Full text of "The Tyranny of the Average Man"

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JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. 240 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. THE TYRANNY OF THE AVERAGE MAN. JOHN M. MECKLIN. THE tyrant, it appears, is an ever recurrent phenomenon in human society. The bearded figures of the Euphrates valley, holding in leash the necks of kneeling captives, are grim witnesses to the conditions in the begin- nings of civilisation. The archaic group of Harmodius and Aristogeiton that adorned the winding approach to the Athenian Acropolis was the plastic embodiment of ancient -democracy's protest against tyranny. Capri's romantic spell suffices even without the aid of Tacitus' biting phrases to remind the traveller of the unhappy despot who there passed his later years in misanthropic seclusion. Machia- velli's "Prince," the hand-book from which Louis XIV learned the gentle art of statecraft, long remained the classic description of the modern tyrant. But with the growth of democracy men became aware of another form of tyranny, more powerful, more insidious perhaps than any other. Our modern tyrant is hydra-headed, myriad- handed, and we call him Demos, borrowing the term from that ancient disgruntled aristocrat, Aristophanes. In a remarkable passage, DeTocqueville portrays this new form of despotism which he thought he saw illustrated in American democracy. It is a despotism, he tells us, not of the body but of the mind. The instruments of ancient tyrants were the thumbscrew and the faggot, fetters and headsmen. But they attacked the body only and were not able to subdue the spirit. Demos, the modern tyrant, extends to his victim physical freedom while seeking to enslave his soul. Death was the penalty for revolt against ancient forms of tyranny. To the modern rebel Demos says, "You are free to think differently from me and retain your life, your property and all that you possess. THE TYRANNY OF THE AVERAGE MAN. 241 But if such be your course you must be content to live the life of an alien and outcast among your own people. Civil rights to be sure are yours, in name at least, but they will lack that sympathy and sanction of your fellows without which they are otiose privileges. Honors and emoluments you may indeed seek at the hands of your fellow-citizens but they will most assuredly be denied you since you have dared to set your feeble will in opposition to theirs. Physi- cal life is yours but it is not incompatible with spiritual annihilation at the hands of the community. " The social, political or religious assassinations daily witnessed under free democratic rule are none the less tragic because they are bloodless. DeTocqueville's observations were based upon the American democracy of the third decade of the last century. At best it was but a shadow democracy, "the substance of things hoped for, " for it still tolerated slavery. Yet with all its crudeness and inconsistency American democracy had already become self-conscious, intolerant and even tyrannical. "The smallest reproach," writes DeTocque- ville, "irritates its sensibility, and the slightest joke that has any foundation in truth renders it indignant ; from the style of its language to the more solid virtues of its character everything must be made the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, can escape from this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. The majority lives in the perpetual practice of self -applause, and there are certain truths which the Americans can only learn from strangers or from experience." The implications of DeTocqueville's criticisms will be clearer if we analyse the situation a little more in detail. There is a general principle of distribution of social strata, according to which we have at the higher levels a small group composed of genius and talent, the elements which make for leadership in every community. At the lower levels are found the unskilled, the illiterate, the proletariat, and lowest of all the defective and the criminal. Midway between these lie the masses which compose the rank and 242 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. file of society. In a democracy it is this numerically dominant mediocrity that controls the situation. The typical representative of this group is the "average man," who is in reality a mythical personage. But in the actual working out of democratic institutions the countless temperamental, social, economic, intellectual and even class differences are ignored or eliminated so that the "average man" becomes tremendously real. He becomes real be- cause of the steam-roller effect of the unwritten law of democracy, namely, uniformity. It is this democratic abstraction which utters the last word in the eternal argu- ment and gives us our measure of values from which there is no appeal. Like the golden calf of apostate Israel he is but the creation of our own hands and yet we worship him as our god. The characteristics of the "average man" are thoroughly familiar to us. He is dominated by routine and tradition. His philosophy of life consists for the most part of con- ventional principles that are provided by pulpit, party or counting-house. On the whole he is suspicious of ideas, especially if they be new; thinking is irksome and largely unnecessary since he finds that a judicious regard for what "they say" will solve most of his problems. The political "spell-binder" and the professional reformer, to whose in- terest it is to study his idiosyncrasies, find that a skillful appeal to his prejudices or his fixed ideas never fails to bring a favorable response. On the whole he prefers orthodoxy to scholarship in his minister, loyalty to party rather than political wisdom in his statesmen, the preservation of the profitable status quo in his business rather than the social or economic betterment of the community. Being our politi- cal over-lord he is unfortunately, in Mr. H. G. Wells' phrase, "state-blind." On the other hand the "average man" is not without redeeming qualities. If it be true that he is shallow and prejudiced these failings are more than offset perhaps by the homely but socially valuable virtues of honesty, patriotism, and sympathy. If he can not be depended upon to start a reform, still less is he inclined to THE TYRANNY OF THE AVERAGE MAN. 243 become a criminal. His simple and unsophisticated exist- ence places at the disposal of the nation a mass of thor- oughly sane and human sentiments to which we can safely appeal in great crises. It is for the "average man" that our democractic in- stitutions exist; they are supposed to be most ideal in fact when they best reflect his view of life. In literature, art, morals and religion he is the final arbiter; hence the ques- tionable exploitation of elemental human instincts in the photo-play, the glorification of obscurantism in the pulpit, the tawdry and commonplace sentimentality of the cheap novel, the impossible wit of the pink Sunday supplement, the utterly inane songs of the popular vaudeville. No Oriental despot ever exercised a tithe of his sway for he rules the minds, not the bodies, of men, and there is no appeal from his arbitrament. The choicest products of literary or plastic art await his sovereign decision for the right to live. Preacher, politician, advertiser, teacher, philosopher, study to know and do his will. He is the incarnation of modern humanity. The salvation of society is ultimately the salvation of the "average man." "Deep in the breast of the Average Man, The passions of ages are swirled, And the loves and the hates of the Average Man Are old as the heart of the world — For the thought of the race as we live and we die Is in keeping the Man and the Average high." II. As a nation we have hardly freed ourselves from the obsession that liberty and equality, the connotations of democracy, are pre-existent, ready-made endowments of human nature. We have fondly imagined that when those hindrances which have weighed down the free spirit of man are swept away there will be a triumphant march to the goal. We have lost sight of the fact that democracy is but one of many solutions of the world-old problem of living together in a social order that will ensure the least amount 244 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. of friction and the richest development of human values. It has come as a bitter disillusionment to many that an honest and enlightened despotism may set standards of scientific achievement and social efficiency which democ- racies have never yet equalled. Many have asked whether a benevolent and farsighted German bureaucracy is not preferable to industrial feudalism and the ignorant though well-meaning tyranny of the "average man." We have yet to learn the truth of Sir Henry Maine's dictum, "Of all forms of government democracy is the most difficult." It can hardly be said, therefore, that the tyranny of the "average man," in so far as it is a reality, is due to malice aforethought. The rather are we to seek its explanation in the difficulties inseparable from democracy itself. That which constitutes the power of democracy, the secret of its hold upon the hearts of men, is also its greatest stumbling block in the effort for efficiency. Democracy is in its last analysis a state of mind. It consists of certain ideals, for the most part exceedingly vague and intangible, which must be intelligently appreciated by all and made the basis of communal action. But strange as it may seem, this very likemindedness so essential to an efficient democracy may defeat itself. For as the sense of this likemindedness grows upon the individual through education, social institutions and the immeasurable suggestive power of millions of his fellow-citizens the tendency is to destroy personal initiative. Uniformity in language, social customs, political institu- tions, education and art combine with the sheer geographi- cal expanse of his native land to coerce the individual American, to put him in the strait-jacket of uniformity. "On all sides," says Bryce, "there stretches round him an illimitable horizon; and beneath the blue vault which meets that horizon there is everywhere the same busy multitude with its clamor of mingled voices which he hears close by. In this multitude his own being seems lost. He has the sense of insignificance which overwhelms us when at night we survey the host of heaven, and know that from even the nearest fixed star this planet of ours is invisible. " Thus THE TYRANNY OF THE AVERAGE MAN. 245 there arises the fatalistic attitude born of the overmastering sense of the multitude. The legitimate and necessary- democratic conviction that the majority must rule comes in time to mean that its decisions are eternally right and any revolt against them is therefore morally reprehensible. The psychological effects of this regard for the opinions of the multitude on American thought and life are simply incalculable in their subtlety and power. Respect for public opinion has become so thoroughly ingrained into our national life that it is little short of a fetish. The deliv- erances of the majority have gradually taken on for us much of the indefectible character of the laws of nature. To challenge the intelligence or the finality of the will of the majority is as futile as to get into an argument with gravita- tion or to dispute the precession of the equinoxes. This is unquestionably the most powerful because the most subtle form of the tyranny of the "average man. " Through this fatalistic regard for the will of the multitude the "average man" becomes for all practical purposes our democratic apotheosis of wisdom. His power lies in his very intangi- bleness. We never meet him face to face; we can never corner him in an argument. He is a spiritual entity and dwells only in the souls of men, and yet his omnipotent ubiquitous hand shapes our individual destinies. The sheer massiveness and pervasiveness of his influence school us into a belief in his infallibility. No moral alternatives can possibly transcend the scope of his consciousness. His inclusiveness is our guarantee of the ultimate triumph of the right. Because of his naive religious trust in the wisdom of the "average man" the American citizen goes to the polls, casts his vote and then takes a ' ' moral holiday. ' ' His peace of soul is seldom disturbed by the fact that he may have been hopelessly in the minority. His mental attitude is aptly parallelled by that of the mediaeval theologian who was willing to be damned for the glory of God. In his loyal allegiance to the will of the majority the American is merely giving expression to a deeply human characteristic. For the vast majority of men it is far more 246 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. natural to obey than to rebel. Furthermore, it is well in a great community still earnestly seeking to understand itself and distraught by the strident voices of conflicting interests to have a final court of appeal. Men can not live by controversy and argument alone. The danger, however, lies not in the repudiation of all authority but in too much acquiescence. Bryce remarks that Americans take the lateness of a railroad train or the delay of a street car by a dray in front of a ware-house door far more complacently than the Englishman. This is but one illustration of the countless ways in which the habit of constant acquiescence to the will of the majority tends to discourage personal in- itiative and to place the average American at the mercy of the status quo. Theoretically we have a free press, dedi- cated to the untrammelled expression of the opinions of a free people. But in industrial centers where the controlling forces are largely economic our great dailies either voice the mind of the prevailing economic interests or are content for the most part to play the r61e of simple purveyors of the news. If we wish critical enlightenment upon these questions we must seek it in scientific journals or in the columns of the independent weekly and monthly periodi- cals. In strongly Protestant communities objection is often raised to the appointment of Catholics as instructors in high schools and state institutions. The popular re- vivalist in a community mainly Protestant and Roman Catholic pours out his religious billingsgate upon the higher critic on the one hand and the outcast Unitarian on the other, knowing full well that both are persona? non grata} to the majority of his hearers. Educators are familiar with the protest against the teaching of evolution and similar "heretical" doctrines in state institutions of learning on the ground that they are contrary to the pre- vailing religious convictions of the community. Respect for the belief of the majority is thus allowed to tyrannize over the thought of the minority, violating our most precious traditions of spiritual freedom. THE TYRANNY OF THE AVERAGE MAN. 247 III. Though ostensibly the stalwart champion of intellectual freedom the "average man" is at heart intolerant of new ideas. Free speech is to be sure a conventional part of democratic traditions. One is free, for example, to criticise the private life of a political candidate, even to the extent of circulating downright scandals. The average minister in orthodox Protestantism is not free to tell his congrega- tion the bare facts of Old Testament history as they have been established by the critics. The "average man" may perhaps be able to stretch his conception of tolerance to the extent of listening to arguments against immortality or woman's rights but the like free speech in regard to the monogamous family, birth-control, the rights of private property, protective tariff, trade unions, or the "color line," depending upon the section concerned, may precipitate a torrent of disapproval and intolerant abuse. Intellectual freedom seems to suffer from certain disabilities which are inseparable from democracy itself. DeTocqueville con- tends that a democracy encourages superficial thinking in that the individual citizen must constantly pronounce upon the profoundest social, economic or political questions in the exercise of his sovereign right as a member of a democ- racy. He inevitably falls into the habit of thinking in ready-made generalities. This amounts to a surrender of intellectual independence. Furthermore the "average man " is made uneasy by new ideas. They suggest possible disconcerting changes in the social order; he has neither the time nor the ability perhaps to think things through for himself and prefers rather to bear those ills he has than fly to others he knows not of. Hence, it may be seriously doubted whether on the great national issues the "average man" ever earnestly seeks an intelligent comprehension of the principles concerned. For this reason his judgment on questions involving technical knowledge is often a hindrance to social efficiency, but on a plain moral issue his opinion is invaluable. Again the " average man" is hampered by the narrow margin that is always found between thought and 248 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. action in the shifting uncertain conditions of American democracy. We have few or no social habits or traditions that encourage the life of reflection. The average Ameri- can, especially in the great industrial centers, is catapulted from the cradle to the grave in the mad hurly burly of a headlong civilization that never pauses to get its bearings or to ask the meaning of life. Having neither the time nor the inclination to think, the "average man" is repelled by reflection. To him every thinker is a potential rebel, a possible disturber of the peace. Since reflection alone gives to men a grasp of values and the sense of perspective it is not surprising that the "average man" who possesses neither is lacking in poise. He is the unhappy puppet of an imperious and eternal now. Imagination alone can emanci- pate us from the tyranny of the present, from the crushing, maddening immediacy of brute facts. Perhaps the most discouraging characteristic of the "average man" in American democracy is what has been called his "state-blindness." Tyrannies are rarely in- telligent but the most intolerable of all tyrannies is that based upon ignorance and callous indifference. "State- blindness ' ' is congenital in American democracy. From the days of the revolutionary fathers to the present the average American has accepted state authority only under protest. He began by throwing off the yoke of despotism and un- fortunately has always associated political authority with that memorable struggle. Politics for the average Ameri- can to-day is merely a necessary evil. The actual machin- ery of the state, political leaders, parties, platforms, party slogans, interest him very little; more often they arouse feelings of disgust or ridicule. True he is patriotic. But the state that elicits his patriotism is a hazy idealistic entity that bears about the same relation to actual politics that the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount does to the "rules of the game" in business. These shadowy ideals find expression at Fourth of July celebrations or are evoked by the name of Lincoln or the sight of the flag. Seldom or THE TYRANNY OF THE AVERAGE MAN. 249 never do they provide moral dynamic in dealing with the problems of the immediate political situation. The average American prides himself upon his energy, his business astuteness, his industrial efficiency, but in many ways his civic stupidity makes the world stand aghast. He can not see that the corrupt party leader whom year after year he returns to office is not only a bad investment from the standpoint of political efficiency but through his in- fluence degrades the moral sense of the entire community. He can not see that by supinely submitting while un- scrupulous individuals exploit the city's franchises he is cheapening the moral self-respect of the citizenship and rendering the economic struggle more difficult for all, in- cluding himself. He can not see that an indispensable background for a noble and worthy citizenship is clean streets, efficient public service, honest officials and a sensi- tive community conscience. For without these there can be no such thing as civic pride and without civic pride no man can do his best work, whether he be an artist or a hod- carrier. A Michael Angelo without Florence or a Phidias without Athens would have been unthinkable. The hard and cruel alternative, "work or starve, " which our militant industrialism offers the toiler, is tragic in its short-sighted selfishness. It forgets that the best worker must love his work and that this is impossible without a sense of social worth. IV. This analysis of the characteristics of the "average man" brings us face to face with a paradox which has puzzled more than one student of democracy. In the light of the evident prejudices and intellectual limitations of the average citizen how are we to justify the appeal democracy is constantly making to his judgment in the settlement of fundamental issues? Writers such as Macaulay, Lecky, and Peel have asserted that since the masses are confessedly ignorant of statecraft or of moral philosophy their rule is necessarily a rule of ignorance and incompetency. On the 250 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. other hand, Bryce states that "where the humbler classes have differed in opinion from the higher, they have often been proved by the event to have been right and their so- called betters wrong" (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 251). An American writer goes so far as to say, "There has never been a period in our history, since the American nation was independent, when it would not have been a calamity to have it controlled by its highly educated men alone" (Higginson, "Cowardice of Culture," Atlantic Monthly, October, 1905). It would be unfair perhaps to infer from this that learning or culture per se unfit a man for pronouncing upon moral issues. But it is doubtless true that the specialization of work and the concentration of energies in the case of the markedly successful business man, lawyer, physician or scientist inevitably induce a narrowing of interests. The price paid for success in a chosen profession is too often an institutionalizing of habits of thought or of feeling. Every social reformer must know from experience the truth of Mr. Lloyd's statement in his Man the Social Creator (p. 101), "Seldom does the new conscience when it seeks a teacher to declare to men what is wrong, find him in the dignitaries of the church, the state, the culture that is. The higher the rank, the closer the tie that binds those to what is but ought not to be." The unsophisticated sanity of the "average man," therefore, gives to his pronouncements on moral questions a validity not possessed by the opinion of the scholar or of the successful business man, hopelessly committed to powerful interests. For this reason we have made the "average man" the keeper of the conscience of the community. Moral valuations are not merely a matter of the intellectual ap- preciation of the situation. The old Socratic dictum that insight will always bring right action has long since been discarded as an ethical principle. At best, insight merely puts one in the position to do the right thing. We must have in addition the driving power of the affections. The springs of moral action are ever in intimate association with THE TYRANNY OF THE AVERAGE MAN. 251 the homely but sane and powerful sentiments that find expression in the marriage tie, love of offspring, normal and healthful occupations and community interests. The secret of moral sanity is found, therefore, in living a well balanced and thoroughly human existence through which these fundamental interests may best find expression. Our tense industrial centers with their selfish profitism, their ruthless exploitation of man and of nature, doubtless militate against the healthful functioning of the basal human impulses. In the mad pursuit of economic gains, social preferment, or the tawdry pleasures of our highly artificial city life, the sober persistent values are often utterly lost from view. Doubtless this explains why we find the unbiased moral judgment of our village and agricultural communities most trustworthy on great na- tional issues. If there the current of life is more monoto- nous it is also more normal. It is hard not to see some con- nection between the freedom, the vigor, and the sanity of western democracy and the more healthful environment of its citizenship. No individual or group of individuals whose broad human sympathies have been warped or vitiated through abnormal social or economic conditions can be trusted to decide aright great moral issues. For good or for ill we have committed our destinies to the keeping of the "average man. " Often we grow restless at his blunders; we despair over his stupidity. It is easy to criticise him for his faults are writ large in the chronicles of passing events; he has nothing to conceal. At best, how- ever, he is more deserving of sympathy than of censure. For he lives in an age unlike any other in its desperate need of an understanding of the real meaning of life. The in- crement of human experience has far outrun our ability to give it rational interpretation and evaluation. We are overmastered, bewildered, even appalled at life's increasing complexity, its tragic revelations of the ape and tiger. We need as never before a philosophy of values. Not a philosophy that moons over the eternal puzzles of meta- physics, that tries to catch the drift of the cosmic weather, 252 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. but a philosophy that will give us a trustworthy evaluation of the immediate and insistent facts of experience. Per- haps we may adapt to the "average man" and his prob- lems Bernard Shaw's somewhat irreverent remark as to the deity and say "Don't pity him. Help him. " John M. Mecklin. University of Pittsburgh.