LAW IN POLITICS. 359 



has supplied. For as in the material world, all her 

 Forces must be acknowledged and obeyed before 

 they can be made to serve, so in the Realm of 

 Mind there can be no success in attaining the 

 highest moral ends until due honour has been 

 assigned to those motives which arise out of the 

 universal instincts of our race. 



Accordingly it is remarkable that the system 

 of ancient philosophy which for so many ages 

 continued to rule the thoughts of men — the 

 philosophy of Aristotle — owes almost all the 

 strength it has in Politics as in other matters, 

 to occasional and almost unconscious resort to the 

 true methods of scientific reasoning and investiga- 

 tion. Aristotle founds his adverse criticism on 

 Plato, where it is most successful, upon the actual 

 facts of what men, under specified conditions, 

 naturally do, and think, and feel. From these facts 

 he argues justly as to what they would do under 

 the artificial restrictions of a theoretical philo- 

 sophy. When, for example, he argues against 

 communism, and in favour of private property, 

 upon the ground of the watchfulness and at- 

 tention which self-interest produces in the con- 



