POLITICAL FORMS AND FORCES. 329 



ourselves governmental actions are habitually thus determined, 

 and that the actions of all minor bodies, temporarily or per 

 manently incorporated, are thus determined. I refer, rather, 

 to illustrations of the irresistible control exercised by popular 

 sentiment over conduct at large. Such facts as that, while 

 general opinion is in favour of duelling law does not prevent 

 it, and that sacred injunctions backed by threats of damnation, 

 fail to check iniquitous aggressions on foreign peoples when 

 the prevailing passions prompt them, alone suffice to show 

 that legal codes and religious creeds, with the agencies en 

 forcing them, are impotent in face of an adverse state of mind, 

 On remembering the eagerness for public applause and the 

 dread of public disgrace which stimulate and restrain men, we 

 cannot question that the diffused manifestations of feeling 

 habitually dictate their careers, when their immediate neces 

 sities have been satisfied. It requires only to contemplate 

 the social code which regulates life, down even to the colour 

 of an evening neck-tie, and to note how those who dare not 

 break this code have no hesitation in smuggling, to see that 

 an unwritten law enforced by opinion is more peremptory 

 than a written law not so enforced. And still more on ob 

 serving that men disregard the just claims of creditors, who 

 for goods given cannot get the money, while they are anxious 

 to discharge so-called debts of honour to those who have 

 rendered neither goods nor services, we are shown that the 

 control of prevailing sentiment, unenforced by law and reli 

 gion, may be more potent than law and religion together 

 when they are backed by sentiment less strongly manifested. 

 Looking at the total activities of men, we are obliged to admit 

 that they are still, as they were at the outset of social life, 

 guided by the aggregate feeling, past and present ; and that 

 the political agency, itself a gradually-developed product of 

 such feeling, continues still to be in the main the vehicle for 

 a specialized portion of it, regulating actions of certain kinds. 

 Partly, of course, I am obliged here to set forth this general 

 truth as an essential element of political theory. My excuse 



