440 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



one of unparalleled progress in natural science, in industry, in 

 invention — in other words, in all those departments of life where 

 clarity of thought and precision of method are essential. All 

 these achievements are endangered, and some have actually 

 been destroyed, because there was no similar advance in political 

 thought, which remained empirical and emotional, unstable in 

 practice and contradictory in theory. 



Yet there is a sense in which politics should be the crown of 

 all the sciences, and a knowledge of its principles a part of the 

 common education of every citizen. Biology is the study of the 

 development of life from the simple to the complex physical 

 organism, psychology of the development of mentality in those 

 organisms. It should be the business of politics to build on 

 those foundations, to elucidate the principles underlying the 

 progress and decay of previous societies, and to apply them to 

 the study of the contemporary State. 



The primary business of the living organism is to go on 

 living ; it seeks stability and permanence for itself and its kind 

 in a world of changing circumstance. The primary business 

 of the State, which is a combination of living organisms, is also 

 to go on living ; it, too, seeks stability and permanence. His- 

 tory shows that every society has unconsciously sought to 

 attain that condition ; and that the essentials are the main- 

 tenance of law within, and of defence from attack without. 

 On those foundations may be built a great superstructure of 

 many varying types, conditioned partly by the heredity 

 and partly by the environment of the society concerned ; but, 

 unless those foundations are secure, the State will be the prey 

 of internal disorders or external aggression, and sooner or later 

 its doom is certain. 



It is the curse of modern statecraft that it everywhere tends 

 to ignore these elementary principles. On the one hand Ger- 

 many produced the autocratic and aggressive type of State, 

 which allowed liberty neither within nor without its borders. 

 The world has seen to what disaster that species of organisation 

 leads; but, on the other hand, the democratic and undis- 

 ciplined type of State, more flexible and therefore more re- 

 sponsive to altered circumstance though it be, is peculiarly liable 

 to forget that it too must obey the root principles on which 

 every poHtical organisation must be founded. Ten years ago 

 we were inclined to confuse defence with aggression ; to-day 

 we are inclined to think that law can be set aside by policy, that 

 murder is no longer a crime when it is practised wholesale, and 

 that rebellion is no longer treason when it is disguised as self- 

 determination. 



The superficial type of mind perceives phenomena but not 

 realities. It is that type which treats symptoms and not 



