198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a provisional and feeble substitute for the universal will. They should 

 not be allowed to j^ersuade themselves that they necessarily represent 

 truth and justice. And they should always remember that they were 

 a minority before they becanae a majority. It is a law of history that 

 every true and progressive opinion was at first that of a single man, 

 then that of a minority, before it became that of the largest number. 

 There are, then, great chances that the opinion of the future may be 

 residing in one of the minorities that have been overcome by the 

 majority ; but in which ? It is impossible to know. The error that is 

 passing away and the truth that is coming are both in a minority ; 

 and it is precisely because we have no sufficient criterion to distinguish 

 the dawn from the twilight that we content ourselves with the average 

 opinion as offering the least chances of error and the most perfectible 

 elements. 



When a decision is to be made, the views of the majority and the 

 minority can not, as we have seen, be reconciled ; but, while the matter 

 is under deliberation, they can be compared by giving a representa- 

 tion of all the opinions and permitting their expression. The brain 

 can not decide for two contrary things at once, but it can deliberate 

 over the conflicting views. The case is the same with the kind of 

 national brain called a parliament. Mirabeau has compared repre- 

 sentative assemblies to geographical maps, which should reproduce all 

 the elements of the country with their proportions, without permitting 

 the more considerable elements to overshadow the less considerable 

 ones. Now, how far ought the proportionality of representation in 

 such bodies to go ? Should it aim at a nearly mathematical exactness, 

 as the partisans of Mr. Mill and Mr. Hare demand ? It may help us, 

 in answering this question, to examine the nature and function of the 

 different parties, of which we propose to assure the exact representa- 

 tion. In the view of social science, two kinds of forces are indispen- 

 sable to the body politic, as well as to every living organism — conserva- 

 tive and progressive forces. These forces are personified in the two 

 great parties that prevail in all modern states — the conservative liberal 

 and the progressive liberal parties. Instead of mutually hating each 

 other, these parties ought to comprehend that they are necessary one 

 to the other, and both to the whole. From a psychological point of 

 view, the state, which is an exaggerated man, and condenses in itself 

 all the living forces of the man, should include simultaneously parties 

 distinguishable from one another by differences corresponding to the 

 successive agfes of the individual. M. Bluntschli has constructed a fine 

 psychology of parties, which, however, goes a little too far. Child- 

 hood is represented by radicalism. All the thoughts of childhood are 

 for the future. A new world is opened before it, which it believes it 

 can organize according to its fancy. Every formula taught in school 

 seems to childhood a universally applicable truth ; the radical thinks 

 the same, and ascribes a magical j)ower to his laws and institutions. 



