The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    56/170 (page 42)
    would be better called pantocracy. In such democracy itself (for the term is too habitual to be discarded) the most power- ful of the old classes is that of the rich, upon which the others lean; and this class of the rich, or the three first classes in one under this name, though they prefer to look upon them- selves as aristocrats, may even regain influence and power so great as to overbalance the rest, forming a state which is describable by the somewhat incongruous term of plutocratic democracy. Over against this condition, the demos proper may wish to get the upper hand entirely and entirely sup- press the other classes. This movement is to-day known as socialism, though this term is more truly appropriate to our present condition, and what is so distinguished is democracy proper (in the literal sense) ; and sometimes for greater clar- ity, it is dubbed social democracy; which, in the full extent of its aspiration, has never existed, and, as we shall see further on, probably never will exist, at least not in our cycle of civilisation. The democracy such as has existed and as now exists, or pantocracy, which rules by agents and makes laws by repre- sentatives of the whole people, always sets out with a multi- plicity of representatives to whom the appointment or the oversight of innumerable other agents is entrusted, in the form known as republicanism. But as responsibility divided between many is diluted and tends to be little observed, the degeneration of republicanism works for the concentration of power in one representative, to whom is entrusted the di- rection of all the others. Under this one all-powerful indi- vidual all the classes are reduced to an equal position of inferiority, and other individuals can rise to power only as they win his favour or that of his favourites. ‘This last stage can be reached only when the people at large are so un- warlike, and so distracted and divided by their several occu- pations and amusements, that a comparatively small army in the one man’s pay can keep them all in subjection. And when once reached, it can in spite of its enormous and growing evils never be subverted from within the nation by the people, for the additional very good reason that the people have noth- ing to substitute for it. Previous degenerate rulers, as we have seen, because they were of a class, could be overthrown