Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/135

lator, party-leader, secretary and president. Such examples as the generals of the first French republic, the Bonapartes, Washingtons, Gambettas, prove nothing against my assertion. They rose to the summit of the nation in consequence of sudden revolutions. Their unexpected elevation was not due to general capability, but in the first place, to the chance that they happened to be close at hand ready to fill the positions, when the positions were ready to be filled, and in the second place, to the forbearance of their numerous and authorized rivals who would not stoop to use force to get the power into their hands at such moments of confusion. Revolutions can promote young men to the first places it is true. But revolutions are exceptional cases, occurrences which will not continue repeating themselves for ever. They are not the normal evolution of a democracy. When it has finally settled down into established forms, and is living according to rule under its natural conditions, then it has no room for the meteoric career of a Washington, Bonaparte or Gambetta. But it is of the greatest importance for the progress of humanity, to have young men take now and then a prominent part in the discussions for and against matters concerning the State. Old men are not accessible to new ideas, and have not the energy and capability necessary to grasp new principles. The physiological law according to which nerve sensations have the tendency to travel along the most accustomed paths, and only enter upon new ones with difficulty, is most important in its application here. It reveals to us the fact that an old man has become an automaton whose entire organic functions are ruled by habit, and whose thought and sensations are hardly more than reflex activity, in which the intervention of the consciousness is hardly necessary. How can we expect then novel forms of effort