MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES
IF I WERE to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say,
Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere,
destroying quality. Our entire life--production, politics, and
education--rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took
pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced
by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities
of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the
rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts
and peace, has merely increased man's burden.
In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to its
increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness are
completely swamped by the array of numbers. In the struggle for
supremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery,
deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who
succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is
the only god,--Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to
character, is of no moment. We have not far to go in search of proof
to verify this sad fact.
Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our
government stand so thoroughly exposed; never before were the American
people brought face to face with the Judas nature of that political
body, which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyond reproach, as
the mainstay of our institutions, the true protector of the rights and
liberties of the people.
Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that even the blind
could see them, it needed but to muster up its minions, and its
supremacy was assured. Thus the very victims, duped, betrayed,
outraged a hundred times, decided, not against, but in favor of the
victor. Bewildered, the few asked how could the majority betray the
traditions of American liberty? Where was its judgment, its reasoning
capacity? That is just it, the majority cannot reason; it has no
judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and moral courage, the
majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others.
Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its leaders
even unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right: "The most
dangerous enemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact
majorities, the damned compact majority." Without ambition or
initiative, the compact mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It
has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer
of a new truth.
The oft repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the
Socialists included, that ours is an era of individualism, of the
minority. Only those who do not probe beneath the surface might be led
to entertain this view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth of the
world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of the situation?
Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but to the
inertia, the cravenness, the utter submission of the mass. The latter
wants but to be dominated, to be led, to be coerced. As to
individualism, at no time in human history did it have less chance of
expression, less opportunity to assert itself in a normal, healthy
manner.
The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or
writer of original ideas, the independent scientist or explorer, the
non-compromising pioneers of social changes are daily pushed to the
wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become decrepit
with age.
Educators of Ferrer's type are nowhere tolerated, while the dietitians
of predigested food, à la Professors Eliot and Butler, are the
successful perpetuators of an age of nonentities, of automatons. In
the literary and dramatic world, the Humphrey Wards and Clyde Fitches
are the idols of the mass, while but few know or appreciate the beauty
and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman; an Ibsen, a Hauptmann, a
Butler Yeats, or a Stephen Phillips. They are like solitary stars, far
beyond the horizon of the multitude.
Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality
inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it
suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping
ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a
result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the
chief literary output.
Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts? One
has but to inspect our parks and thoroughfares to realize the
hideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacture. Certainly, none but
a majority taste would tolerate such an outrage on art. False in
conception and barbarous in execution, the statuary that infests
American cities has as much relation to true art, as a totem to a
Michael Angelo. Yet that is the only art that succeeds. The true
artistic genius, who will not cater to accepted notions, who exercises
originality, and strives to be true to life, leads an obscure and
wretched existence. His work may some day become the fad of the mob,
but not until his heart's blood had been exhausted; not until the
pathfinder has ceased to be, and a throng of an idealles and
visionless mob has done to death the heritage of the master.
It is said that the artist of today cannot create because
Prometheuslike he is bound to the rock of economic necessity. This,
however, is true of art in all ages. Michael Angelo was dependent on
his patron saint, no less than the sculptor or painter of today,
except that the art connoisseurs of those days were far away from the
madding crowd. They felt honored to be permitted to worship at the
shrine of the master.
The art protector of our time knows but one criterion, one value,--the
dollar. He is not concerned about the quality of any great work, but
in the quantity of dollars his purchase implies. Thus the financier in
Mirbeau's Les Affaires sont les Affaires points to some blurred
arrangement in colors, saying: "See how great it is; it cost
50,000 francs." Just like our own parvenus. The fabulous figures
paid for their great art discoveries must make up for the poverty of
their taste.
The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. That
this should be so terribly apparent in a country whose symbol is
democracy, is very significant of the tremendous power of the
majority.
Wendell Phillips said fifty years ago: "In our country of
absolute, democratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent,
it is omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny, there is no
hiding from its reach, and the result is that if you take the old
Greek lantern and go about to seek among a hundred, you will not find
a single American who has not, or who does not fancy at least he has,
something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social life, or
business, from the good opinion and the votes of those around him. And
the consequence is that instead of being a mass of individuals, each
one fearlessly blurting out his own conviction, as a nation compared
to other nations we are a mass of cowards. More than any other people
we are afraid of each other." Evidently we have not advanced very
far from the condition that confronted Wendell Phillips.
Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant; today, as
then, the majority represents a mass of cowards, willing to accept him
who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty. That accounts for the
unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the very worst
element of mob psychology. A politician, he knows that the majority
cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display. It
matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight, the lynching of
a "nigger," the rounding up of some petty offender, the
marriage exposition of an heiress, or the acrobatic stunts of an
ex-president. The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the
delight and bravos of the mass. Thus, poor in ideals and vulgar of
soul, Roosevelt continues to be the man of the hour.
On the other hand, men towering high above such political pygmies, men
of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as
mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of
individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the
phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for
enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic
liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as
ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and
killed.
The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth
preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was
the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it,
that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and
fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence
of Rome, led by the colossal figures of Huss, Calvin, and Luther, was
like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night. But so soon as Luther
and Calvin turned politicians and began catering to the small
potentates, the nobility, and the mob spirit, they jeopardized the
great possibilities of the Reformation. They won success and the
majority, but that majority proved no less cruel and bloodthirsty in
the persecution of thought and reason than was the Catholic monster.
Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta.
After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice, the human mind is at
last free from the religious phantom; the minority has gone on in
pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind,
handicapped by truth grown false with age.
Politically the human race would still be in the most absolute
slavery, were it not for the John Balls, the Wat Tylers, the Tells,
the innumerable individual giants who fought inch by inch against the
power of kings and tyrants. But for individual pioneers the world
would have never been shaken to its very roots by that tremendous
wave, the French Revolution. Great events are usually preceded by
apparently small things. Thus the eloquence and fire of Camille
Desmoulins was like the trumpet before Jericho, razing to the ground
that emblem of torture, of abuse, of horror, the Bastille.
Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great
idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of
which does not let it move. The truth of this is borne out in Russia
with greater force than elsewhere. Thousands of lives have already
been consumed by that bloody r gime, yet the monster on the throne is
not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture,
literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron
yoke? The majority, that compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian
peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold misery,
still believes that the rope which strangles "the man with the
white hands" * brings luck.
In the American struggle for liberty, the majority was no less of a
stumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of Jefferson, of
Patrick Henry, of Thomas Paine, are denied and sold by their
posterity. The mass wants none of them. The greatness and courage
worshipped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men who created the
background for the panorama of that time. The true patron saints of
the black men were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston,
Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and
Theodore Parker, whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in that
somber giant John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their eloquence and
perseverance undermined the stronghold of the Southern lords. Lincoln
and his minions followed only when abolition had become a practical
issue, recognized as such by all.
About fifty years ago, a meteorlike idea made its appearance on the
social horizon of the world, an idea so far-reaching, so
revolutionary, so all-embracing as to spread terror in the hearts of
tyrants everywhere. On the other hand, that idea was a harbinger of
joy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The pioneers knew the
difficulties in their way, they knew the opposition, the persecution,
the hardships that would meet them, but proud and unafraid they
started on their march onward, ever onward. Now that idea has become a
popular slogan. Almost everyone is a Socialist today: the rich man, as
well as his poor victim; the upholders of law and authority, as well
as their unfortunate culprits; the freethinker, as well as the
perpetuator of religious falsehoods; the fashionable lady, as well as
the shirtwaist girl. Why not? Now that the truth of fifty years ago
has become a lie, now that it has been clipped of all its youthful
imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its
revolutionary ideal--why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful
vision, but a "practical, workable scheme," resting on the
will of the majority, why not? Political cunning ever sings the praise
of the mass: the poor majority, the outraged, the abused, the giant
majority, if only it would follow us.
Who has not heard this litany before? Who does not know this
never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that
it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters.
But I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself is
responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its
masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment a
protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic
authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would
authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of
the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The
Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the
myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life
means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be acquired
without numbers? Yes, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the
mass, but never freedom or the free unfoldment of the individual,
never the birth of a free society.
Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of the
earth; not because I do not know the shame, the horror, the indignity
of the lives the people lead, do I repudiate the majority as a
creative force for good. Oh, no, no! But because I know so well that
as a compact mass it has never stood for justice or equality. It has
suppressed the human voice, subdued the human spirit, chained the
human body. As a mass its aim has always been to make life uniform,
gray, and monotonous as the desert. As a mass it will always be the
annihilator of individuality, of free initiative, of originality. I
therefore believe with Emerson that "the masses are crude, lame,
pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be
flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them,
but to drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of
them. Masses! The calamity are the masses. I do not wish any mass at
all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only."
In other words, the living, vital truth of social and economic
well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the
non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not
through the mass.
FOOTNOTE:
* The intellectuals.
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