362 THE REIGN OF LAW. 



Aristotle should have supposed that it was either 

 possible, or, if possible, desirable that the benefits 

 of traffic should all be on one side ; nor is it less 

 wonderful that, with his hands, as it were, upon the 

 spot, and touching with his very fingers the founda- 

 tion-facts, he should yet have failed to feel and to 

 seize the great secret of modern Political Science 

 — the links of Natural Consequence in which the 

 blessedness of Commerce lies. But all this comes 

 of thinking that we can be wiser than Nature, and of 

 failing to see that every natural instinct has its own 

 legitimate field of operation, within which we can- 

 not do better than let it alone. It comes from the 

 notion that we can arrive at that which ought to be, 

 without taking any note of that which actually is. 

 The bondage under which all true Science lies 

 to fact — the necessity of groping among the de- 

 tail of little and common things — this is a hard 

 lesson for the human Intellect to learn — conscious 

 as that Intellect is of its own great powers — 

 of its own high aims — of its own large capa- 

 cities of intuitive understanding. But it is a 

 lesson which must be learnt. There are no 

 short cuts in Nature. Her results are always 



