great majority of the human race.

Now there can be no kind of doubt that the passive type of character
is favored by the government of one or a few, and the active
self-helping type by that of the many. Irresponsible rulers need the
quiescence of the ruled more than they need any activity but that
which they can compel. Submissiveness to the prescriptions of men as
necessities of nature is the lesson inculcated by all governments upon
those who are wholly without participation in them. The will of
superiors, and the law as the will of superiors, must be passively
yielded to. But no men are mere instruments or materials in the hands
of their rulers who have will, or spirit, or a spring of internal
activity in the rest of their proceedings, and any manifestation of
these qualities, instead of receiving encouragement from despots, has
to get itself forgiven by them. Even when irresponsible rulers are not
sufficiently conscious of danger from the mental activity of their
subjects to be desirous of repressing it, the position itself is a
repression. Endeavour is even more effectually restrained by the
certainty of its impotence than by any positive discouragement.
Between subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self-help
and self-government there is a natural incompatibility. This is more
or less complete according as the bondage is strained or relaxed.
Rulers differ very much in the length to which they carry the control
of the free agency of their subjects, or the supersession of it by
managing their business for them. But the difference is in degree, not
in principle; and the best despots often go the greatest lengths in
chaining up the free agency of their subjects. A bad despot, when his
own personal indulgences have been provided for, may sometimes be
willing to let the people alone; but a good despot insists on doing
them good by making them do their own business in a better way than