164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



count for it. As regards the proposition itself, it means simply that 

 the House of Commons knows its own mind, such as it is, and, what- 

 ever the worth of that knowledge, better than any single member of 

 it ; and as a rule the average member who is in sympathy with it will 

 interpret it better than the member of much higher powers who is 

 above its level. But it is only wiser than its wisest members in the 

 sense in which the field may be said to be wiser than the farmer, or 

 the ocean than the navigator ; that is to say, in no intelligible sense 

 at all. Like Nature, if it is to be commanded it must be obeyed, and 

 the necessity of understanding it is, by confusion of thought, taken 

 for its understanding of itself. 



The inferior society in which politicians live, inferior in intelli- 

 gence and cultivation, and the necessity of adapting their own 

 thoughts and aims to those of the ordinary minds and characters 

 they have to influence, brings about the decline and deterioration of 

 men of originally fine endowments. It either prevents these qualities 

 from developing, or stunts them where they have a certain degree of 

 growth. Their "nature is subdued to what it works in, like the 

 dyer's hand." This evil is in part qualified by another. It is chiefly 

 the second-rate order of minds and characters that betake themselves 

 now to politics in England minds already on the level to which 

 superiority needs to be reduced before it can be effective. For this 

 reason, probably, whenever an occasion demands a hero in politics, he 

 has been seldom found in the walks of professional statesmanship. 

 The national crisis which asks for a deliverer finds him not among 

 those who have been deteriorated and dwarfed by the ordinary work 

 and associations of politics, but in a man who has lived among nobler 

 ideas and associations, and cultivated a larger and more liberal na- 

 ture. The practice of affairs is, no doubt, a discipline of some value ; 

 but nearly everything depends on what the affairs are. To manage 

 the House of Commons, to get bills through committee, to administer 

 a public office, does not seem usually to be good training for very 

 difficult business. When a considerable emergency occurs there is 

 almost invariably a breakdown of the departments. The true dis- 

 cipline of public business is to teach men readiness in action and fer- 

 tility in resources. Its ordinary effect is to harden them in routine, 

 which suits poorly enough even the common round and the daily task 

 of business, and which is a hinderance, and which may be ruin when 

 necessities, transcending precedents and rules of office, have to be 

 encountered. The fact is, that the training of affairs, invaluable as it 

 is, seldom bears its proper fruit, unless the affairs are a man's own, or 

 when the consequences of failure are sure to come upon him in a 

 rapid and crushing manner. The merchant or capitalist, whose vent- 

 ures depend upon his personal vigilance; the engineer, who has to 

 deal with overwhelming physical forces ; the military commander, 

 who has to contend at once with the not always benevolent neutral- 



