Introduction 



Are we, as is becoming our wont in public affairs, 

 in education, before improving our method, to 

 go on " completing our organisation " first, and 

 afterwards, when all is bungled, to begin tardily 

 to have an " inquiry " by royal commission or 

 otherwise ? Is it not of the very essence of 

 science to have its inquiry first ? And if so, is the 

 reversed method of the bureaucratic mind in any 

 way distinguishable from invincible ignorance ? 



Here evidently we come very near the crux of 

 fresh questionings. What is, and what should be 

 the place of science in social life ? What in 

 public affairs ? The current glib explanations of 

 the present breakdown of the traditional regime in 

 Russia as that of an old-world autocracy stand 

 in much need of complementing ; for this social 

 organisation which has collapsed is in a large 

 measure that to which we and all western peoples 

 are tending, and in which Russia has not lagged, 

 but in large measure led, the rule of the adminis- 

 trator ; for the terrible " Russian bureaucrat " is 

 no mere bogey, but corresponds, much more than 

 we commonly realise, to one of our own govern- 

 ment clerks or education officials ; indeed, so far 

 from being merely backward, as we too often 

 suppose, he is conversant with modern thought, 

 both in its material and its psychological side, to 

 a degree which would surprise many of us. No 

 doubt, the ways of French or German function- 

 aries may strike us as something stiff and hard 

 beside our own easy-going Civil Servants, that of 

 Austria as more wooden than either, while Russian 



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