THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JUNE, 1884. 

 THE SmS OF LEGISLATOES. 



By HERBERT SPENCER. 



n. 



THE reply to all this will doubtless be that nothing better than 

 guidance by "collective wisdom" can be had — that the select 

 men of the nation, led by a reselected few, bring their best powers, 

 enlightened by all the knowledge of the time, to bear on the matters 

 before them. "What more would you have?" will be the question 

 asked by most. 



My answer is that this best knowledge of the time with which leg- 

 islators are said to come prepared for their duties is a knowledge of 

 which the greater part is obviously irrelevant, and that they are blame- 

 worthy for not seeing what is the relevant knowledge. 'No amount of 

 the linguistic acquirements by which many of them are distinguished 

 will help their judgments in the least ; nor will they be appreciably 

 helped by the literatures these acquirements open to them. Neither 

 the history of Thucydides, nor the biographies of Plutarch, nor the 

 dialogues of Plato, will in any considerable degree prepare them for 

 judging how this or that measure will operate on social life. N^ot even 

 Aristotle's " Politics " will give them much help in judging how acts 

 of Parliament are likely to work. They may ponder on the doings of 

 all the great men by whom, according to the Carlylean theory, society 

 is framed, and they may spend years over those accounts of interna- 

 tional conflicts, and treacheries, and intrigues, and treaties, which fill 

 historical works, without being much nearer understanding the how 

 and the why of social structures and actions, and the ways in which 

 laws affect them. Nor does such information as is picked up in the 

 vor,. sxT. — 10 



