THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
vastly simplifies the problem of government. But this is on condition that the masses consent to be measured by the scale of the masters. Where, as with the captive Jews, or the Chris- tian races of the Turkish Empire, the governed feels itself a sub- ject population, and spurning the master values that brand it with inferiority clings to its own table of excellences, the ruling class will not be able to ease itself in the saddle. But if the subjugated accept the scale of values of their rulers, and so feel their own inferiority, the relations of coercion and submission pass over into the domination and fealty of feudal society. Here where fidelity is a universal countersign with which men meet the challenge of conscience, personal control bulks for more than it ever has before or since.
But a later evolution of personality shatters the foundations of this control. Certain theological ideas accepted by the Occi- dent taught each man, even the undermost, to feel himself an immortal soul of a worth quite independent of his political or social weight. In the eye of Deity men stood not on rising terraces, but on a common footing. Acquired prestige, there- fore, shrunk, and personality lost the brilliant chromosphere lent it by social distinction. Printing, gunpowder, trade and new land conspiring to improve the social situation of the lower classes, these theological ideas, revamped by metaphysics, were used as a lever to lift the lowly to a realizing sense of the pos- sibilities before them. The common man was declared first custodian of an inviolable conscience, and later proprietor of a bundle of "rights." Kquality was proclaimed a fact, liberty a birthright, and fraternity an ideal. Thus Protestantism, Puritan- ism, and democracy have worked together to deepen the individual's sense of his own worth, and to indispose him to unconditional subordination to another.
Impressed by the collapse of social order in revolutionary France, and the signs that western societies were sliding toward the abyss of anarchy, Carlyle, with his gospel of hero worship, sought to revive the sway of personality by inspiring anew rev- erence and admiration for the exceptional man. For the decay
