222 IDEALISM AND POLITICS 



spirit of devotion into political life. Besides, it is too 

 general to guide a people amidst the complex details of 

 circumstance, and it is capable of abuse as well as use. It 

 can make the conscience of the politician his accomplice, 

 as well as his guide. It has generated the worst as well as 

 the best governments. Civilisations have perished beneath 

 the rule of ignorant priests who were conscientious devotees 

 of their degraded deities. 



There were no answer to these charges if Idealism had 

 contributed nothing to political theory except the mere 

 conception of the spiritual principle in history. The value 

 of any such conception depends on the way in which it is 

 articulated and applied. Like every other broad, "colli- 

 gating" hypothesis, whether in science or in philosophy, 

 or in morals, or in religion, it is capable of being an empty,, 

 otiose and even a false generalisation. Idealism is not in 

 the least unique in that it has taken a spiritual view of 

 human life ; it is not from that that either its merits or its 

 demerits flow. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it has 

 endeavoured to employ the conception of spirit in the way 

 in which the natural sciences employ their dominating 

 hypotheses. It is for it a principle of research in know- 

 ledge, and of reform in private and public conduct. 

 Idealism would follow the self -articulation of spirit in the 

 history of beliefs and institutions, even as biology seeks 

 to follow the evolution of natural life from form to form 

 in an ascending series. Its task is only begun. It is no 

 complete theory, rounded and finished. The soundness 

 of its results may quite legitimately be questioned in every 

 one of the fields in which its ruling conception has been 

 employed. After all, the category of "spirit," like that 

 of the "space" of ordinary geometry, or of the "trans- 



