neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty.
And the other side of this belated freedom — it is permitted to everyone to say what he pleases, but the Press is free to take notice of what he says or not. It can condemn any "truth" to death simply by not undertaking its communication to the world — a terrible censorship of silence; which is all the more potent in that the masses of newspaper readers are absolutely unaware that it exists.[1] Here, as ever in the birth-pangs of Cæsarism, emerges a trait of the buried springtime.[2] The arc of happening is about to close on itself. Just as in the concrete and steel buildings the expression-will of early Gothic once more bursts forth, but cold, controlled, and Civilized, so the iron will of the Gothic Church to power over souls reappears as — the "freedom of democracy." The age of the "book" is flanked on either hand by that of the sermon and that of the newspaper. Books are a personal expression, sermon and newspaper obey an impersonal purpose. The years of Scholasticism afford the only example in world-history of an intellectual discipline that was applied universally and permitted no writing, no speech, no thought to come forth that contradicted the willed unity. This is spiritual dynamics. Classical, Indian, or Chinese mankind would have been horrified at this spectacle. But the same things recur, and as a necessary result of the European-American liberalism — "the despotism of freedom against tyranny," as Robespierre put it. In lieu of stake and faggots there is the great silence. The dictature of party leaders supports itself upon that of the Press. The competitors strive by means of money to detach readers — nay, peoples — en masse from the hostile allegiance and to bring them under their own mind-training. And all that they learn in this mind-training, is what it is considered that they should know — a higher will puts together the picture of their world for them. There is no need now, as there was for Baroque princes, to impose military-service liability on the subject — one whips their souls with articles, telegrams, and pictures (Northcliffe!) until they clamour for weapons and force their leaders into a conflict to which they willed to be forced.
This is the end of Democracy. If in the world of truths it is proof that decides all, in that of facts it is success. Success means that one being triumphs over the others. Life has won through, and the dreams of the world-improvers have turned out to be but the tools of master-natures. In the Late Democracy, race bursts forth and either makes ideals its slaves or throws them scornfully into the pit. It was so, too, in Egyptian Thebes, in Rome, in China — but in no
