M. Fouillée also argues that reform must come "from above and not from below," and that "the movement for regeneration can come from above and not from below."
I ask nothing better, but I ask also how is it going to be done? Inasmuch as everything depends upon the people, who, what, can influence the people except the people itself? Everything depends on the people, by what then can it be moved except by a force that is innate. We are here confronted--we are talking to a philosopher and can make use of scientific terms--with a { Kinêtês akinêtos} with a motive force which causes but does not receive motives.
A principle has disappeared, a prejudice if you like to call it so, the prejudice in favour of competence. We no longer think that the man who understands how to do a thing ought to be doing that thing, or ought to be chosen to do it. Hence, not only is everything mismanaged, but it seems impossible by any device to handle the matter effectually. We see no solution.
Nietzsche really has a horror of democracy; only like all energetic pessimists, who are not mere triflers, he used to say from time to time: "There are pessimists who are resigned and cowardly. We do not wish to be like them." When he would not take this view he persuaded himself to look at democracy through rose-coloured spectacles.
At times, looking at the matter from an æsthetic point of view, he used to say: "Intercourse with the people is as indispensable and refreshing as the contemplation of vigorous and healthy vegetation," and although this is in flagrant contradiction to all he has elsewhere said of the "bestial flock" and the "inhabitants of the swamp," the thought has a certain amount of sense in it. It signifies that instinct is a force, and that every force must be interesting to study; and further that, as such, it contains an active virtue, a principle of life, a nucleus of growth.
This, though vaguely expressed, is very possible. After all the crowd is only powerful by reason of numbers, and because it has been decided that numbers shall decide. It is an expedient; but an expedient cannot impart force to a thing that had it not before. Motive power, initiative, belongs to the man who has a plan, who makes his combination to achieve it, who perseveres and is patient and does not relinquish pursuit. If he is eliminated and reduced to impotence or to a minimum of usefulness, one does not see how the crowd, without him, can obtain its power of initiation. Further explanation is needed.