Now, in what I have been urging thus far—­which practically comes to this, that the sovereignty popularly ascribed to democratic majorities is an illusion—­not socialists only, but other advocates of popular government also, will alike be against me, as the promulgator of some blasphemous paradox.  It will be easy, however, to show them that their objections are quite mistaken, and that the exceptional powers of dictation which have just been ascribed to a minority are so far from being inconsistent with the real powers of the majority that the latter, when properly understood, are seen to be their complement and their counterpart.  For, though socialists and thinkers like “X” ascribe to majorities powers which they do not possess, we shall find that majorities do actually possess others, in some ways very much greater, of which such thinkers have thus far taken no cognisance at all.  I have said that minorities can dictate their own terms to majorities which desire to secure their services, the reason being that the former are alone competent to determine what treatment will supply them with a motive to exert themselves.  What holds good of minorities as opposed to majorities holds good in essentials, though in a somewhat different form, of majorities as opposed to such minorities.

Let us turn again to a matter to which I have referred already—­namely, the family life of the citizens of any race or nation.  This results from propensities in a vast number of human beings which, although they are similar, are in each case independent.  These propensities give rise to legislation, the object of which is to prescribe rules by which their satisfaction may be made secure; but the propensities are so far from originating in legislation that no legislation which seriously interfered with them would be tolerated.  Socialists themselves have continually admitted this very thing.  The Italian socialist, Giovanni Rossi, for instance, who attempted about fifteen years ago to found a socialistic colony in Brazil—­an attempt which completely failed—­attributed its failure largely to this particular cause—­namely, the impossibility of inducing the colonists to conform to any rules of the community by which family life was interfered with.  Here we have an example of democracy in its genuine form, rendering powerless what affected to be democratic legislation.  We have the cumulative power of similar human characters compelling legislation to limit itself to what these characters spontaneously demand.  And now let us go a step—­a very short step—­further.  The family propensities in question show their dictatorial power, not only in the limitations which they impose on positive laws, but also in the character which they impose on the material surroundings of existence, especially in the material structure of the dwellings of all classes except the lowest.  All are constructed with a view to keeping the family group united, and each family group separate from all others.  Further, if the natural family propensities thus affect the structure of the dwelling, other propensities, more various in detail, but in each case equally spontaneous, determine what commodities shall be put into it.