Chapter 6

THE METHOD OF POLITICAL REASONING

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 entities 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 assume 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 associated 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-Japanese 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 'classical' 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 encumbering 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 quantitative estimate of what under given circumstances 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 assimilated, 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 quantitative form. As Professor Marshall said the other day, _qualitative_ reasoning in economics is passing away and _quantitative_ reasoning is beginning to take its place.[43]

[43] _Journal of Economics_, March 1907, pp. 7 and 8. 'What by chemical analogy may be called qualitative analysis has done the greater part of its work.... Much less progress has indeed been made towards the quantitative 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 institutions?

It is of course easy to pick out political questions which can obviously be treated by quantitative methods. One may take, for instance, the problem of the best size for a debating hall, to be used, say, by the Federal Deliberative Assembly of the British Empire--assuming 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 classes 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 assembly 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 assembly 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 quantitative method of reasoning on such questions, and may find themselves in 1912 provided with a new hall admirably adapted to illustrate the dignity of London and the genius of their architect, but unfitted for any other purpose.

Nor is the essence of the quantitative method changed when the answer is to be found, not in one, but in several 'unknown quantities.' Take, for instance, the question as to the best types of elementary school to be provided in London. If it were assumed 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 aptitude (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 circumstances 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 quantitative character. The essential point is that in every case in which a political thinker is able to adopt what Professor Marshall calls the quantitative 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 quantitative methods possible when a statesman is dealing, neither with an obviously quantitative problem, like the building of halls or schools, nor with an attempt to give quantitative 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 constitutional 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 assemblies in Dicey's _Law of the Constitution_ (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 associated 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 aggrandisement; 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 quantitative solution. 'Home Rule' is no simple entity 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 substitution 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 Shelley, they see in the whole human race an infinite repetition of uniform individuals, the 'millions on millions' who 'wait, firm, rapid, and elate.'[44]

[44] Shelley, _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 repetitions of a simple type, they cease to think of them at all; and content themselves with using party phrases about the mass 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, quantitative method must spread in politics and must transform the vocabulary and the associations 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 accumulated; and collections of detailed facts, if they are to be used at all in political reasoning, must be used quantitatively. The intellectual work of preparing legislation, whether carried on by permanent officials or Royal Commissions or Cabinet Ministers takes every year a more quantitative and a less qualitative form.

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 destitute 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 class.'[46] The _a priori_ argument is admirably illustrated 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, illustrated, 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, passed 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 mass of varied evidence before it, onto new lines. Instead of assuming 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 quantitative 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 illustrate general propositions otherwise established, but to provide quantitative answers to quantitative questions; and instances are in each case accumulated according to a well-known statistical rule until the repetition of results shows that further accumulation 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 municipal 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 quantitative 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 masse_,'[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 destitution, tend now to use, not general terms applied to whole social classes like the 'poor,' 'the working class,' or 'the lower orders,' but terms expressing quantitative 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 quantitative 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 partition of Africa from causing a series of European wars as long as those caused by the partition of America, was compelled by the complexity of the problems before it to approach the question of sovereignty on quantitative 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 Algeçiras 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 classifying under a few heads thousands of 'railway accidents,' every one of which differed in its circumstances 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 quantitative 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 quantitative facts. A picture, for instance, may be sometimes nearer to quantitative truth, more easily remembered and more useful for purposes of argument and verification than a row of figures. The most exact quantitative political document 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 quantitative 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 quantitative 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 quantitative conceptions.

An objection has been urged against the adoption of political reasoning either implicitly or explicitly quantitative, 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 quantitatively 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 attitude of Prince Bülow, 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 Constitution 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 Bülow'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 quantitative political thought. If the 'dogma' of universal suffrage means the assertion 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 aptitude, ministerial responsibility, and the like, being other elements--then the speech is absolutely meaningless.

But Prince Bülow was making a parliamentary speech, and in parliamentary oratory that change from qualitative to quantitative 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.