78 THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE 



as discipline is an affair of association, whereby, 

 when orders are given, the obedience becomes 

 mechanical and independent of the will, and the 

 army becomes a tempered weapon in the hands of its 

 commander. Most of politics may be taken as an 

 illustration of the power of association. The art 

 of electioneering in especial consists in impressing 

 on the minds of the electors the association of their 

 ideas of the blue party and Smith, the blue candidate, 

 with the idea of peace, cheap food, and reform, or a 

 strong Empire and work for all, and connecting the 

 idea of Jones, the buff candidate, with Chinese 

 slavery, a dear loaf, a refusal to " tax the foreigner," 

 or other unpopular and possibly irrelevant concep- 

 tions. The preliminary stage may involve a good 

 deal of more or less rational discussion ; but, as the 

 polling day approaches, excitement rises, and pre- 

 formed associations take most of those who vote to 

 the poll at the last. 



In the methods of modern electioneering, elaborated 

 according to long experience in political psychology, 

 it is probable that there is an actual disadvantage in 

 having a candidate who is resident in the constitu- 

 ency, since he inevitably becomes associated in the 

 minds of the voters with commonplace occurrences 

 of daily life and useful enterprise, and consequently 

 the simplicity of association between the idea of the 

 candidate and the ideas of the electioneering virtues 

 tends to be obscured. 



