transitional preparation for something beyond. But the argument can do
without even this immense item in the account. Suppose the difficulty
vanquished. What should we then have? One man of superhuman mental
activity managing the entire affairs of a mentally passive people.
Their passivity is implied in the very idea of absolute power. The
nation as a whole, and every individual composing it, are without any
potential voice in their own destiny. They exercise no will in respect
to their collective interests. All is decided for them by a will not
their own, which it is legally a crime for them to disobey. What sort
of human beings can be formed under such a regimen? What development
can either their thinking or their active faculties attain under it?
On matters of pure theory they might perhaps be allowed to speculate,
so long as their speculations either did not approach politics, or had
not the remotest connection with its practice. On practical affairs
they could at most be only suffered to suggest; and even under the
most moderate of despots, none but persons of already admitted or
reputed superiority could hope that their suggestions would be known
to, much less regarded by, those who had the management of affairs. A
person must have a very unusual taste for intellectual exercise in and
for itself who will put himself to the trouble of thought when it is
to have no outward effect, or qualify himself for functions which he
has no chance of being allowed to exercise. The only sufficient
incitement to mental exertion, in any but a few minds in a generation,
is the prospect of some practical use to be made of its results. It
does not follow that the nation will be wholly destitute of
intellectual power. The common business of life, which must
necessarily be performed by each individual or family for themselves,
will call forth some amount of intelligence and practical ability,
within a certain narrow range of ideas. There may be a select class of
_savants_ who cultivate science with a view to its physical uses or