NOTES 441 



diseases in medicine, which prefers an emotional revival to a 

 reasonable conviction in religion, and a rhetorical flourish to 

 a solid principle in politics. It is a misfortune that the parlia- 

 mentary form of government and universal suffrage with an 

 insufficiently educated population rather encourage that variety 

 of politician. By temperament and training he is apt to 

 construe a speech as an act ; and to hold that in affairs of State 

 alone, among all the manifold activities of the world, similar 

 causes do not produce similar effects, so long as they are suffi- 

 ciently disguised by eloquence. The art of politics may be the 

 drapery which covers the ignoble figure of a betrayal. The 

 science of politics would strip those decorative garments, in 

 order to examine whether the model offered for approval was 

 consistent with the known principles of sound statecraft. If 

 the anatomy is defective, no amount of catch-phrases, such as 

 " self-determination," however attractive, can make it anything 

 but a deception, which at the best is dangerous, and at the 

 worst may be disastrous. 



A century ago it was perhaps possible to govern a State by 

 rule of thumb ; its organisation was relatively simple, and its 

 reactions upon its neighbours infrequent and slow. In those 

 days politics could be treated as an art, and even as an attractive 

 and amusing drama to the chief actors, without any great risk. 

 The more complex society of the present day cannot properly 

 be directed by those primitive and picturesque methods. The 

 salvation of the State can only be assured when politics are 

 treated as a science, which would take something of the form of 

 a higher psychology, recognising at once the liberty of the sub- 

 ject and the general need of the Commonwealth. Unfortu- 

 nately, there are no present indications that those who lead 

 politics to-day have any conception that scientific principles 

 underlie the art they practise. 



Albert E. F. Leyton. 



The death of Albert E. F. Leyton on September 21, in 

 Cambridge, removes a friend of many of us, and a distinguished 

 pathological worker. He was the son of Joseph Griinbaum, 

 a naturalised British subject, and was born in 1869, and, after 

 being qualified, worked at the University of Liverpool, and then 

 as Professor of Pathology in the University of Leeds, and lastly 

 as Director of the clinical laboratory, Addenbrookes Hospital, 

 Cambridge — being a graduate of that University. He was of 

 that rather rare type, a critical medical man of science — that is, 

 he did not accept readily every hypothesis which was put before 

 him ; and the result was, of course, that people often thought 

 him to be not only critical, but hypercritical. As Professor 

 C. S. Sherrington, President of the Royal Society, says in con- 

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