The Drift of Democracy

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It is not surprising that in the political field, the traditional form of Christianity has not accepted the logical conclusions of that democracy which asserts that man can do what he likes, since there is no power greater than man. In that sense, Catholicism has never been democratic in spirit.

The Persistence of Order, Volume II: Essays on Politics and Society, ed. Christopher Dawson and T.F. Burns (Cluny Media, 362 pages)

The people who lived in the third and fourth centuries A.D. were probably quite unaware that they were approaching the end of an epoch. They had no idea that the great majority of things which they regarded as the natural necessities of life were to vanish and be forgotten for thousands of years, that an abyss was to separate their world from the next stage of what historians would call “progress,” an abyss so profound that no single family would be able to trace continuity of descent through the dark period ahead. Warned by their blindness, many have since that time thought it wise to prophesy another collapse of civilization, but so far they have been proved wrong by the events. Changes, though immense, have been gradual, and even so important a change as the harnessing of power to machinery has been so gradual that historians deny that it can be called a revolution. But in this case we can still prophesy and be proved right: the “Industrial Revolution,” despite the historians, may still be a real revolution, for it is not ended.

It is not easy to fit contemporary events into an historical perspective, and we always tend to exaggerate the importance of our own time. But it is difficult to think of a period of such anxiety and uncertainty as the present. There is an awareness of the fact that civilization, both in its economic structure and its cultural outlook, is imperiled. There is a growing feeling that life has become so complex that human reason at its best can hardly guide it, and a certainty that it is hopeless to leave its destiny to the wishes of the people, as expressed in the rough and ready methods of modern democracy.

This anxiety about the future and dissatisfaction with the present would give a rude shock to our “enlightened” forefathers, for their dreams of an ideal future have become realities far sooner than they could have expected. We are living in the world of their dreams, and yet we seem to experience little of what they thought we should experience. We are not happy. Yet, if they were right, we ought to be happy. For they would point out that belief in a God whose only practical value was to deceive with hopes of a better world to come those who were not courageous enough to find their heaven in this world is diminishing. People do seem to be losing the old belief in eternal punishment—an immoral doctrine, they would have called it, whose only value was to keep people out of mischief; and yet, in spite of its disappearance, honesty, sympathy, tolerance increase at a rate that Christians must approve. The Gospels, for instance, have not achieved with their message of supernatural charity as much apparent selflessness and altruism as the economic ideal of “service.”

No doubt the world has lost something in gradually forgetting Christianity as a way of life, but any loss has been amply repaid by the love of the scientific spirit, the humility of man before the hard facts of nature, the adventurous toil of the human mind shaping good out of the raw material instead of feebly praying for it under the guidance of the leaders who had vested interests in the prejudices and superstitions of the people. Year by year this great scientific adventure and this love of work have achieved a higher standard of comfort, for the luxuries of our fathers would be rejected by the poorest of our fellow men. Nor has this increased command over the real wealth of the world been as unfairly divided as were the meager spoils of the past. The modern man has felt it necessary to temper the crudities of a purely economic spirit by a spirit of justice.

Part of the prophecies of Marx have come true: a great portion of the wealth which the outstanding men of the time have made possible is handed over to the poor, who contributed but little to its acquirement; it has been made over, not according to the whims of an unorganized and uncertain charity, but by a system ultimately controllable by the poor themselves. No doubt the vast economic system must still fail to realize the noblest demands of the day, but at least all are agreed that it is even more important that destitution should be banished from the land than that wealth itself should be increased.

It must be admitted that for a long time the demands of culture were neglected. But today it is realized that man is more than an animal and that he needs food for his soul; great sums of money are spent to give him a love of the arts, a love of music, an easy introduction to the best literature. The latest scientific discoveries, such as the wireless and the cinema, have been used for his edification and instruction. The drabness of the towns need no longer depress him, seeing that they are filled with great public parks, with bands and bathing; the glories of the country invite him to use cheap motors and chars-a-bancs to rest his mind from the strain of business. Most important of all, perhaps, for the first time in the history of man, it has been possible for the majority of people to rise to the fullest development of personality through a free or a very cheap education; so that nearly every man can be made heir to the spiritual and intellectual riches of the past and present. It is an astounding achievement, this progress of the West. God may or may not be in His Heaven, but surely all ought to be right with our world.

Despite it all, it is no foolish question to ask whether man has been made happier by these achievements. Those whose dreams have come true beyond their fondest hopes never seem to have realized that there is no simple recipe for happiness. They have never learned—as many of our social reformers have not learned—the simplest psychological and ethical lesson that pleasure and happiness are not the same. It seems to be an awful truth that only one factor in the conquest of happiness has been realized by modern progress, and that is the diminution of physical suffering. It is indeed a fine achievement, and yet experience tells us how comparatively unimportant it is, for very great happiness has come through suffering…

If men were machines or animals, all would have been well, but being men, they must express their personality in some way. One way is to express dissatisfaction, and of that there is no lack in these days. But human nature can hardly fail to express itself positively in some belief or demand which is above the utilitarian or material plane. If religion, in the true sense of the word, and traditional morals disappear, some substitute will arise. Man will have ideals and “causes,” something to fight and strive for. If he cannot endure God, he will deify the people; if he dislikes the notion of duty, he will preach the sacredness of rights.¹ The quality of what he insists upon may deteriorate, but whatever it is, it will raise him from the level of what “is,” to the level of what he believes “ought to be.” In the modern experiment man’s religious and ethical nature seem to have found plenty of scope, if we judge by the number of “causes” in which he is interested, but they are all reducible to two fundamental ideals: the abolition of physical suffering, and the defense of the democratic article of faith that all men are, in so far as they are men, equal.

The “Rights of Man,” the foundation of the spirit of democracy, however interpreted, strike the one genuinely ethical note in our civilization. The moment modern man rises above the level of the machine and utility, his views or his demands will be found to rest on that one moral intuition. Humanitarianism, sympathy, justice, tolerance, private judgment all arise from it. So strong is it, that it overflows into the rights of animals, and we may notice how kindness to animals now takes rank above many of the cardinal virtues. Since it is the strongest moral belief, and the source of the emotions which have fired men to achieve whatever is super-material in our civilization, it is of the utmost importance that it be understood. The future must, in a large measure, depend upon its nature.

By the spirit of democracy, I do not mean this or that democratic experiment, which arises, is criticized, modified, and then disappears; I mean the fundamental moral intuition that each and every person has a right to count in the determination of the order to which all must submit, if they are to live together, and that no person may be sacrificed for the good of others. Or, to borrow and adapt the convenient phrase of Kant, the insistence that each and every person shall be treated as, and therefore shall be allowed to act as, an “end in himself.”

To our generation, this reads like an ethical platitude; the difficulty arises in the endeavor to turn that formal law into something that matters, for never was there a time when true personality was rarer, never so much “mass” movement; yet it is true that the universal belief that one man is as good as another in those things that makes a man a man, and, therefore that gives him rights and imposes on him duties, is a product of our Western civilization. It corresponds in the development of the race, to the stage in the history of the individual, when he definitely accepts as genuine doubts, those suggestions, difficulties, and questionings which come and go in every growing mind. The moment they become doubts, the whole quality of his outlook changes, and he can never get back to the days of naive trust. For the future, he alone can be the judge. Many men never go through this change, at bottom they believe what they are told because they are told it. It is the same with the race. Many peoples have not realized and will not realize that in a true sense there is nothing in this world greater than man, and therefore than themselves; but once the fact is realized, a complete and permanently different outlook must result. No authority, no vested interest, no tradition is again accepted as such, it has to prove the genuineness of its credentials.

Christianity has proved to be the dividing line between those who have the moral intuition as to the “Rights of Man” and those who have it not. It did not exist in the days before Christ, it does not exist today in the East, except as a result of Western influence. It was Christianity that first taught as true for both rich and poor, wise and foolish, that grandest and yet most dangerous of all moral teachings; that each man is himself and alone responsible for the salvation of his immortal soul. This doctrine lifted man once and for all out of the rut of living, out of the security of just accepting what he found, and forced him to risk losing his soul in the adventure and experiment of saving it by his own efforts. But Christianity not only taught the doctrine which is the inspiration of our Western experiment, it also offered the safeguards which would prevent disaster. Man’s uniqueness is not due to his wisdom or his power or his autonomy, but to the fact that he participates in the Divine Nature, which is the source of all wisdom and power and authority. Man is not free to do what he likes, but he is free to participate in or reject a supra-sensible and supernatural order. He is not released from the order of nature in order to live in disorder, but to be able to rise to the order of supernature, an order which must of its nature be chosen freely.

It is not then surprising that in the political field, the traditional form of Christianity has not accepted the logical conclusions of that democracy which asserts that man can do what he likes, since there is no power greater than man. In that sense, Catholicism has never been democratic in spirit; it teaches, of course, the freedom and responsibility of the self, but emphasizes the fact that this freedom is for a purpose, namely, to build up a better self. To ensure that end Catholicism taught man to perfect himself by relying on God, and on the visible representatives of His spiritual and temporal authority. At the same time it has been the strongest upholder of the essence of what democracy aims at defending, the inalienable rights of man, who is the image of God. Hence in these days she has encouraged what is called social reform, while condemning many of the extreme doctrines of democratic and social reformers.

It was Calvinism and the dissident sects that arose from it, which tended to interpret the Christian spirit of self-reliance and fundamental equality of all men as political democracy. The doctrine of salvation by faith alone prejudged the issue in man’s striving after perfection in the supernatural sense, and threw him back on himself and his this-world activities, while its note of protest emphasized the importance of the individual as against the existing powers and authorities. It was in such sects that the spiritual freedom and moral responsibility of each soul was translated into an individualism, strengthened by the consciousness of Divine protection, which caused its adherents to aim at doing as freely and as earnestly as possible whatever they felt themselves called upon to do. As unsupported moral earnestness weakened, and the “divine call” became more and more of a personal choice or whim, the quality of the work done deteriorated, but the insistence on the rights and liberty of the individual survived and overflowed into every kind of political life.

Thus it has come about that the moral belief that each and every man is an end in himself, the basis of the democratic faith, has separated itself from the safeguards with which it was originally associated, and has drifted from the setting in which it developed. Nevertheless, it may be said to be the only generally accepted counterweight to the determinist and mechanical character of our civilization, in which more and more material wealth is produced by a mighty and ever more complex machine at the mercy of an impersonal law of supply and demand.

The problem that demands urgent solution is how to preserve this spirit and, if possible, replace it in an acceptable religious and philosophical setting, while, at the same time, enabling it to fulfill its function of helping to direct the economic machine to ends worthy of man. In the days when the production of wealth was simple and localized, man, religious, moral, and cultured, could easily direct it for good or evil. Today this production has grown so complex, and man’s spirit has so weakened, that it is natural that one should have the gravest fears for the future. Once religion, philosophy, ethics, art were in fact as important as economics in the life of society; today the only possible rival of economics seems to be the so-called science of politics.

Republished with gracious permission from Cluny Media.

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The featured image is “Château Noir” (1903), by Paul Cézanne, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.