“The perfect unit of self-government is a familiar environment in which, as Aristotle would say, people can know one another’s character. In villages, townships or communes, autonomy reproduces the advantages of direct democracy, rousing civic patriotism, lifting the individual beyond himself, encouraging habits of cooperation, training the judgement and imparting administrative experience to millions who cannot hope to enter representative assemblies or services at a distance. Local self-government in towns or districts lightens the burden of central legislatures and administrations. In the big states of the modern world, it has the sovereign merit of preventing the individual from being submerged in huge electorates. These tend to inspire a sort of awe, a sense of individual impotence like that which people feel when they contemplate the majestic and eternal forces of the inanimate world. The resulting fatalism of the multitude is best corrected by local self-government.”[50]