DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 35 



inferior to a nation. We may feel dissatisfied 

 enough with what representative institutions 

 still are, even at their best and when honestly 

 worked ; but we should be indulging in a 

 foolish paradox if we did not see that any such 

 institutions are better than their absence, 

 because of the possibilities they contain. Yet 

 could any political thinker of the ancient world 

 have believed such institutions possible ? 

 Would he have believed it possible for free 

 citizens to delegate their functions, even for 

 a time, without surrendering their democratic 

 freedom ? 1 One can see in Strauss's book how 

 little understanding the cultured German may 

 still have of this great condition of political 

 advance. 2 



Does not the introduction of representative 

 government, which has solved and will solve 



1 In enumerating the different kinds of oligarchy, Aristotle 

 gives what is practically a definition of representative 

 government {Pol. iv. 14 8, 1298 a 40); but this is merely 

 put forward as a logical possibility. At least he gives no 

 example, and this slight naming is the clearest proof of the 

 absence of the idea from the mind of the greatest political 

 thinker of antiquity. 



2 The Old Faith and the Neu\ sec. 81 (German ed. 1875) 

 = sec. 77 Eng. Tr. 





