Individuals, and peoples, who
are acutely sensible of the value of superior wisdom, are likely to
recognise it, where it exists, by other signs than thinking exactly as
they do, and even in spite of considerable differences of opinion: and
when they have recognised it they will be far too desirous to secure
it, at any admissible cost, to be prone to impose their own opinion as
a law upon persons whom they look up to as wiser than themselves. On
the other hand, there is a character of mind which does not look up to
any one; which thinks no other person's opinion much better than its
own, or nearly so good as that of a hundred or a thousand persons like
itself. Where this is the turn of mind of the electors, they will
elect no one who is not or at least who does not profess to be, the
image of their own sentiments, and will continue him no longer than
while he reflects those sentiments in his conduct: and all aspirants
to political honours will endeavour, as Plato says in the "Gorgias,"
to fashion themselves after the model of the Demos, and make
themselves as like to it as possible. It cannot be denied that a
complete democracy has a strong tendency to cast the sentiments of the
electors in this mould. Democracy is not favourable to the reverential
spirit. That it destroys reverence for mere social position must be
counted among the good, not the bad part of its influences; though
by doing this it closes the principal school of reverence (as to
merely human relations) which exists in society.
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