726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hampered and delayed. There is another reason of a still more com- 

 manding importance which operates in the same direction with a still 

 more signal force. It is that, at any given moment, when the legis- 

 lator, or administrator, would otherwise most desire to govern with 

 due regard to well-established principles dictated by abstract political 

 science, he is imperatively urged on to the front, and impelled into 

 action, by the pressing necessity of instantly choosing between a 

 limited number of possible alternative courses. Most of all is this 

 the case in what are sometimes called constitutionally-governed coun- 

 tries that is, countries in which representative institutions have 

 reached a tolerable degree of advancement, and political knowledge 

 and interest are widely diffused. In these circumstances a sponta- 

 neous organization of political leaders and their respective followers 

 into parties for the purpose of uniform and combined action is sure to 

 have taken place. 



The result is, that an artificial effort will be made, at each critical 

 occurrence which seems to call for the intervention of the Govern- 

 ment, to narrow the possible courses of action to a very few immedi- 

 ately intelligible expedients, recommended rather by their rough con- 

 formity to some pre-existing schemes or ideals in favor with the 

 different contending parties than by their intrinsic harmony with 

 scientific requirements. No doubt the party leader who is himself 

 imbued with a scientific spirit, and is personally disposed to do as 

 little violence as possible to his cultured instincts, will do his utmost 

 to bring all his measures into the shape which his logical and historical 

 training, applied to all the circumstances of the special case, leads him 

 to desire. But action at once and without further delay is unavoid- 

 able. A decision can only be deferred at the cost either of letting go 

 the opportunity for providing a remedy of some sort for a possibly 

 crying abuse ; or of openly confessing impotency ; or of surrendering 

 to others a leadership which, with all its demerits, is probably believed 

 to be, on the whole, fraught with good rather than with evil. Thus 

 the peremptoriness of political opportunities and the necessity of in- 

 stant action withstand, in a country with free representative institu- 

 tions, every effort to impart to political action through a long period a 

 comprehensive, consistent, and scientific character. 



It is no wonder if the same class of facts reacts on the intellectual 

 conception of the position of Politics as a subject of study and of 

 knowledge. 



The topic is naturally relegated to the region of caprice and acci- 

 dent, or to that of tentative experiment and spasmodic contrivance. 

 This intellectual consequence is intensified by the fact that all Govern- 

 ments and not least those known at the present day as the freest and, 

 on the whole, the soundest are habitually made the arena of purely 

 ambitious contention, of selfish aspiration, and even of corrupt con- 

 spiracies against the public well-being. The wider the territorial area 



