THE LIFE-HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY
most remarkable ways. Not only is this "Democracy" now dominant as a tacit assumption in nearly all contemporary thought, but it is all too manifestly becoming as the years pass more and more overwhelmingly predominant. Allusions to Democracy are so abundant, deductions from its influence so confident and universal, that it is worth while to point out what a very hollow thing the word in most cases really is, what a large empty object in thought, of what vague and faded associations and of what attenuated content, and to enquire just what exactly the original implications and present realities of "Democracy" may be. The enquiry will leave us with a very different conception of the nature and future of this sort of political arrangement from that generally assumed. We have already seen in the discussion of the growth of great cities that an analytical process may absolutely invert the expectation based on the gross results up-to-date, and I believe it will be equally possible to show cause for believing that the development of Democracy also is, after all, not the opening phase of a world-wide movement going on unbendingly in its present direction, but the first impulse of forces that will finally sweep round into a quite different path. Flying off at a tangent is probably one of the gravest dangers and certainly the one most constantly present, in this enterprise of prophecy.
One may, I suppose, take the Rights of Man as they are embodied in the French Declaration as the ostentations of Democracy; our present Democratic state may be regarded as a practical realisation of
129
