Now, this is the answer to the questions of some kind critics, whose
actual words I have not within reach at the moment, about whether my
democracy meant the rule of the majority over the minority. It means the
rule of the rule--the rule of the rule over the exception. When a nation
finds a soul it clothes it with a body, and does verily act like one
living thing. There is nothing to be said about those who are out of it,
except that they are out of it. After talking about it in the abstract
for decades, this is Democracy, and it is marvellous in our eyes. It is
not the difference between ninetynine persons and a hundred persons; it is
one person--the people. I do not know or care how many or how few of the
Belgians like or dislike the pictures of Wiertz. They could not be either
justified or condemned by a mere majority of Belgians. But I am very
certain that the defiance to Prussia did not come from a majority of
Belgians. It came from Belgium one and indivisible--atheists, priests,
princes of the blood, Frenchified shopkeepers, Flemish boors, men, women,
and children, and the sooner we understand that this sort of thing can
happen the better for us. For it is this spontaneous spiritual fellowship
of communities under certain conditions to which the four or five most
independent minds of Europe willingly bear witness to-day.
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