has no wish to be perpetually rubbing elbows in the lobby with Cleon and Alcibiades, or serving on a financial commission with Eschines and Theramenes. 'Lastly, Democracy has not induced that satisfaction and contentment with itself which was expected. One of the strongest arguments used to recommend Universal Suffrage was that as it gave supreme power to the numerical majority, every section of the people would bow to that majority. a resort to violence would be treason against the people and their sovereignty. Nevertheless in some countries governed under democratic constitutions revolutionary methods are now being applied or threatened, just as they were in the Fold days of tyrannical kings or oligarchies' (II, 584). 'Direct action' by large organised minorities, like the recent Triple Alliance of miners, railwaymen, and transport workers in Great Britain-still more the violent abolition of Universal Suffrage in Russia by the armed minority which calls itself the Proletariate, were things that were never foreseen by 19th-century prophets when they hazarded a guess at the practical working of a democratic constitution. Art. The 195 The list of defects is formidable-and we have not got to the end of it; administrative extravagance might, for example, ask for more notice than space allows here. But yet-here comes Lord Bryce's final judgment-mankind Ir is must be governed somehow, unless black anarchy is to supervene. And the examination of autocracy, oligarchy, relat bureaucracy, leads to the conclusion that all are infinitely those worse than democracy as practical expedients. Work han he re E har ind T 'It has achieved less than idealists of the 18th or 19th centuries expected; but, after all, the experiment has not failed-the world is now a better place than it was under other governments, and the faith that it may be better still survives. Hope, often disappointed but often renewed, is the anchor by which the ship that carries democracy and its fortunes will have to ride out the latest storm, as it has ridden out so many storms before. There is an Eastern of K story of a king with an uncertain temper, who desired his som astrologer to discover from the stars when his death would revi come. The astrologer, having cast the horoscope, replied t that he could not find the date, but had ascertained only this-that the king's death would follow immediately on his own. So may it be said that Democracy will never perish ides till after Hope has expired.' one of Art. 9.-LORD HALDANE AND RELATIVITY. bur The Reign of Relativity. By Viscount Haldane. Murray, 1921. It is unfortunate that some reviews of this work have assumed it to be a treatise on the physical theory of relativity, and have concentrated in their criticisms on those chapters which deal specifically with Einstein's work. The scope of the book is, however, far wider than this. It is in fact that of Knowledge itself. As the author states in the preface, the topics of this book are Knowledge itself and the relativity of reality to the character of Knowledge.' The subjects dealt with range from science, religion, and art to the history of philosophy, political science, and law, in so far as all these fall within the content of Knowledge. The result has been the production of a somewhat bulky volume of over 400 pages. In a recent review a writer has criticised such voluminous works as the production (as Pascal said) of those who have not got time to write less. It is certainly true that but one idea runs through the whole volume, and that this idea could have been expressed abstractly in a fraction of the volume of the actual book; but, where an idea is new and essentially difficult to grasp, it cannot be adequately transmitted by abstract phraseology. The process of transmission which must be adopted is that of suggestion by setting forward the idea as it appears in many different forms, till at last the reader, by a process of generalisation, grasps the concept which the author wishes to transmit. This is the method Lord Haldane has adopted, and he has excellent precedent in the works of Schopenhauer, who has stated that, by his bulky treatise on 'The World as Will and Idea,' he intends to impart a single thought, and can find no shorter way of doing so. What Lord Haldane's book loses in the way of pure logical form, it far more than makes up for by covering, in one comprehensive survey, a range of subjects, many of which lie outside the knowledge of more academic philosophers. The fundamental thesis is that Knowledge is ultimate. We cannot resolve Knowledge into other wh ing its its in terms. We cannot ask the explanation of the 'why' nece the Scie rela T deve ien imp 'How the great fundamental fact of knowledge is to be accounted for, is a question which is constantly being raised. But it is inherently an irrational question, for the fact of knowledge is presupposed as ultimate in whatever shape the question is put. When we raise points about how knowledge is put together, we are raising points about a foundation which our own questions presuppose for their possibility.' il no fu th and Whi bifu Dess Datu natu and poin desc from tion but. The doctrine of the Relativity of Reality to Knowledge is developed from this view of Knowledge. Every aspect of reality disclosed in Knowledge is relative to Knowledge itself. Our world is not made up of disconnected fragments and relations but as a whole, the parts of which exist as relative to the whole, that is, to Knowledge. This basic fact manifests itself, as Lord Haldane shows, in every branch of Knowledge. Each branch abstracts from the whole only those features of S bea it t and the Me fal |
