Note (return) — Chapter II

The question, therefore, whether our adoption of representative democracy was a mistake, raises the preliminary question whether the consent of the members of a community is a necessary condition of good government. To this question Plato, who among the political philosophers of the ancient world stood at a point of view nearest to that of a modern psychologist, unhesitatingly answered, No. To him it was incredible that any stable polity could be based upon the mere fleeting shadows of popular opinion. He proposed, therefore, in all seriousness, that the citizens of his Republic should live under the despotic government of those who by 'slaving for it'[65] had acquired a knowledge of the reality which lay behind appearance. Comte, writing when modern science was beginning to feel its strength, made, in effect, the same proposal. Mr. H.G. Wells, in one of his sincere and courageous speculations, follows Plato. He describes a Utopia which is the result of the forcible overthrow of representative government by a voluntary aristocracy of trained men of science. He appeals, in a phrase consciously influenced by Plato's metaphysics, to 'the idea of a comprehensive movement of disillusioned and illuminated men behind the shams and patriotisms, the spites and personalities of the ostensible world....'[66] There are some signs, in America as well as in England, that an increasing number of those thinkers who are both passionately in earnest in their desire for social change and disappointed in their experience of democracy, may, as an alternative to the cold-blooded manipulation of popular impulse and thought by professional politicians, turn 'back to Plato'; and when once this question is started, neither our existing mental habits nor our loyalty to democratic tradition will prevent it from being fully discussed.