(Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained, and what sanction it can claim.) It is possible to conceive an order of nature in which all individuals were born and developed exactly alike and with exactly equal powers. Such is apparently the case with lower animals, for example the ants and the bees. But among human beings there are great differences; some are born idiots and some are born geniuses. Even supposing that we are able to do away with blindness and idiocy, it is not likely that we can ever make a race of uniform genius. There will always be some more capable minds, who will discover new powers of life, and will compel the others to learn from them. It is to the interest of the race that this learning should be done as quickly as possible. In other words, the great problem of society is how to recognize superior minds and put them in authority.
We look back over history, and discover a few wise men, and many rulers; but very, very rarely does it happen that the ruler is a wise man, or a friend of wise men. Far more often we find the ruler occupied in suppressing the wise man and his wisdom. There was a ruler who allowed the mob to crucify Jesus, and another who ordered Socrates to drink the hemlock, and another who tortured Galileo, and another who chopped off the head of Sir Walter Raleigh—and so on through a long and tragic chronicle. And even when the accident of a wise ruler occurs he is apt to be surrounded by a class of parasites and corrupt officials who are busy to thwart his will.
The general run of history is this: some group seizes power by force, and holds it by the same means, and seeks to augment and perpetuate it. Those who win the power are frequently men of energy and practical sense, and do fairly well as governors; but they are never able to hand on their virtues, and their line becomes corrupted by sensuality and self-indulgence, and the subject classes are plundered and driven to revolt. Often the revolt fails, but in the course of time it succeeds, and there is a new dynasty, or a new ruling class, sometimes a little better than the old, sometimes worse.
How shall one judge whether the new régime is better or worse? Obviously, this is a most important question; it has to do, not merely with history, but with our daily affairs, our voting. As one who has read some tens of thousands of pages of history, and has pondered its lessons with heart-sickness and despair, I lay down this general law by which revolts and changes of power may be judged: If the change results in the holding of power by a smaller number of people, it is a reaction; but if the change results in distributing the power among a larger group of the community, then that community has made a step in advance.
I have seen a sketch of the history of some Central American country—Guatemala, I think—which showed 130 revolutions in less than a hundred years. Some rascal gets together a gang, and seizes the government and plunders its revenue. When he has plundered too much, some other rascal stirs up the people, and gets together another gang. Such "revolutions" we regard as subjects for comic opera, and for the Richard Harding Davis type of fiction; but we do not consider them as having any relationship to progress. We describe them as "palace" revolutions.
But compare with this the various English revolutions. We write learned h............