of the people, by the people, for the people. It is chiefly the second
factor in this definition that calls for comment here. It means that in
a democratic state there is no distinction between the rulers and the
ruled. The people are supposed to rule themselves. They cannot do
so directly, so they elect their representatives. These representatives,
in turn, select the ministers who actually run the government. The
laws and policies of the state and the principal measures adopted by
the government do indeed reflect the will of the people, not of the
whole people but of the majority of them.
This in brief is democracy. There is no doubt that this is the best
system man has been able so far to evolve for himself. The basic
concept on which it rests, namely, that nobody has a right to rule
over another, is ideal. But the point is whether it has achieved, or is
capable of achieving the aim it has laid before it, The West has been
the cradle of democracy, so we may ask what the thinkers there have
to say about it.
VI. Democracy's FailureIn his book The Crisis of Civilisation Professor Alfred Cobban of
London University, discussing the causes of the decline of Western
civilisation, says:
Considering politics in terms of actual facts and not of abstract
theories, it must be acknowledged that the identification of ruler and
the ruled, assumed in the theory of the sovereignty of people, is a
practical impossibility. The government is one set of people and the
governed another. Once society has developed beyond the smallest
and the most primitive communities, they never have been and never
can be the same. The pretence that they are can only lead to the worst
excesses of power in the state (p. 68).
Professor A.C. Ewing of Cambridge University has discussed
democracy in his book The Individual, the State and World Government.
The following quotation from the book shows the trend of his
thought:
Had Rousseau written now, and not, as he did, prior to any experience
of democracy in the modern world, he could not have been so
optimistic (p.116).
A similar view has been expressed by another thinker, Rene
Guenon, in his book The Crisis of the Modern World. The relevant
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