Dedication
To my friends and former students at
Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express his thanks to a number of American publishers and copyright holders who permitted him to quote from these various books:
The Atlantic Monthly Press: The Letters of William James, edited by H. P. Bowditch.
Messrs. Brandt and Brandt: The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, edited by A. W. Lane and L. H. Hall (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1922).
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Incorporated: Gustav Stolper, This Age of Fable (Reynal and Hitchcock, New York, 1942).
Preface
NOT without an inner emotion and a certain feeling of hesitancy am I offering these pages to the English-speaking public. The emotion is due to the fact that I lived for over ten years on the hospitable soil of the United States of America—the native land of my second child—which to me is my second home. The hesitancy, on the other hand, is the result of the grim foreboding that this volume will be the cause of several misunderstandings and, in a number of cases, of downright resentment.
Chapter I. Definitions and Basic Principles
THIS book is an essay in the narrowest sense of the term—an effort to throw some light on certain phases and aspects of the century-old struggle between the principles of freedom and those of equality, between the ideologies of liberalism and of democracy (in their classic sense, of course). It is obvious that this study cannot be exhaustive; nevertheless, the subjects of our analysis have not been chosen at random, but have been selected for special reasons.
Chapter II. Democracy and Totalitarianism: The Prophets
Verzeiht, es ist ein gross Ergetzen
Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen;
Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
Und wie wir’s dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.
—J. W. GOETHE, Faust
Chapter III. A Critique of Democracy
“. . . for the few shall save
The many or the many are to fall
Still to be wrangling in a noisy grave.”
The belief that the liberty of the people can be guaranteed by parliamentary government has ceased to exist for some time. . . . The world is fed up with parliamentarism, but nobody has a better solution, and the knowledge that this despised institution has to be carried over as a necessary evil into the twentieth century fills the minds of the best of our contemporaries with anxiety.
Chapter IV. Democracy and Monarchy
1. THE QUESTION
Mir ist das Volk zur Last:
Meint es doch diess und das;
Weil es die Fürsten hasst,
Denkt es, es wäre was.
The hatred for the monarchical principle has gone so far that people want to have four-part solos.
Chapter V. The Political Temper of Catholic Nations
It is surprising to observe how constantly we find theology at the bottom of our political questions.
—P. J. PROUDHON, Les confessions d’un révolutionnaire
(Paris, 1849, p. 61)
1. THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF CATHOLICISM
Chapter VI. Hus, Luther and National Socialism; The Genesis of a Totalitarian Movement, I
The Genesis of a Totalitarian Movement—I
Chapter VII. The Rise of the National Socialist Party; The Genesis of a Totalitarian Movement, II
The Genesis of a Totalitarian Movement—II
I am tired, Mr. Roosevelt, of hearing it said—even by M. Maritain—that the democracies are the opposite of the dictatorships. Democracy offers no defence to dictators, that is the truth. Every democracy can at any moment have an acute attack of dictatorship, as one has an acute attack of appendicitis; and national temperament can do nothing about it.
