WHAT THE STATESMAN IS UP AGAINST

Under the terms of the democratic formula the problems of the statesman seem to become enormously simplified.  That is, if one assumes that he has worked out a perfectly clear idea of what a democracy means and what the normal means.  Assuming these unassumables, his problem simplifies into the definite object of producing and developing the greatest possible number of normals—­or if you will, the greatest happiness of the greatest number of normal lives.

Furthermore you then begin to have the entirely novel possibility in the world:  some sort of collective effort for a collective purpose, beyond the personal greeds and fears, factions and hatreds.  So the state, instead of fulfilling its old function of serving as the tool of certain powerful individuals, latterly known as the Big Men, might be transformed into an instrument toward freedom.  With the ideal of a democracy of the normals ever before him, the statesman could go on to construct and modify his social machinery.  That would entail the satisfaction not alone of the animal needs, but also the highest aspirations and therefore the provision of the finest conditions of life for the normal:  those most favorable, stimulative, and assistant to creative activity.  For what else is the content of the idea of freedom?

Without committing the intellectual sin which William James named Vicious Abstractionism, the goal of the clearest progressive and liberal thought and forces of the twentieth century might be summed up as this freedom in a democracy of normals.  A good formula which coincides with the technique of nature in the evolution of species.  A fair fight, a free-for-all who are unhandicapped, is the motto of natural selection.  Where civilization shakes hands with natural instinct, what but the happiest of results can be expected?

Unfortunately, the formula in human society possesses an Achilles’ heel.  Again it is slavery.  Where slavery has become bred into the bone, the standard of the normal becomes reduced so tremendously that the average of normals, the majority, are hopelessly inferior.  In effect, they are really subnormal.  So the ideal of our ideal statesman is bound to be defeated because of the inadequacy of his material.

No matter how interested in his main business:  the promotion of freedom for creative activities in a democracy of the normals, he is bound to be beaten by the majority consisting of subnormals.  There is nothing left for him but to cater to the minority of careerists, the one-eighth of the electorate representing superior intelligence.  The intelligence tests employed in the War showed that and also that forty-five per cent of the examined, or about one half the total population, had a mental capacity, or natural ability that would never develop beyond the stage normal to a twelve-year-old child.  They are doomed to remain forever subnormal.