The patri. cian hierarchy.

in all other classes pride is misplaced or childish. A competent priesthood will find it the easier to put aside the jealous objections of empiricism, from the circumstance that the patricians, as the ministers of the Great Being, whilst subject to the fatalities of our cerebral organisation, display, as a rule, a less ignoble egoism than that of the objectors. From avarice their wealth protects them; they ennoble labour by their free choice of it as their profession; and that choice is determined by the highest of our personal instincts—the instincts most closely allied to those of sympathy, and most open to social influences. Still, allowing for these natural dispositions, the spiritual power will have to exert itself constantly to modify by faith and love the energetic will required of the patriciate by its mission, with the view of bringing it into as close a connection as possible with the benevolent instincts. The regeneration indicated finds direct support in the concentration of wealth, such concentration strengthening the consciousness of the sway of Humanity, and so evoking generosity of feeling as a consequence of generality in thought and act.

Thus we introduce regularity into the phenomenon, so deserving our admiration, of the constant reproduction, with increase, of the perishable portion of human capital. Yet to ensure a right appreciation of this general result of human providence in its material aspect, I have to show in what way the several constituents of the patrician hierarchy contribute to it.

The constituent elements of the moderating power are each of them by their nature indivisible; as appears from the uniformity of the action of women; from the concentration which characterises that of the priesthood; for any division weakens it by interfering with synthesis. The patriciate, on the contrary, the directing power, is divisible, and must be so, from the speciality inherent in its object. All spiritual authority necessarily originates in a single brain, and radiates thence gradually in every direction whatsoever; that it requires a plurality of interpreters is due solely to its wide sphere of action; in itself it remains homogeneous. Practical power, on the other hand, admits of concentration only in a very limited degree; so limited that each department of industry, looked at as a whole, requires many chiefs, each independent one of the other, each providing for the wants of a

small population. Neglecting this secondary division, due to our weakness as individuals, what we have to attend to here is the main division of the patriciate, based on the differences in its industrial action.

of patricians

tural.

facturing.

cial.

The division consists in distinguishing three essential Three classes classes, according as industry, becoming more and more (1) Agriculcondensed, produces, manufactures, or transports the objects (2) Manuthat supply our wants. Hence, as a consequence, the patrician (3) Commerhierarchy, in natural correspondence with the universal principle of Positive classification, the principle of increase in generality and decrease in independence. So viewed, to concentrate the hierarchy in one single chief becomes evidently impossible, not merely for our planet as a whole, but even for each independent state, as no single man could be competent simultaneously to direct its agriculture, its manufactures, and its commerce. Nevertheless the organisation of industry would Bankers. still be impracticable, were it not that the progress of the most concentrated of its forms, commerce, has thrown up a still more condensed form, which connects with all the other forms by the circulation of values and the developement of credit. This supreme degree of industrial abstraction leads to the creation of a patriciate on which naturally devolves the leading influence in the city, and the further function of bringing into active concert all the various states.

And yet the Bank, however legitimate its superiority when compared with commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, can offer no discipline for each several population, much less a rallying point for the different populations. But though in no sense a substitute for the continuous interference of the two elements of the spiritual power, its ascendancy smooths the way for their influence upon the directing patriciate, by concentrating such influence on its highest branch. In fact the encyclopædic education will lead habitually to close relations between the priesthood and the bankers, by virtue of the generality which characterises their operations, so that the banking class will be the civic organ for inaugurating the more important connections of science with industry.

tariate.

After this examination of the patriciate, we may complete The Proleour conspectus of the Sociocracy in the concrete by that of its fourth indispensable constituent. Though it have the most of a collective character, it connects directly with the first, and

Its homoge

neity.

In the pro letariate are developed the general

yet that first has the most of an individual character; for the proletaries do not, any more than women, form a class, properly so-called. The proletariate is to be regarded as the general milieu from out of which the two special powers take their rise, and which should control the action of those powers, because it constitutes the object of that action.

The real character of the popular constituent is best seen in its inherent homogeneity, which it maintains under the continuous pressure of influences in the contrary direction. The hierarchy gradually established in the patriciate does not apply to the proletariate, and this in spite of the subordination of workmen to capitalists, which has been on the increase ever since the close of the Middle Ages. Difference of employments, nay, even national differences, are lost in the community of position and object. The similarity becomes more easy to appreciate if placed in contrast with the habitual tendencies to rivalry of the industrial chiefs. The only point where it fails is in the division which exists between the agricultural labourers and those of the towns. Now the separation between these two depends not so much on difference of work as on the moral and intellectual inferiority of the rural population. This transitory consequence of the inequality in their advance will disappear under a common education, and when it disappears all proletaries, in town or country, will awake to a sense of their intrinsic uniformity, which has an immediate bearing on the success to which they are entitled in realising their common aspirations.

These considerations may show us that the mass of the people really has no peculiar features, but offers us only the features of general characteristics of Humanity, masked in its different

Humanity.

chiefs by their respective functions. The peculiar office of the proletariate lends itself best to the rise of a community of feeling in regard to the harmony of the state, or of the world; given such social arrangements as shall allow it the proper leisure requisite for it to avail itself of the advantages of its position the advantages of its disengagement in heart and intellect. Owing to the simple character of their special work, proletaries are the least synthetic of the constituent elements of Sociocracy, whilst their poverty is a hindrance to their being as sympathetic as their chiefs may be. For this reason there will always be a disposition in the proletariate to protest against the

classification by offices here given, and to prefer the classification of individuals by personal merit, independently of social position. Herein lies the main source of the attributes which characterise, and of the dangers which attach to, the influence of the people, an influence which is equally adapted to regulate or to disturb the common harmony, according to the direction it takes.

It should be a leading aim in the institutions of Sociocracy to give a systematic direction to the power of number-a power not unfrequently an element of temporary disturbance, but on which it devolves to give completeness, by its constant intervention, to the social order, the true foundations of which are wealth and wisdom. Such a change in the action of number depends rather on the people itself than on the influence of its circumstances. The first requisite is, that the people of its own impulse renounce the use of force, in all cases confining its just resistance to this or that abuse of authority, temporal or spiritual, to the refusal to cooperate or to the withholding its assent, the sole form of contest admissible in the Sociocracy. In the second place, the people must so far shake off class selfishness as not to look upon itself as the essential object of the whole social economy. The Positive religion will make the people feel that, unworthy parasites excepted, all men are practically fellow-labourers in a continuous work, a work never having for its object any one group, however large, but always concerning the whole of mankind. At bottom, the existing generation labours for that part of the subjective population which is to be, as the part which has been, laboured for it. Continuity, by the systematic teaching of the priesthood, once recognised as superior to solidarity, the proletariate will, of its own impulse, support the priesthood by virtue of the tendency of its form of activity to abstraction and unselfishness, bearing, as it does mainly, on the future of the race.

Means for direction of number.

a systematic

the power of

The prolerestrain its In instincts. personal

tariate must

of

A further and last requisite for the personal regeneration of the proletariate must be a firmer control over their self-regarding instincts, a greater cultivation of their social. regard to the former, the main effort will concern the love gain, to which their position offers a constant stimulus, while it as naturally protects them against pride and vanity, the faults of their leaders, whether practical or theoretical. Once protected as a body from the pressure of want, they will feel

External conditions.

the contradiction involved in the outcry against the selfishness and idleness of the rich, whilst the poor make it the final end and aim of their own exertions to reach the same ignoble state. Guided by the priesthood, the proletaries will stigmatise any tendency to leave the class as a slur upon the dignity of the popular function, and as fatal to the just aspirations of the people, those who desert it invariably betraying it. In the second place, the plebeians-better placed for the attainment of domestic happiness than the patricians and the priests whilst they cultivate attachment, will add to it veneration for all their leaders, even in the midst of civil or religious disputes. Their position as inferiors may seem to deny them the exercise of benevolence, for benevolence implies protection; yet in reality there is ample scope for it, as it is the Proletariate which presides over the relations of man with the animals. The developement of the life of sympathy, in regard to these two instincts, will, more easily with the proletariate than elsewhere, be carried on under the constant influence of women, the best types of the sex being found in its ranks.

These personal requirements met, those of its position in the Sociocracy the external conditions of its well-being-will be satisfied by the due performance on the part of the priesthood and the patriciate of the conditions which depend on them. These concern first education, next labour, as indicated in the General View and to be completely explained in the present volume. Destined for the proletaries above all, the encyclopædic instruction will enable them at once to give greater value to their own more special action, by virtue of the several connections which exist between industry and science, and at the same time to render more effective their general supervision by appealing to the common doctrine. As for labour, its normal conditions have been adequately stated in the second volume, allowing for the further explanations to be given in the fourth chapter of the present volume. At present I need only add that the guarantees of labour are not limited to the securing the labourer against want, but extend to the moral and intellectual elevation of the proletariate, the object being to allow the universal attainment of family life, in the name equally of order and of progress. The several conditions required for this purpose will be satisfied when, as a consequence of the voluntary acceptance of the sedentary form of human activity, the