Democracy, and its people, have long since ceased from seeking Excellence, and have instead "settled" for the despair of finding any Heroes to govern them, and to be contented with the putting up with the want of them. Carlyle's dread mechanical age and cash nexus devoured the feudal pieties, and universal sufferage would not elevate the many, but enthrone the lowest common denominator; Judas would have the same vote as Christ, they would hold the same sacred weight, and "immeasurable Democracy rose monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voice of Chaos," coming to consume everything, and manufacture sickly consumers out of men.
Look around you! O dear reader! Virile hero-worship hath been corrupted, and made to the worship and love of the quality of inequality, the mad obsession, the ugly paradox, and the crown of to-day. The Great Man has been reduced to the safe and relatable Everyman; aspiration and elevation have become democratization and relatability, and all descends into a sludge.
What has arrived was not the emancipated individual, but the smiling compassion of hidden-slavery, creeping legislation, and a pathological Democracy to re-enslave men. The enlightened rationalist gave way to the dependent client class of consumers, and the administrative Leviathan which feeds it. The love for Liberty, it seems, was not strong enough for the love of putrid equalityism, and brought not Freedom, but a new and softer servitude: "more extensive and more mild," one that "degrades men without tormenting them." An "immense tutelary power," that covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, that break not wills, but softens them, that does not tyrannize, but hinders, represses, enervates, and finally reduces each nation to "nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals." The soul is herded into perpetual childhood. Equality of condition has been achieved, at the cost of Excellence and manly character.
"There is no Truth, only Power; no Beauty, only Preference; no Virtue, only Performance."
Look around you! O dear reader! Virile hero-worship hath been corrupted, and made to the worship and love of the quality of inequality, the mad obsession, the ugly paradox, and the crown of to-day. The Great Man has been reduced to the safe and relatable Everyman; aspiration and elevation have become democratization and relatability, and all descends into a sludge.
What has arrived was not the emancipated individual, but the smiling compassion of hidden-slavery, creeping legislation, and a pathological Democracy to re-enslave men. The enlightened rationalist gave way to the dependent client class of consumers, and the administrative Leviathan which feeds it. The love for Liberty, it seems, was not strong enough for the love of putrid equalityism, and brought not Freedom, but a new and softer servitude: "more extensive and more mild," one that "degrades men without tormenting them." An "immense tutelary power," that covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, that break not wills, but softens them, that does not tyrannize, but hinders, represses, enervates, and finally reduces each nation to "nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals." The soul is herded into perpetual childhood. Equality of condition has been achieved, at the cost of Excellence and manly character.
"There is no Truth, only Power; no Beauty, only Preference; no Virtue, only Performance."