第88章

One of the psychological causes of this intense thirst for reforms arises from the difficulty of determining the real causes of the evils complained of.The need of explanation creates fictitious causes of the simplest nature.Therefore the remedies also appear simple.

For forty years we have incessantly been passing reforms, each of which is a little revolution in itself.In spite of all these, or rather because of them, the French have evolved almost as little as any race in Europe.

The slowness of our actual evolution may be seen if we compare the principal elements of our social life--commerce, industry, &c.--with those of other nations.The progress of other nations--of the Germans especially--then appears enormous, while our own has been very slow.

Our administrative, industrial, and commercial organisation is considerably out of date, and is no longer equal to our new needs.Our industry is not prospering; our marine is declining.

Even in our own colonies we cannot compete with foreign countries, despite the enormous pecuniary subventions accorded by the State.M.Cruppi, an ex-Minister of Commerce, has insisted on this melancholy decline in a recent book.Falling into the usual errors, he believed it easy to remedy this inferiority by new laws.

All politicians share the same opinion, which is why we progress so slowly.Each party is persuaded that by means of reforms all evils could be remedied.This conviction results in struggles such as have made France the most divided country in the world and the most subject to anarchy.

No one yet seems to understand that individuals and their methods, not regulations, make the value of a people.The efficacious reforms are not the revolutionary reforms but the trifling ameliorations of every day accumulated in course of time.The great social changes, like the great geological changes, are effected by the daily addition of minute causes.

The economic history of Germany during the last forty years proves in a striking manner the truth of this law.

Many important events which seem to depend more or less on hazard--as battles, for example--are themselves subject to this law of the accumulation of small causes.No doubt the decisive struggle is sometimes terminated in a day or less, but many minute efforts, slowly accumulated, are essential to victory.We had a painful experience of this in 1870, and the Russians have learned it more recently.Barely half an hour did Admiral Togo need to annihilate the Russian fleet, at the battle of Tsushima, which finally decided the fate of Japan, but thousands of little factors, small and remote, determined that success.Causes not less numerous engendered the defeat of the Russians--a bureaucracy as complicated as ours, and as irresponsible;lamentable material, although paid for by its weight in gold; a system of graft at every degree of the social hierarchy, and general indifference to the interests of the country.

Unhappily the progress in little things which by their total make up the greatness of a nation is rarely apparent, produces no impression on the public, and cannot serve the interests of politicians at elections.These latter care nothing for such matters, and permit the accumulation, in the countries subject to their influence, of the little successive disorganisations which finally result in great downfalls.

5.Social Distinctions in Democracies and Democratic Ideas in Various Countries.

When men were divided into castes and differentiated chiefly by birth, social distinctions were generally accepted as the consequences of an unavoidable natural law.