THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

i 48 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
not in his day grown to such proportions as to suggest the difficulty. His
ideal, apparently, was higher education such as once flourished in Greece,
coming not from institutions but from free individuals "Sophists" who
traveled from city to city and taught independently of either public or
private control.
These things premised, it makes no great difference what is the form of
government; and Spinoza expresses only a mild preference for democracy.
Any of the traditional political forms can be framed "so that every man
. . . may prefer public right to private advantage; this is the task" of the
law-giver. 132 Monarchy is efficient, but oppressive and militaristic.
and concord to
Experience is thought to teach that it makes for peace
confer the whole authority on one man. For no dominion has stood so long
without any notable change as that of the Turks; and on the other hand
there were none so little lasting as those which were popular or democratic,
nor any in which so many seditions arose. Yet if slavery, barbarism and
desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. No
doubt there are usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and
children, than between masters and slaves; yet it advances not the art of
household management to change a father's right into a right of property,
and count children but as slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, is furthered
by handing over the whole authority to one man.133
To which he adds a word on secret diplomacy:
It has been the one song of those who thirst after absolute power that the
interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret.
. . . But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of
public welfare, the more oppressive is the slavery to which they will lead.
. Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil
secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat
secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority;
and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the
citizens in time of peace. 134
Democracy is the most reasonable form of government; for in it "every
one submits to the control of authority over his actions, but not over his
judgment and reason; i. e., seeing that all cannot think alike, the voice of
the majority has the force of law." 135 The military basis of this democracy
should be universal military service, the citizens retaining their arms
during peace; 186 its fiscal basis should be the single tax. 137 The defect
of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into power; and there is
"*T. T-P., ch. 17. T. P., ch. 6. T. P., ch. 7.
**T. T-P., ch. 20. T. P., ch. 7.
137
"The fields and the whole soil, and (if it can be managed) the houses, should
be public property, ... let at a yearly rental to the citizen; . , . and with this
exception let them all be free from every kind of taxation in time of peace."
T. P* ch. 6.