knowledge and experience, is the remarkable novel, ‘Les Morts qui parlent,’ by the Vicomte Le Vogue.  Readers of this book will not forget the description of the bain de haine in which a new deputy at once finds himself plunged, and the canker of corruption which eats into the whole system.  It is no wonder that the majority of Frenchmen do not care to record their votes.  In 1906, 5,209,606 votes were given, 6,383,852 electors did not go to the poll.  The record of democracy in the new countries is no better.  We must regretfully admit that Louis Simond was right when he said, ’Few people take the trouble to persuade the people, except those who see their interest in deceiving them.’

2.  The democracy is a ready victim to shibboleths and catchwords, as all demagogues know too well.  ‘The abstract idea,’ as Scherer says, ’is the national aliment of popular rhetoric, the fatal form of thought which, for want of solid knowledge, operates in a vacuum.’  The politician has only to find a fascinating formula; facts and arguments are powerless against it.  The art of the demagogue is the art of the parrot; he must utter some senseless catchword again and again, working on the suggestibility of the crowd.  Archbishop Trench, ‘On the Study of Words,’ notices this fact of psychology and the use which is commonly made of it.

If I wanted any further evidence of the moral atmosphere which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others, is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious light.  A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go; that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the influences which these words are evermore, however imperceptibly, diffusing.  By argument they might hope to gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these nicknames the prejudices and passions of the many.

The chief instrument of this base art is no longer the public speech but the newspaper.

The psychology of the crowd has been much studied lately, by Le Bon and other writers in France, by Mr. Graham Wallas in England.  I think that Le Bon is in danger of making The Crowd a mystical, superhuman entity.  Of course, a crowd is made up of individuals, who remain individuals still.  We must not accept the stuffed idol of Rousseau and the socialists, ‘The General Will,’ and turn it into an evil spirit.  There is no General Will.  All we have a right to say is that individuals are occasionally guided by reason, crowds never.