[burwash] evolution AND DEGENERATION OF PARTY S 



acter. This is essential not only to the perpetuity of party life, but also 

 to that force or energy which makes a party effective for its political 

 function. A deeply earnest interest is necessary to strong healthy poli- 

 tical life and even the most fiery or bitter party spirit is preferable from 

 the moral point of view to apathy and consequent carelessness. Indif- 

 ference is only less fatal to the welfare of the state than that selfish and 

 corrupt individualism or sectionalism which makes the state the prey of 

 the grasping and unscrupulous schemer. 



An issue which is strong enough to awaken and sustain a strong 

 healthy political life will generally result in the creation of two parties. 

 This is especially the case among the Anglo-Saxon peoples who form 

 their opinions with great definiteness and force of character. The 

 French people, with their more delicate logical distinctions, may shade 

 ofE from the extreme right to the extreme left into five sections whose 

 boundary lines are not very clearly defined. This certainly gives more 

 scope for individualism in political life which when pure and healthy 

 may be a very useful characteristic. But in Anglo-Saxon politics it has 

 passed into a proverb that " Every question has two sides." The two 

 sides are not created by the abstract merits of the question itself; for 

 could we at once apprehend the absolute truth of every question there 

 would be but one opinion, and that the correct one. It is the slowness 

 of the human mind to arrive at final truth that renders the conflict of 

 party needful as the process by which that goal is reached ; and it is the 

 characteristic one sidedness or imperfection of the human genius which 

 determines its view, from this side or that side, of each individual ques- 

 tion. This characteristic habit or attitude is probably more moral than 

 intellectual, a matter of feeling rather than of judgment. On the one 

 hand we have the conservative spirit, attached to things as they are, 

 cautious and critical, averse to all change, a lovcr of the ancient, the 

 venerable and respectable. On the other hand we have the progressive 

 spirit, delighted with the new, with brilliant imagination portraying it in 

 gay colours, venturesome and idealistic, keenly alive to all the imperfec- 

 tions of the present order, and a worshipper of the millennial idea rather 

 than that of hoary antiquity. Under the impulse of the one spirit pro- 

 gress will be slow but safe and solid. Under the other there will be 

 constant activity and movement, but not unfrequently mistakes. 



It is not necessary here to enter into the investigation of the various 

 causes which produce this variety of mental attitude. Influence of phy- 

 sical environment, hereditary proclivities, social environment, education, 

 and social, religious or political institutions, all have their influence on 

 the final result, which is the foundation under the stimulus of some 

 practical issue of two antithetic political parties. 



