The Henson Journals

[260]

Monday, March 23rd, 1925.

It is undoubtedly true that a ruling tendency in modern democracy is to wage war upon excellence and to give preference to the commonplace and the ordinary. The great mass of mankind feel what they are pleased to call "safer" under the guidance of mediocrity than under the leadership of excellence. Ideas are unfamiliar things and rather terrifying as well. Instincts and unconscious sympathies are less jarring and less disturbing. Human beings as a whole greatly dislike any interference with the conventional. The notion that the average man is a radical is a figment of the imagination of him who has no real contact with human beings. In truth, the average man is a sturdy & inexpugnable conservative. Were this not so, civilisation would have committed suicide long ago.

Nicholas Murray Butler, 1924.

Lord Joicey sent £100 for the Escomb fund, & Lord Londonderry £25. The first is generous: the last disappointing.

I went to Hamsterley in the afternoon, & confirmed 36 persons: &, in the evening to Spennymoor, & confirmed 149. The first church was asphyxiating; the last (though an ill–ventilated building) was tolerable.

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