(b) Perhaps a more important source of appeal made by the leader to his following lies in the vicarious gratification of their yearnings through his presumed traits and achievements. The splendour, the power, the flame of the leader are shared imaginatively. New elements of meaning enter the lives of those who are emotionally impoverished. The everyday disparities and injustices of social life, and sometimes the lacks and incapacities of personal life, fade out of the centre of concern. The ego is enlarged without effort and without cast. The skilful leader makes effective use of this, especially in the modern era of nationalism when fetishistic attitudes toward abstractions like the State and nation have been developed. By identifying his struggle for power with these abstractions, the leader effects a transference to himself of emotions previously directed to historic traditions, institutions, symbols, and ideologies. He is then able to change the old and established in the name of the old and established.
The tendency to compensate for one’s deficiencies by sinking them in the glorious achievements of more fortunate mortals may be an ever-present feature of social life. It may even explain, as Ludwig Feuerbach persuasively argued, the character of the gods men worship. But it should not be lost sight of that the persons and traits chosen for identification are historically variable. There usually are at least two possible ideals into which a need may be projected. A poor man may worship a rich god or an austere one; a people suffering from injustice may exalt a just ruler but they may also take pride in the fact that their tyrant is greater than all other tyrants. Why individuals should feel glorified in the exploits of a Hitler rather than in the wisdom of a Goethe, in the ruthlessness of a Stalin rather than the saintliness of a Tolstoy, cannot be explained simply in terms of the tendency to seek vicarious satisfaction for their limitations. The type of satisfaction sought is derived from the values of their culture.
(c) If everyone, or even many, were candidates for political leadership, social life would be far more disturbed than it is. We would not need to be fearful of this disturbance if mechanisms of selection were evolved that would give us highly qualified leaders responsive to the needs and wishes of an informed and politically active electorate. But this is a long way off, and we are discussing what has been and is. A survey of political history shows that aspirants for leadership constitute,
