XXIII. Democracy

BUT in our adult world, there is still another moral quality demanded of our human enterprise. It is not merely better to create than to destroy, but it is better to create something which is useful, or desirable, to others. Our moral attitude is a little uncertain upon this point, for the artist knows that his coarsest and easiest kind of enterprise is likely to be valued by others, and his finer and more difficult enterprises neglected and scorned. And so he has the impulse to work only for himself; nevertheless, he realizes that if he does work only for himself he is doing wrong. For he really feels a deep-lying moral obligation to work for others—a moral obligation which comes, of course, from his egoistic need of the spiritual sustenance of praise. The fact is that others are necessary to him, and that his work must please others. So if he ignores the crowd, it is because he wishes to compel it to take something better than what it asked for.[Pg 168] And this democratic quality in enterprise becomes the third test of civilized life. Does a given action fit in everybody else’s scheme as well as in your own: and, if it conflicts with the outside scheme, is it with a fundamentally altruistic intention? There are prophets and false prophets and of those who take the difficult course of disagreeing with their fellows, the best we can immediately demand of them is that they afflict us because they think it good for us and not because they do not care. Yet even so they differ from us at their peril. For we are to be the final judges of whether we are being imposed on or not. If we do not, after full consideration, feel that we can play our game if Napoleon or the Kaiser plays his, we put him out of business.

Now the child has a certain natural tendency toward the Napoleon-Kaiser attitude. He began, as we pointed out some time ago, by being an infantile emperor. He likes it. And being deposed by his parents does not alter his royalist convictions. For he has not merely been deposed—he has seen another king set up in his place. And one reason why parents are not the best persons to teach children democracy, is that they are the authors of the whole succession of enthronements and deposings which constitute the[Pg 169] early history of a family. No, the children need a change of air—a chance to forget their Wars of the Roses and to take their places in a genuine democracy. The place for them to learn democracy (though I believe this has been said before) is the school. For in a properly conducted school there is an end of jealous little princes and princesses squabbling over prestige and appealing to the Power Behind the Throne; in such a school, conduct in general and work in particular is performed not with reference to such prestige as a reward, but with reference to their individual wishes in democratic composition with the wishes of their fellows.

But this will be true only if they find at school something different from what they have left at home. And what they have left at home may be described as a couple of well-meaning, bewildered and helpless people who are half the slaves of the children and half tyrants over them. It is unfortunate, but it is true, that the first that children learn of human relationships, is by personal experience of a relationship which is on both sides tyrannical and slavish. They naturally expect all their relationships with the adult world, if not with each other, to be conducted on this same pattern. They expect to find father and mother[Pg 170] over again in the school-teacher. They hope to find the slave and fear to find the tyrant. But it is necessary that they should face the adult world into which they must grow up, as equals; and therefore they must begin to learn the lesson of equality. The school, by providing a kind of association between adults and children which is free from the emotional complexes of the home, can teach that lesson.

There is, however, so much intellectual confusion about what equality means that we must be quite clear on that point before we go on. At any moment of our careers, we are the servant of others, in the sense of being their follower, helper, disciple or right-hand man; and the master of still others, in that we are their leader, counsellor or teacher. We can hardly conduct an ordinary conversation without assuming, and usually shifting several times, these r?les. And these relationships extend far beyond the bounds of acquaintanceship, for one can scarcely read a book or write an article without creating such relationships for the moment with unknown individuals. In all the critical and important moments of one’s life one is inevitably a leader or a follower. But in adult civilized life, these relationships are fluid; they change and exchange with each other.[Pg 171] And they are fluid because they are free. You and I can choose, though perhaps not consciously, our leaders and our helpers; we are not condemned to stand in any fixed relationship to any other person. And this freedom to be servant of whom we please, and master of whom we can, is equality. If I want to know about fishing-tackle, I will sit at your feet and learn, and if you will condescend to lead the expedition in quest of these articles I will be your obedient follower; while if you happened to want advice about pens, pencils, ink, or typewriter-ribbons, you would, I trust, yield a similar deference to me. We have no shame in serving nor any egregious pride in directing each other, because we are equals. We are equals because we are free to become each other’s master and each other’s servant whenever we so desire.

But the relationship of parents and children is not free. Parents cannot choose their children, and must serve their helplessness willy-nilly. Children cannot choose their parents, and must obey them anyhow. It is a rare triumph of parenthood—and doubtless also of childhood—when children and parents become friends, and serve and obey each other not because they must but because they really like to. But schools can[Pg 172] easily take up the task which parents are only with the greatest difficulty able to accomplish, and dissolve the infantile tyrant-and-slave relationship to the grown-up world. The grown-up people in the school can be the child’s equals. They can become so by ceasing to encourage the notion which the child carries with him from the home, that adults are beings of a different caste. Once they regard an adult as a person like themselves—which, Heaven knows, he is!—children will discover quickly enough his admirable qualities, and his special abilities, and pay them the tribute of admiration and emulation. There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher’s ability to do sums, rather than the village bum’s ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes; the reason why the child doesn’t is plain enough—the bum has put himself on an equality with them and the teacher has not.