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DEMOCRACY, WITH REFERENCE TO A

RECENT BOOK.

WHAT is the greatest name in the world? What word responds to the most inclusive thought of the time?

Surely it is this: Democracy. The word "Catholicism" has a renowned echo in the world. No observer of the moment will refuse to Pope Leo XIII. the distinction that is his. The Holy See is still perhaps as well able to take care of itself as ever. Once all eyes turned to Rome with superstitious adoration; for centuries the Pope nearly hypnotised the world. Today in Catholicism there is not quite the same power of attraction, the same glory, the same prestige. But the Catholic Church, the Church which is after all, historically, The Church,-driven for mere self-preservation to a new opportunism, a fresh political wisdom, is recovering again, for a time at least, its ground. It is bending on its oars with an unexpected vigour. So men pull with a winning - or a losing!-stake in sight. And although one sees in the near future perhaps a future so near as the end of the twentieth century the rock of St. Peter, cracked, though not

shattered, yet more venerable always and picturesque than any of the foundations on which the post-Reformation religious sects have raised the symbols and temples of their faith, while in the unsightly clefts the lichens begin to encroach, as long ago they did on the Doric flutings of dead Apollo's shrine at Bassæ, still, to-day there is no obvious sign of the change, to-day, at least, the Church is holding its own and more!

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Why is this renewed vitality, this undiminished and lusty life? Because, simply because, it has burned the old standards, and raised another of a bunting woven in nineteenth-century looms. It has lifted the standard of Democracy. Pope Leo XIII. has himself given the cue in memorable words. It is not seemly - the application was to France and the Royalists— that the Church should direct its loyalty to more than one corpse.

The fittest survives on this planet. But the fittest survives only in obedience to the laws of this planet, of this whole mysterious system in the network of the complications of which we find ourselves prisoners with the sweet illusion that we are free. To ignore the arrangement of things is the courageous privilege of an idealist, of a Ravachol, but not of a discreet,

1 The exact words of Leo XIII. as spoken to Monsieur de Blowitz were: L'Église du Christ ne s'attache qu'à un seul cadavre, à celui qui est lui-même attaché sur la croix.

time-serving man, not of the opportunist. And The Church, in its alliance with Democracy, is showing itself more in and of the world than ever. So, that it will survive yet for a fruitful while one may be sure: it has based its hope upon the greatest of all names; it is making the cause of the people its own.

Yes, Democracy is the greatest name in the world; and the entertainment which the advance of the ideas for which it stands offers to the critic is so exhilarating as almost to imperil his steadiness of vision. To be fully abreast of one's time, an achievement which Goethe thought enough to make a man a genius, — is to-day beyond the opportunity of even so fortunately placed an observer as a pope.

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Not even can Leo

XIII., who, for the pleasure of criticism, is the most privileged prisoner on the planet, hope to sum up the entire moment; not even he can venture to plot the curve of the developing Democracy. But the great thing is that he has seen the nature of the problem, and where lies the safety of the venerable interests dear to him. Could there be any doubt, indeed, that the word "Democracy" covers vaguely a host of facts belonging to the most interesting series now at the critical disposal of an observing man, the right-aboutface of Catholicism just the other day in France would be conclusive evidence: so much confidence has The Church taught us to have in her worldly wisdom!

It is of the latest serious attempt to interpret to us the meaning of this word so often on our lips to-day, Laveleye's Le Gouvernement dans la Démocratie,1 that I am now going to speak. We have not the book as yet in English. But in Europe, as of all that Laveleye did, one hears about it a great deal. Perhaps readers care about him there too much. But it is worth while, I believe, as often as possible to interest ourselves in what other people are saying on those matters of which we too are thinking. The process is invigorating and widening; it is a good thing for our prejudices.

A new book by Laveleye was always a pleasure, but never a surprise. Few writers devoting themselves to large, yet after all special and limited, themes have adopted at once so many of the good, and some of the attractive but unfortunate, intellectual methods of our age. There have been times, one likes to think, when men have had no thought for the morrow; when they have cared only to satisfy their own sense of perfection, letting all other ends take care of themselves; when they have been willing to risk being forestalled, so only they might be left sincerely to follow their own bent in their own leisurely way. At our exciting moment of to-day the temptation to be immediately heard leads so Émile de Lave

1 Le Gouvernement dans la Démocratie, par leye. Vols. 2. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1891. pp. 664.

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