Human Nature in Politics Part 7

The traditional method of political reasoning has inevitably shared the defects of its subject-matter. In thinking about politics we seldom penetrate behind those simple ent.i.ties which form themselves so easily in our minds, or approach in earnest the infinite complexity of the actual world. Political abstractions, such as Justice, or Liberty, or the State, stand in our minds as things having a real existence. The names of political species, 'governments,' or 'rights,' or 'Irishmen,'

suggest to us the idea of single 'type specimens'; and we tend, like medieval naturalists, to a.s.sume that all the individual members of a species are in all respects identical with the type specimen and with each other.

In politics a true proposition in the form of 'All A is B' almost invariably means that a number of individual persons or things possess the quality B in degrees of variation as numerous as are the individuals themselves. We tend, however, under the influence of our words and the mental habits a.s.sociated with them to think of A either as a single individual possessing the quality B, or as a number of individuals equally possessing that quality. As we read in the newspaper that 'the educated Bengalis are disaffected' we either see, in the half-conscious substratum of visual images which accompanies our reading, a single Babu with a disaffected expression or the vague suggestion of a long row of identical Babus all equally disaffected.

These personifications and uniformities, in their turn, tempt us to employ in our political thinking that method of _a priori_ deduction from large and untried generalisations against which natural science from the days of Bacon has always protested. No scientist now argues that the planets move in circles, because planets are perfect, and the circle is a perfect figure, or that any newly discovered plant must be a cure for some disease because nature has given healing properties to all plants. But 'logical' democrats still argue in America that, because all men are equal, political offices ought to go by rotation, and 'logical'

collectivists sometimes argue from the 'principle' that the State should own all the means of production to the conclusion that all railway managers should be elected by universal suffrage.

In natural science, again, the conception of the plurality and interaction of causes has become part of our habitual mental furniture; but in politics both the book-learned student and the man in the street may be heard to talk as if each result had only one cause. If the question, for instance, of the Anglo-j.a.panese alliance is raised, any two politicians, whether they are tramps on the outskirts of a Hyde Park crowd or Heads of Colleges writing to the _Times_, are not unlikely to argue, one, that all nations are suspicious, and that therefore the alliance must certainly fail, and the other that all nations are guided by their interests, and that therefore the alliance must certainly succeed. The Landlord of the 'Rainbow' in _Silas Marner_ had listened to many thousands of political discussions before he adopted his formula, 'The truth lies atween you: you're both right and both wrong, as I allays say.'

In Economics the danger of treating abstract and uniform words as if they were equivalent to abstract and uniform things has now been recognised for the last half century. When this recognition began, it was objected by the followers of the 'cla.s.sical' Political Economy that abstraction was a necessary condition of thought, and that all dangers arising from it would be avoided if we saw clearly what it was that we were doing. Bagehot, who stood at the meeting-point of the old Economics and the new, wrote about 1876:--

'Political Economy ... is an abstract science, just as statics and dynamics are deductive sciences. And in consequence, it deals with an unreal and imaginary subject, ... not with the entire real man as we know him in fact, but with a simpler imaginary man....'[41]

[41] _Economic Studies_ (Longmans, 1895), p. 97.

He goes on to urge that the real and complex man can be depicted by printing on our minds a succession of different imaginary simple men.

'The maxim of science,' he says, 'is that of common-sense--simple cases first; begin with seeing how the main force acts when there is as little as possible to impede it, and when you thoroughly comprehend that, add to it in succession the separate effects of each of the enc.u.mbering and interfering agencies.'[42]

[42] _Ibid._, p. 98.

But this process of mental chromolithography, though it is sometimes a good way of learning a science, is not a way of using it; and Bagehot gives no indication how his complex picture of man, formed from successive layers of abstraction, is to be actually employed in forecasting economic results.

When Jevons published his _Theory of Political Economy_ in 1871, it was already widely felt that a simple imaginary man, or even a composite picture made up of a series of different simple imaginary men, although useful in answering examination questions, was of very little use in drafting a Factory Act or arbitrating on a sliding scale of wages.

Jevons therefore based his economic method upon the variety and not the uniformity of individual instances. He arranged the hours of labour in a working day, or the units of satisfaction from spending money, on curves of increase and decrease, and employed mathematical methods to indicate the point where one curve, whether representing an imaginary estimate or a record of ascertained facts, would cut the others to the best advantage.

Here was something which corresponded, however roughly, to the process by which practical people arrive at practical and responsible results. A railway manager who wishes to discover the highest rate of charges which his traffic will bear is not interested if he is told that the rate when fixed will have been due to the law that all men seek to obtain wealth with as little effort as possible, modified in its working by men's unwillingness to break an established business habit. He wants a method which, instead of merely providing him with a verbal 'explanation' of what has happened, will enable him to form a quant.i.tative estimate of what under given circ.u.mstances will happen. He can, however, and, I believe, now often does, use the Jevonian method to work out definite results in half-pennies and tons from the intersection of plotted curves recording actual statistics of rates and traffic.

Since Jevons's time the method which he initiated has been steadily extended; economic and statistical processes have become more nearly a.s.similated, and problems of fatigue or acquired skill, of family affection and personal thrift, of management by the _entrepreneur_ or the paid official, have been stated and argued in quant.i.tative form. As Professor Marshall said the other day, _qualitative_ reasoning in economics is pa.s.sing away and _quant.i.tative_ reasoning is beginning to take its place.[43]

[43] _Journal of Economics_, March 1907, pp. 7 and 8. 'What by chemical a.n.a.logy may be called qualitative a.n.a.lysis has done the greater part of its work.... Much less progress has indeed been made towards the quant.i.tative determination of the relative strength of different economic forces. That higher and more difficult task must wait upon the slow growth of thorough realistic statistics.'

How far is a similar change of method possible in the discussion not of industrial and financial processes but of the structure and working of political inst.i.tutions?

It is of course easy to pick out political questions which can obviously be treated by quant.i.tative methods. One may take, for instance, the problem of the best size for a debating hall, to be used, say, by the Federal Deliberative a.s.sembly of the British Empire--a.s.suming that the shape is already settled. The main elements of the problem are that the hall should be large enough to accommodate with dignity a number of members sufficient both for the representation of interests and the carrying out of committee work, and not too large for each member to listen without strain to a debate. The resultant size will represent a compromise among these elements, accommodating a number smaller than would be desirable if the need of representation and dignity alone were to be considered, and larger than it would be if the convenience of debate alone were considered.

A body of economists could agree to plot out or imagine a succession of 'curves' representing the advantage to be obtained from each additional unit of size in dignity, adequacy of representation, supply of members for committee work, healthiness, etc., and the disadvantage of each additional unit of size as affecting convenience of debate, etc. The curves of dignity and adequacy might be the result of direct estimation.

The curve of marginal convenience in audibility would be founded upon actual 'polygons of variation' recording measurements of the distance at which a sufficient number of individuals of the cla.s.ses and ages expected could hear and make themselves heard in a room of that shape.

The economists might further, after discussion, agree on the relative importance of each element to the final decision, and might give effect to their agreement by the familiar statistical device of 'weighting.'

The answer would perhaps provide fourteen square feet on the floor in a room twenty-six feet high for each of three hundred and seventeen members. There would, when the answer was settled, be a 'marginal' man in point of hearing (representing, perhaps, an average healthy man of seventy-four), who would be unable or just able to hear the 'marginal'

man in point of clearness of speech--who might represent (on a polygon specially drawn up by the Oxford Professor of Biology) the least audible but two of the tutors at Balliol. The marginal point on the curve of the decreasing utility of successive increments of members from the point of view of committee work might show, perhaps, that such work must either be reduced to a point far below that which is usual in national parliaments, or must be done very largely by persons not members of the a.s.sembly itself. The aesthetic curve of dignity might be cut at the point where the President of the Society of British Architects could just be induced not to write to the _Times_.

Any discussion which took place on such lines, even although the curves were mere forms of speech, would be real and practical. Instead of one man reiterating that the Parliament Hall of a great empire ought to represent the dignity of its task, and another man answering that a debating a.s.sembly which cannot debate is of no use, both would be forced to ask 'How much dignity'? and 'How much debating convenience'? As it is, this particular question seems often to be settled by the architect, who is deeply concerned with aesthetic effect, and not at all concerned with debating convenience. The reasons that he gives in his reports seem convincing, because the other considerations are not in the minds of the Building Committee, who think of one element only of the problem at a time and make no attempt to co-ordinate all the elements. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain the fact that the Debating Hall, for instance, of the House of Representatives at Washington is no more fitted for debates carried on by human beings than would a spoon ten feet broad be fitted for the eating of soup. The able leaders of the National Congress movement in India made the same mistake in 1907, when they arranged, with their minds set only on the need of an impressive display, that difficult and exciting questions of tactics should be discussed by about fifteen hundred delegates in a huge tent, and in the presence of a crowd of nearly ten thousand spectators. I am afraid that it is not unlikely that the London County Council may also despise the quant.i.tative method of reasoning on such questions, and may find themselves in 1912 provided with a new hall admirably adapted to ill.u.s.trate the dignity of London and the genius of their architect, but unfitted for any other purpose.

Nor is the essence of the quant.i.tative method changed when the answer is to be found, not in one, but in several 'unknown quant.i.ties.' Take, for instance, the question as to the best types of elementary school to be provided in London. If it were a.s.sumed that only one type of school was to be provided, the problem would be stated in the same form as that of the size of the Debating Hall. But it is possible in most London districts to provide within easy walking distance of every child four or five schools of different types, and the problem becomes that of so choosing a limited number of types as to secure that the degree of 'misfit' between child and curriculum shall be as small as possible. If we treat the general apt.i.tude (or 'cleverness') of the children as differing only by more or less, the problem becomes one of fitting the types of school to a fairly exactly ascertainable polygon of intellectual variation. It might appear then that the best results would come from the provision, say, of five types of schools providing respectively for the 2 per cent, of greatest natural cleverness, the succeeding 10 per cent., the intermediate 76 per cent., the comparatively sub-normal 10 per cent., and the 2 per cent, of 'mentally deficient.' That is to say the local authority would have to provide in that proportion Secondary, Higher Grade, Ordinary, Sub-Normal, and Mentally Deficient schools.

A general improvement in nutrition and other home circ.u.mstances might tend to 'steepen' the polygon of variation, i.e. to bring more children near the normal, or it might increase the number of children with exceptional inherited cleverness who were able to reveal that fact, and so 'flatten' it; and either case might make a change desirable in the best proportion between the types of schools or even in the number of the types.

It would be more difficult to induce a committee of politicians to agree on the plotting of curves, representing the social advantage to be obtained by the successive increments of satisfaction in an urban industrial population of those needs which are indicated by the terms Socialism and Individualism. They could, however, be brought to admit that the discovery of curves for that purpose is a matter of observation and inquiry, and that the best possible distribution of social duties between the individual and the state would cut both at some point or other. For many Socialists and Individualists the mere attempt to think in such a way of their problem would be an extremely valuable exercise.

If a Socialist and an Individualist were required even to ask themselves the question, 'How much Socialism'? or 'How much Individualism'? a basis of real discussion would be arrived at--even in the impossible case that one should answer, 'All Individualism and no Socialism,' and the other, 'All Socialism and no Individualism.'

The fact, of course, that each step towards either Socialism or Individualism changes the character of the other elements in the problem, or the fact that an invention like printing, or representative government, or Civil Service examinations, or the Utilitarian philosophy, may make it possible to provide greatly increased satisfaction both to Socialist and Individualist desires, complicates the question, but does not alter its quant.i.tative character. The essential point is that in every case in which a political thinker is able to adopt what Professor Marshall calls the quant.i.tative method of reasoning, his vocabulary and method, instead of constantly suggesting a false simplicity, warn him that every individual instance with which he deals is different from any other, that any effect is a function of many variable causes, and, therefore, that no estimate of the result of any act can be accurate unless all its conditions and their relative importance are taken into account.

But how far are such quant.i.tative methods possible when a statesman is dealing, neither with an obviously quant.i.tative problem, like the building of halls or schools, nor with an attempt to give quant.i.tative meaning to abstract terms like Socialism or Individualism, but with the enormous complexity of responsible legislation?

In approaching this question we shall be helped if we keep before us a description of the way in which some one statesman has, in fact, thought of a great const.i.tutional problem.

Take, for instance, the indications which Mr. Morley gives of the thinking done by Gladstone on Home Rule during the autumn and winter of 1885-86. Gladstone, we are told, had already, for many years past, pondered anxiously at intervals about Ireland, and now he describes himself as 'thinking incessantly about the matter' (vol. iii. p. 268), and 'preparing myself by study and reflection' (p. 273).

He has first to consider the state of feeling in England and Ireland, and to calculate to what extent and under what influences it may be expected to change. As to English feeling, 'what I expect,' he says, 'is a healthy slow fermentation in many minds working towards the final product' (p. 261). The Irish desire for self-government, on the other hand, will not change, and must be taken, within the time-limit of his problem, as 'fixed' (p. 240). In both England and Ireland, however, he believes that 'mutual attachment' may grow (p. 292).

Before making up his mind in favour of some kind of Home Rule, he examines every thinkable alternative, especially the development of Irish County Government, or a Federal arrangement in which all three of the united kingdoms would be concerned. Here and there he finds suggestions in the history of Austria-Hungary, of Norway and Sweden, or of the 'colonial type' of government. Nearly every day he reads Burke, and exclaims 'what a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America' (p.

280). He gets much help from 'a chapter on semi-sovereign a.s.semblies in Dicey's _Law of the Const.i.tution_ (p. 280). He tries to see the question from fresh points of view in intimate personal discussions, and by imagining what 'the civilised world' (p. 225) will think. As he gets nearer to his subject, he has definite statistical reports made for him by 'Welby and Hamilton on the figures' (p. 306), has 'stiff conclaves about finance and land' (p. 298), and nearly comes to a final split with Parnell on the question whether the Irish contribution to Imperial taxation shall be a fifteenth or a twentieth.

Time and persons are important factors in his calculation. If Lord Salisbury will consent to introduce some measure of Irish self-government, the problem will be fundamentally altered, and the same will happen if the general election produces a Liberal majority independent of both Irish and Conservatives; and Mr. Morley describes as underlying all his calculations 'the irresistible attraction for him of all the grand and eternal commonplaces of liberty and self-government'

(p. 260).

It is not likely that Mr. Morley's narrative touches on more than a fraction of the questions which must have been in Gladstone's mind during these months of incessant thought. No mention is made, for instance, of religion, or of the military position, or of the permanent possibility of enforcing the proposed restrictions on self-government.

But enough is given to show the complexity of political thought at that stage when a statesman, still uncommitted, is considering what will be the effect of a new political departure.

What then was the logical process by which Gladstone's final decision was arrived at?

Did he for instance deal with a succession of simple problems or with one complex problem? It is, I think, clear that from time to time isolated and comparatively simple trains of reasoning were followed up; but it is also clear that Gladstone's main effort of thought was involved in the process of co-ordinating all the laboriously collected contents of his mind onto the whole problem. This is emphasised by a quotation in which Mr. Morley, who was closely a.s.sociated with Gladstone's intellectual toil during this period, indicates his own recollection.

'Historians,' he quotes from Professor Gardiner, 'coolly dissect a man's thoughts as they please; and label them like specimens in a naturalist's cabinet. Such a thing, they argue, was done for mere personal aggrandis.e.m.e.nt; such a thing for national objects, such a thing from high religious motives. In real life we may be sure it was not so' (p.

277).

And it is clear that in spite of the ease and delight with which Gladstone's mind moved among 'the eternal commonplaces of liberty and self-government,' he is seeking throughout for a quant.i.tative solution.

'Home Rule' is no simple ent.i.ty for him. He realises that the number of possible schemes for Irish government is infinite, and he attempts to make at every point in his own scheme a delicate adjustment between many varying forces.

A large part of this work of complex co-ordination was apparently in Mr.

Gladstone's case unconscious. Throughout the chapters one has the feeling--which any one who has had to make less important political decisions can parallel from his own experience--that Gladstone was waiting for indications of a solution to appear in his mind. He was conscious of his effort, conscious also that his effort was being directed simultaneously towards many different considerations, but largely unconscious of the actual process of inference, which went on perhaps more rapidly when he was asleep, or thinking of something else, than when he was awake and attentive. A phrase of Mr. Morley's indicates a feeling with which every politician is familiar. 'The reader,' he says,'knows in what direction the main current of Mr. Gladstone's thought must have been setting' (p. 236).

That is to say, we are watching an operation rather of art than of science, of long experience and trained faculty rather than of conscious method.

But the history of human progress consists in the gradual and partial subst.i.tution of science for art, of the power over nature acquired in youth by study, for that which comes in late middle age as the half-conscious result of experience. Our problem therefore involves the further question, whether those forms of political thought which correspond to the complexity of nature are teachable or not? At present they are not often taught. In every generation thousands of young men and women are attracted to politics because their intellects are keener, and their sympathies wider than those of their fellows. They become followers of Liberalism or Imperialism, of Scientific Socialism or the Rights of Men or Women. To them, at first, Liberalism and the Empire, Rights and Principles, are real and simple things. Or, like Sh.e.l.ley, they see in the whole human race an infinite repet.i.tion of uniform individuals, the 'millions on millions' who 'wait, firm, rapid, and elate.'[44]

[44] Sh.e.l.ley, _Poetical Works_ (H.B. Forman), vol. iv. p. 8.

About all these things they argue by the old _a priori_ methods which we have inherited with our political language. But after a time a sense of unreality grows upon them. Knowledge of the complex and difficult world forces itself into their minds. Like the old Chartists with whom I once spent an evening, they tell you that their politics have been 'all talk'--all words--and there are few among them, except those to whom politics has become a profession or a career, who hold on until through weariness and disappointment they learn new confidence from new knowledge. Most men, after the first disappointment, fall back on habit or party spirit for their political opinions and actions. Having ceased to think of their unknown fellow citizens as uniform repet.i.tions of a simple type, they cease to think of them at all; and content themselves with using party phrases about the ma.s.s of mankind, and realising the individual existence of their casual neighbours.

Wordsworth's _Prelude_ describes with pathetic clearness a mental history, which must have been that of many thousands of men who could not write great poetry, and whose moral and intellectual forces have been blunted and wasted by political disillusionment. He tells us that the 'man' whom he loved in 1792, when the French Revolution was still at its dawn, was seen in 1798 to be merely 'the composition of the brain.'

After agonies of despair and baffled affection, he saw 'the individual man ... the man whom we behold with our own eyes.'[45] But in that change from a false simplification of the whole to the mere contemplation of the individual, Wordsworth's power of estimating political forces or helping in political progress was gone for ever.

[45] _The Prelude_, Bk. XIII., ll. 81-84.

If this constantly repeated disappointment is to cease, quant.i.tative method must spread in politics and must transform the vocabulary and the a.s.sociations of that mental world into which the young politician enters. Fortunately such a change seems at least to be beginning. Every year larger and more exact collections of detailed political facts are being acc.u.mulated; and collections of detailed facts, if they are to be used at all in political reasoning, must be used quant.i.tatively. The intellectual work of preparing legislation, whether carried on by permanent officials or Royal Commissions or Cabinet Ministers takes every year a more quant.i.tative and a less qualitative form.