Human Nature in Politics Part 8

Compare for instance the methods of the present Commission on the Poor Law with those of the celebrated and extraordinarily able Commission which drew up the new Poor Law in 1833-34. The argument of the earlier Commissioners' Report runs on lines which it would be easy to put in _a priori_ syllogistic form. All men seek pleasure and avoid pain. Society ought to secure that pain attaches to anti-social, and pleasure to social conduct. This may be done by making every man's livelihood and that of his children normally dependent upon his own exertions, by separating those dest.i.tute persons who cannot do work useful to the community from those who can, and by presenting these last with the alternative of voluntary effort or painful restriction. This leads to 'a principle which we find universally admitted, even by those whose practice is at variance with it, that the situation [of the pauper] on the whole shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest cla.s.s.'[46] The _a priori_ argument is admirably ill.u.s.trated by instances, reported by the sub-commissioners or given in evidence before the Commission, indicating that labouring men will not exert themselves unless they are offered the alternative of starvation or rigorous confinement, though no attempt is made to estimate the proportion of the working population of England whose character and conduct is represented by each instance.

[46] _First Report of the Poor Law Commission_, 1834 (reprinted 1894), p. 187.

This _a priori_ deduction, ill.u.s.trated, but not proved by particular instances, is throughout so clear and so easily apprehended by the ordinary man that the revolutionary Bill of 1834, which affected all sorts of vested interests, pa.s.sed the House of Commons by a majority of four to one and the House of Lords by a majority of six to one.

The Poor Law Commission of 1905, on the other hand, though it contains many members trained in the traditions of 1834, is being driven, by the mere necessity of dealing with the ma.s.s of varied evidence before it, onto new lines. Instead of a.s.suming half consciously that human energy is dependent solely on the working of the human will in the presence of the ideas of pleasure and pain, the Commissioners are forced to tabulate and consider innumerable quant.i.tative observations relating to the very many factors affecting the will of paupers and possible paupers. They cannot, for instance, avoid the task of estimating the relative industrial effectiveness of health, which depends upon decent surroundings; of hope, which may be made possible by State provision for old age; and of the imaginative range which is the result of education; and of comparing all these with the 'purely economic' motive created by ideas of future pleasure and pain.

The evidence before the Commission is, that is to say, collected not to ill.u.s.trate general propositions otherwise established, but to provide quant.i.tative answers to quant.i.tative questions; and instances are in each case acc.u.mulated according to a well-known statistical rule until the repet.i.tion of results shows that further acc.u.mulation would be useless.

In 1834 it was enough, in dealing with the political machinery of the Poor Law, to argue that, since all men desire their own interest, the ratepayers would elect guardians who would, up to the limit of their knowledge, advance the interests of the whole community; provided that electoral areas were created in which all sectional interests were represented, and that voting power were given to each ratepayer in proportion to his interest. It did not then seem to matter much whether the areas chosen were new or old, or whether the body elected had other duties or not.

In 1908, on the other hand, it is felt to be necessary to seek for all the causes which are likely to influence the mind of the ratepayer or candidate during an election, and to estimate by such evidence as is available their relative importance. It has to be considered, for instance, whether men vote best in areas where they keep up habits of political action in connection with parliamentary as well as munic.i.p.al contests; and whether an election involving other points besides poor-law administration is more likely to create interest among the electorate. If more than one election, again, is held in a district in any year it may be found by the record of the percentage of votes that electoral enthusiasm diminishes for each additional contest along a very rapidly descending curve.

The final decisions that will be taken either by the Commission or by Parliament on questions of administrative policy and electoral machinery must therefore involve the balancing of all these and many other considerations by an essentially quant.i.tative process. The line, that is to say, which ultimately cuts the curves indicated by the evidence will allow less weight either to anxiety for the future as a motive for exertion, or to personal health as increasing personal efficiency, than would be given to either if it were the sole factor to be considered.

There will be more 'bureaucracy' than would be desirable if it were not for the need of economising the energies of the elected representatives, and less bureaucracy than there would be if it were not desirable to retain popular sympathy and consent. Throughout the argument the population of England will be looked upon not (as John Stuart Mill would have said) 'on the average or _en ma.s.se_,'[47] but as consisting of individuals who can be arranged in 'polygons of variation' according to their nervous and physical strength, their 'character' and the degree to which ideas of the future are likely to affect their present conduct.

[47] See p. 132.

Meanwhile the public which will discuss the Report has changed since 1834. Newspaper writers, in discussing the problem of dest.i.tution, tend now to use, not general terms applied to whole social cla.s.ses like the 'poor,' 'the working cla.s.s,' or 'the lower orders,' but terms expressing quant.i.tative estimates of individual variations, like 'the submerged tenth,' or the 'unemployable'; while every newspaper reader is fairly familiar with the figures in the Board of Trade monthly returns which record seasonal and periodical variations of actual unemployment among Trade Unionists.

One could give many other instances of this beginning of a tendency in political thinking, to change from qualitative to quant.i.tative forms of argument. But perhaps it will be sufficient to give one relating to international politics. 'Sixty years ago sovereignty was a simple question of quality. Austin had demonstrated that there must be a sovereign everywhere, and that sovereignty, whether in the hands of an autocracy or a republic, must be absolute. But the Congress which in 1885 sat at Berlin to prevent the part.i.tion of Africa from causing a series of European wars as long as those caused by the part.i.tion of America, was compelled by the complexity of the problems before it to approach the question of sovereignty on quant.i.tative lines. Since 1885 therefore every one has become familiar with the terms then invented to express gradations of sovereignty: 'Effective occupation,' 'Hinterland,'

'Sphere of Influence'--to which the Algeciras Conference has perhaps added a lowest grade, 'Sphere of Legitimate Aspiration.' It is already as unimportant to decide whether a given region is British territory or not, as it is to decide whether a bar containing a certain percentage of carbon should be called iron or steel.

Even in thinking of the smallest subdivisions of observed political fact some men escape the temptation to ignore individual differences. I remember that the man who has perhaps done more than any one else in England to make a statistical basis for industrial legislation possible, once told me that he had been spending the whole day in cla.s.sifying under a few heads thousands of 'railway accidents,' every one of which differed in its circ.u.mstances from any other; and that he felt like the bewildered porter in _Punch_, who had to arrange the subleties of nature according to the unsubtle tariff-schedule of his company. 'Cats,' he quoted the porter as saying, 'is dogs, and guinea-pigs is dogs, but this 'ere tortoise is a hinsect.'

But it must constantly be remembered that quant.i.tative thinking does not necessarily or even generally mean thinking in terms of numerical statistics. Number, which obliterates all distinction between the units numbered, is not the only, nor always even the most exact means of representing quant.i.tative facts. A picture, for instance, may be sometimes nearer to quant.i.tative truth, more easily remembered and more useful for purposes of argument and verification than a row of figures.

The most exact quant.i.tative political doc.u.ment that I ever saw was a set of photographs of all the women admitted into an inebriate home. The photographs demonstrated, more precisely than any record of approximate measurements could have done, the varying facts of physical and nervous structure. It would have been easily possible for a committee of medical men to have arranged the photographs in a series of increasing abnormality, and to have indicated the photograph of the 'marginal'

woman in whose case, after allowing for considerations of expense, and for the desirability of encouraging individual responsibility, the State should undertake temporary or permanent control. And the record was one which no one who had ever seen it could forget.

The political thinker has indeed sometimes to imitate the cabinet-maker, who discards his most finely divided numerical rule for some kinds of specially delicate work, and trusts to his sense of touch for a quant.i.tative estimation. The most exact estimation possible of a political problem may have been contrived when a group of men, differing in origin, education, and mental type, first establish an approximate agreement as to the probable results of a series of possible political alternatives involving, say, increasing or decreasing state interference, and then discover the point where their 'liking' turns into 'disliking.' Man is the measure of man, and he may still be using a quant.i.tative process even though he chooses in each case that method of measurement which is least affected by the imperfection of his powers.

But it is just in the cases where numerical calculation is impossible or unsuitable that the politician is likely to get most help by using consciously quant.i.tative conceptions.

An objection has been urged against the adoption of political reasoning either implicitly or explicitly quant.i.tative, that it involves the balancing against each other of things essentially disparate. How is one, it is asked, to balance the marginal unit of national honour involved in the continuance of a war with that marginal unit of extra taxation which is supposed to be its exact equivalent? How is one to balance the final sovereign spent on the endowment of science with the final sovereign spent on a monument to a deceased scientist, or on the final detail in a scheme of old age pensions? The obvious answer is that statesmen have to act, and that whoever acts does somehow balance all the alternatives which are before him. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his annual allocation of grants and remissions of taxation balances no stranger things than does the private citizen, who, having a pound or two to spend at Christmas, decides between subscribing to a Chinese Mission and providing a revolving hatch between his kitchen and his dining-room.

A more serious objection is that we ought not to allow ourselves to think quant.i.tatively in politics, that to do so fritters away the plain consideration of principle. 'Logical principles' may be only an inadequate representation of the subtlety of nature, but to abandon them is, it is contended, to become a mere opportunist.

In the minds of these objectors the only alternative to deductive thought from simple principles seems to be the att.i.tude of Prince Bulow, in his speech in the Reichstag on universal suffrage. He is reported to have said:--'Only the most doctrinaire Socialists still regarded universal and direct suffrage as a fetish and as an infallible dogma. For his own part he was no worshipper of idols, and he did not believe in political dogmas. The welfare and the liberty of a country did not depend either in whole or in part upon the form of its Const.i.tution or of its franchise. Herr Bebel had once said that on the whole he preferred English conditions even to conditions in France. But in England the franchise was not universal, equal, and direct. Could it be said that Mecklenburg, which had no popular suffrage at all, was governed worse than Haiti, of which the world had lately heard such strange news, although Haiti could boast of possessing universal suffrage?'[48]

[48] _Times_, March 27, 1908.

But what Prince Bulow's speech showed, was that he was either deliberately parodying a style of scholastic reasoning with which he did not agree, or he was incapable of grasping the first conception of quant.i.tative political thought. If the 'dogma' of universal suffrage means the a.s.sertion that all men who have votes are thereby made identical with each other in all respects, and that universal suffrage is the one condition of good government, then, and then only, is his attack on it valid. If, however, the desire for universal suffrage is based on the belief that a wide extension of political power is one of the most important elements in the conditions of good government--racial apt.i.tude, ministerial responsibility, and the like, being other elements--then the speech is absolutely meaningless.

But Prince Bulow was making a parliamentary speech, and in parliamentary oratory that change from qualitative to quant.i.tative method which has so deeply affected the procedure of Conferences and Commissions has not yet made much progress. In a 'full-dress' debate even those speeches which move us most often recall Mr. Gladstone, in whose mind, as soon as he stood up to speak, his Eton and Oxford training in words always contended with his experience of things, and who never made it quite clear whether the 'grand and eternal commonplaces of liberty and self-government' meant that certain elements must be of great and permanent importance in every problem of Church and State, or that an _a priori_ solution of all political problems could be deduced by all good men from absolute and authoritative laws.

PART II

_Possibilities of Progress_

CHAPTER I

POLITICAL MORALITY

In the preceding chapters I have argued that the efficiency of political science, its power, that is to say, of forecasting the results of political causes, is likely to increase. I based my argument on two facts, firstly, that modern psychology offers us a conception of human nature much truer, though more complex, than that which is a.s.sociated with the traditional English political philosophy; and secondly, that, under the influence and example of the natural sciences, political thinkers are already beginning to use in their discussions and inquiries quant.i.tative rather than merely qualitative words and methods, and are able therefore both to state their problems more fully and to answer them with a greater approximation to accuracy.

In this argument it was not necessary to ask how far such an improvement in the science of politics is likely to influence the actual course of political history. Whatever may be the best way of discovering truth will remain the best, whether the ma.s.s of mankind choose to follow it or not.

But politics are studied, as Aristotle said, 'for the sake of action rather than of knowledge,'[49] and the student is bound, sooner or later, to ask himself what will be the effect of a change in his science upon that political world in which he lives and works.

[49] _Ethics_, Bk. I. ch. iii. (6). [Greek: epeide t telos [tes politikes] estn ou gnesis alla praxis.]

One can imagine, for instance, that a professor of politics in Columbia University, who had just taken part as a 'Mugwump' in a well-fought but entirely unsuccessful campaign against Tammany Hall, might say: 'The finer and more accurate the processes of political science become, the less do they count in politics. Astronomers invent every year more delicate methods of forecasting the movements of the stars, but cannot with all their skill divert one star an inch from its course. So we students of politics will find that our growing knowledge brings us only a growing sense of helplessness. We may learn from our science to estimate exactly the forces exerted by the syndicated newspaper press, by the liquor saloons, or by the blind instincts of cla.s.s and nationality and race; but how can we learn to control them? The fact that we think about these things in a new way will not win elections or prevent wars.'

I propose, therefore, in this second part of my book to discuss how far the new tendencies which are beginning to transform the science of politics are likely also to make themselves felt as a new political force. I shall try to estimate the probable influence of these tendencies, not only on the student or the trained politician, but on the ordinary citizen whom political science reaches only at second or third hand; and, with that intention, shall treat in successive chapters their relation to our ideals of political morality, to the form and working of the representative and official machinery of the State, and to the possibilities of international and inter-racial understanding.

This chapter deals from that point of view with their probable influence on political morality. In using that term I do not mean to imply that certain acts are moral when done from political motives which would not be moral if done from other motives, or _vice versa_, but to emphasise the fact that there are certain ethical questions which can only be studied in close connection with political science. There are, of course, points of conduct which are common to all occupations. We must all try to be kind, and honest, and industrious, and we expect the general teachers of morals to help us to do so. But every occupation has also its special problems, which must be stated by its own students before they can be dealt with by the moralist at all.

In politics the most important of these special questions of conduct is concerned with the relation between the process by which the politician forms his own opinions and purposes, and that by which he influences the opinions and purposes of others.

A hundred or even fifty years ago, those who worked for a democracy of which they had had as yet no experience felt no misgivings on this point They looked on reasoning, not as a difficult and uncertain process, but as the necessary and automatic working of man's mind when faced by problems affecting his interest. They a.s.sumed, therefore, that the citizens under a democracy would necessarily be guided by reason in the use of their votes, that those politicians would be most successful who made their own conclusions and the grounds for them most clear to others, and that good government would be secured if the voters had sufficient opportunities of listening to free and sincere discussion.

A candidate to-day who comes fresh from his books to the platform almost inevitably begins by making the same a.s.sumption.

He prepares his speeches and writes his address with the conviction that on his demonstration of the relation between political causes and effects will depend the result of the election. Perhaps his first shock will come from that maxim which every professional agent repeats over and over again to every candidate, 'Meetings are no good.' Those who attend meetings are, he is told, in nine cases out of ten, already loyal and habitual supporters of his party. If his speeches are logically unanswerable the chief political importance of that fact is to be found, not in his power of convincing those who are already convinced, but in the greater enthusiasm and willingness to canva.s.s which may be produced among his supporters by their admiration of him as a speaker.

Later on he learns to estimate the way in which his address and that of his opponent appeal to the const.i.tuents. He may, for instance, become suddenly aware of the att.i.tude of mind with which he himself opens the envelopes containing other candidates addresses in some election (of Poor Law Guardians, for instance), in which he is not specially interested, and of the fact that his attention is either not aroused at all, or is only aroused by words and phrases which recall some habitual train of thought. By the time that he has become sufficiently confident or important to draw up a political programme for himself, he understands the limits within which any utterance must be confined that is addressed to large numbers of voters--the fact that proposals are only to be brought 'within the sphere of practical politics' which are simple, striking, and carefully adapted to the half-conscious memories and likes and dislikes of busy men.

All this means that his own power of political reasoning is being trained. He is learning that every man differs from every other man in his interests, his intellectual habits and powers, and his experience, and that success in the control of political forces depends on a recognition of this and a careful appreciation of the common factors of human nature. But meanwhile it is increasingly difficult for him to believe that he is appealing to the same process of reasoning in his hearers as that by which he reaches his own conclusions. He tends, that is to say, to think of the voters as the subject-matter rather than the sharers of his thoughts. He, like Plato's sophist, is learning what the public is, and is beginning to understand 'the pa.s.sions and desires' of that 'huge and powerful brute, how to approach and handle it, at what times it becomes fiercest and most gentle, on what occasions it utters its several cries, and what sounds made by others soothe or irritate it.'[50] If he resolutely guards himself against the danger of pa.s.sing from one illusion to another, he may still remember that he is not the only man in the const.i.tuency who has reasoned and is reasoning about politics. If he does personal canva.s.sing he may meet sometimes a middle-aged working man, living nearer than himself to the facts of life, and may find that this const.i.tuent of his has reasoned patiently and deeply on politics for thirty years, and that he himself is a rather absurd item in the material of that reasoning. Or he may talk with a business man, and be forced to understand some one who sees perhaps more clearly than himself the results of his proposals, but who is separated from him by the gulf of a difference of desire: that which one hopes the other fears.

[50] Plato, _Republic_, p. 493.

Yet however sincerely such a candidate may respect the process by which the more thoughtful both of those who vote for him and of those who vote against him reach their conclusions, he is still apt to feel that his own part in the election has little to do with any reasoning process at all. I remember that before my first election my most experienced political friend said to me, 'Remember that you are undertaking a six weeks' advertising campaign.' Time is short, there are innumerable details to arrange, and the candidate soon returns from the rare intervals of mental contact with individual electors to that advertising campaign which deals with the electors as a whole. As long as he is so engaged, the maxim that it is wrong to appeal to anything but the severest process of logical thought in his const.i.tuents will seem to him, if he has time to think of it, not so much untrue as irrelevant.

After a time the politician may cease even to desire to reason with his const.i.tuents, and may come to regard them as purely irrational creatures of feeling and opinion, and himself as the purely rational 'over-man' who controls them. It is at this point that a resolute and able statesman may become most efficient and most dangerous.

Bolingbroke, while he was trying to teach his 'Patriot King' how to govern men by understanding them, spoke in a haunting phrase of 'that staring timid creature man.'[51] A century before Darwin he, like Swift and Plato, was able by sheer intellectual detachment to see his fellow-men as animals. He himself, he thought, was one of those few 'among the societies of men ... who engross almost the whole reason of the species, who are born to instruct, to guide, and to preserve, who are designed to be the tutors and the guardians of human kind.'[52] For the rest, 'Reason has small effect upon numbers: a turn of imagination, often as violent and as sudden as a gust of wind, determines their conduct.'[53]

[51] _Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism_, etc. (ed. of 1785), p. 70.

[52] _Ibid._, p. 2.

[53] _Ibid._, p. 165.

The greatest of Bolingbroke's disciples was Disraeli, who wrote, 'We are not indebted to the Reason of man for any of the great achievements which are the landmarks of human action and human progress.... Man is only truly great when he acts from the pa.s.sions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. Even Mormon accounts more votaries than Bentham.'[54] It was Disraeli who treated Queen Victoria 'like a woman,' and Gladstone, with the Oxford training from which he never fully recovered, who treated her 'like a public meeting.'