ABSTRACT
For our present purposes, the significant facts about the governments of contemporary nations are these. The patience of common humanity is the most important, and almost the most surprising, fact in history. Men know that their life is intolerable, but are afraid of the consequences of revolt. The existence of a sense of kinship and social solidarity constitutes another reason why people tolerate the intolerable. Mere habit and the force of inertia are also extremely powerful. Reinforcing the effect of indolence, kindliness and fear, rationalizing these emotions in intellectual terms, is philosophical belief. To a greater or less degree, then, all the civilized communities of the modern world are made up of a small class of rulers, corrupted by too much power, and of a large class of subjects, corrupted by too much passive and irresponsible obedience. A desirable social order is one that delivers us from avoidable evils.
