COMPARATIVE STUPIDITY OF POLITICIANS. 163 



whom, during her period of lionizing in London, she was brought 

 into contact, as compared with the men of letters, and still more with 

 the men of science, whose acquaintance she made. She observed in 

 the politicians a much lower type of mind and character, expressing 

 itself even in a certain vulgarity of manners, the lowest point being 

 reached in all these particulars by the Whig aristocracy of the day. 



In the long prevalence of an aristocratic monopoly, diminished 

 now, but not altogether done away with, and subsisting still in its 

 effects even more powerfully than in itself, one of the special causes 

 of the comparative stupidity of politicians in England may be dis- 

 cerned. But the evil is inherent in the very conditions of what 

 are called practical politics. The real development of mind is to 

 be sought in what Mr. Arnold calls its disinterested play in science 

 and art. Discipline in the methods of research after truth, famil- 

 iarity with the highest conceptions of the universe, delight in the 

 most perfect forms of expression, whether they take the shape of lit- 

 erature or of the plastic and imitative arts, these are the feeders and 

 purifiers of the mind. The artist, including the author as well as 

 the sculptor, the painter, and the actor, and the man of science, live, 

 so far as they are true to their work, in the society of Nature and of 

 its great interpreters. They are constantly in the presence of their 

 betters. The statesman lives habitually in the society of county and 

 borough members ; or, if we restrict our view to the intimate associa- 

 tions of the cabinet, of men little, if at all, above these intellectually. 

 In other words, the finest mind is habitually in the presence of its in- 

 feriors, whose ideas and impulses are to it what his daily beer was to 

 Mr. Justice Maule, the instrumentality with which he brought him- 

 self down to the level of his work. He must think their thoughts 

 and speak their language. To be over their heads, to be, as a dex- 

 terous politician said of a great philosopher, too clever for the House 

 of Commons, to have nobler and farther-reaching conceptions than 

 they, is to commit the sin for which there is no parliamentary for- 

 giveness. It is sometimes said that the House of Commons is wiser 

 than any single member; a saying which, according as it is inter- 

 preted, is either an absurdity or a truism. It may mean, what is in- 

 disputable, that the whole is greater than the part, or, what is im- 

 possible, that the average is higher than the elements which raise it. 

 The House of Commons can only be wiser than some particular mem- 

 ber by following the guidance of some other member who, on that 

 particular occasion, is wiser than he; that is to say, it is wiser than 

 one of its less wise members. The saying, however, is intended to 

 affirm the position that intellectual superiority is not the truest guide 

 in politics, or, in other words, that politicians, in so far as they are 

 successful, are comparatively stupid, a position which we are far from 

 disputing. On the contrary, we affirm it as a truth of observation 

 and experience, and are at the present moment doing our best to ac- 



