IN
A RIGHT ordering of public affairs, the mass is that part which does
not act of itself. Such is its mission. It has come into the world in order to
be directed, influenced, represented, organised- even in order to cease being
mass, or at least to aspire to this. But it has not come into the world to do
all this by itself. It needs to submit its life to a higher court, formed of the
superior minorities. The question as to who are these superior individuals may
be discussed ad libitum, but that without them, whoever they be, humanity would
cease to preserve its essentials is something about which there can be no
possible doubt, though Europe spend a century with its head under its wing,
ostrich-fashion, trying if she can to avoid seeing such a plain truth. For we
are not dealing with an opinion based on facts more or less frequent and
probable, but on a law of social "physics," much more immovable than
the laws of Newton's physics. The day when a genuine philosophy[1] once more holds sway in Europe- it is the one thing that can save her-
that day she will once again realise that man, whether he like it or no, is a
being forced by his nature to seek some higher authority. If he succeeds in
finding it of himself, he is a superior man; if not, he is a mass-man and must
receive it from his superiors.
[1]For
philosophy to rule, it is not necessary that philosophers be the rulers- as
Plato at first wished- nor even for rulers to be philosophers- as was his
later, more modest, wish. Both these things are, strictly speaking, most
fatal. For philosophy to rule, it is sufficient for it to exist; that is to
say, for the philosophers to be philosophers. For nearly a century past,
philosophers have been everything but that- politicians, pedagogues, men of
letters, and men of science.
