blundering even when it is most honest; and when it is dishonest it can hardly do worse. Its ultimate reliance must therefore be force, and force, behind all pretenses, is to-day, as in all ages, the whole substance and meaning of authority. Democracy, because relatively broadly based, is the least timid and therefore the most resolute and tyrannical of despotisms. It cannot be reorganized or reconstructed in accordance with its own lawful methods of amendment, and violent or peaceful revolution must be the only remedy.[1]
Facing this frank and vigorous attack upon the rationality of democracy under ethical auspices, ethical theory seems to be without adequate resource. It may appeal to its ideals of happiness and the general well-being, of duty and restraint, of human dignity, vocation, and destiny. It sets forth in order life's intrinsic values, and cheers us with the assurance that our immemorial ideals are no fictions of our own contriving but subsist eternally in the realm of neutral being. But the appeal is still the appeal of intuitive reason and self-evidence. The perspective is still the backward-looking perspective of attained conviction, not the forward-looking one in which men see themselves in the act of seeking, accepting and following the truth by which they hope to save themselves. Reason and self-evidence still stand, though perhaps latterly with some misgivings, upon their ultimate self-sufficiency and power to prevail over the wills of men. Men's loyalties, sympathies and desires may protest or concur as they please. Their assistance is superfluous and in the long run their opposition must be futile.
Like the revolutionary ideas which it must meet, ethical theory repudiates the authoritative factor in conduct, and all other factors of a humanly personal and individualizing sort. In place of the specific guidance these might offer toward happiness, self-fulfillment or even intrinsic values, it offers the individual some
- ↑ Cf. Republic, 540. One might suspect Plato's anticipation of the revolutionary principle (which in our day, to a different end, no doubt, ordains the disfranchisement or extermination of the bourgeoisie) of being a bit of Socratic humor by way of relaxation at the close of a long stage in the argument. But Barker (Greek Political Theory—Plato and his Predecessors, p. 240) takes it more seriously.
