(Chapter II — Representative Government, Page 199)
The changes now going on in our conception of the psychological basis of politics will also re-open the discussion of representative democracy.
Some of the old arguments in that discussion will no longer be accepted as valid, and it is probable that many political thinkers (especially among those who have been educated in the natural sciences) will return to Plato’s proposal of a despotic government carried on by a selected and trained class, who live apart from the ‘ostensible world’; though English experience in India indicates that even the most carefully selected official must still live in the ‘ostensible world,’ and that the argument that good government requires the consent of the governed does not depend for its validity upon its original intellectualist associations.
Our new way of thinking about politics will, however, certainly change the form, not only of the argument for consent, but also of the institutions by which consent is expressed. An election (like a jury-trial) will be, and is already beginning to be, looked upon rather as a process by which right decisions are formed under right conditions, than as a mechanical expedient by which decisions already formed are ascertained.
Proposals for electoral reform which seem to continue the old intellectualist tradition are still brought forward, and new difficulties in the working of representative government will arise from the wider extension of political power. But that conception of representation may spread which desires both to increase the knowledge and public spirit of the voter and to provide that no strain is put upon him greater than he can bear.