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He says that there can be no separate science of government; government being the fact which of all others is most mixed up, both as cause and effect, with the qualities of the particular people or of the particular age. He holds, accordingly, that the science of government cannot be properly separated from what he calls "Political Ethology, or the theory of the causes which determine the type of character belonging to a people or to an age." Since, therefore, in treating of the phenomena of government we have to take account of "all the circumstances by which the qualities of the people are influenced," Mill concludes that "all questions respecting the tendencies of forms of government must stand part of the general science of society, not of any separate branch of it." Of this general science, as he afterwards explains (ch. x. § 2), "the fundamental problem is to find the laws according to which any state of society produces the state which succeeds it and takes its place." And the solution of this problem, as he goes on to explain, can only be advantageously attempted by a method primarily historical: we must obtain from history empirical laws of social development, and afterwards endeavour to connect these, by a process which he calls "inverse deduction," with "the psychological and ethological laws which govern the action of circumstances on men and of men on circumstances." In Mill's view, in short, Theoretical Politics can only be scientifically studied as one part or application of the Philosophy of History.

Now, I agree with Mill in holding that the scientific study of the different kinds of governments that have actually existed in human society ought to be pursued in close connection with the scientific study of other important elements of the societies in question: whether the aim of the student is to ascertain the causal relations of the differences in such governments or to compare their effects on the happiness of the societies governed. I think, however, that the development of Government or of the State is one thread or strand of human history which may usefully be separated from other components of the complex fact of social develop

ment to a greater extent than Mill holds to be possible. I think that in the division of intellectual labour which the growth of our knowledge renders necessary, this separation of Political History is almost unavoidable: though I quite admit that it ought never to be carried so far as to make us forget the influence exercised on government by other social changes for instance, by the development of thought, of knowledge, of morals, of industry.

But it would be out of place to discuss this question further here since in any case I do not think that any results attained by the study of the history of political societies can be directly or decisively applied to answer the questions with which we are here primarily concerned.

I explained at the outset that the primary aim of these lectures is to set forth in a systematic manner the general notions and principles which we use in ordinary political reasonings. Now, ordinary political reasonings have some practical aim in view to determine whether either the constitution or the action of government ought to be modified in a certain proposed manner. Hence the primary aim of our study must be similarly practical: we must endeavour to determine what ought to be, so far as it depends on the constitution and action of government, as distinct from what is or has been. And in the systematic reasonings by which we seek to arrive at such practical conclusions I conceive that the historical study of the forms and functions of government can only occupy a secondary place.

This is not so much on account of the inevitable defects of the study of human history-the difficulty of ascertaining past events with sufficient fulness and accuracy to enable us to establish trustworthy generalisations as to their causal relations it is rather owing to the very characteristic which gives the history of civilised mankind its special interest for the philosopher-viz. that it is concerned with that part of the knowable universe in which change most distinctly takes the form of progress: so that each age has its own problems, in the solution of which we can only obtain a doubtful and indirect assistance from a study of preceding ages. Grant

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that History scientifically treated may enable us to decide, at least roughly and approximately, how far particular laws and institutions have tended to promote human happiness or social wellbeing in past ages; we cannot hence legitimately infer, in any direct and cogent way, what structure or mode of action of government is likely to be most conducive to happiness here and now. This, indeed, the advocates of what is called the "historical method" have usually maintained with especial emphasis: they have been especially anxious to urge that the value of all political institutions is "relative," and that those best adapted to promote social wellbeing in any given age and country may be in the highest degree unsuited to different circumstances and a different stage in the development of human society. It may be said, however, that a science of history, if deserving of the name, must enable us to predict: that if we have ascertained the true laws of development of political societies, we shall know what government is to be and do in the future, no less than what it has been and done in the past. But even granting-what would be very difficult to establish

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by any consensus of experts that our study of history

has actually attained to this extent a scientific character, it appears to me that any guidance that may be derived from such scientific forecasts for the problems of practical politics must be merely negative and limitative, and cannot amount to positive direction. It may be most useful in preventing us from wasting our efforts in the attempt to realise impracticable ideals: it may lay down for us certain lines within which our choice of governmental institutions and laws is necessarily restricted: but it cannot, I conceive, instruct us how to choose within these lines. For instance, we might conceivably know in this way that in the course of one or two centuries all nations now civilised will have adopted some form of democracy: this would render it useless to inquire what kind of aristocracy would be best adapted for any of these nations, but would in no way assist us in determining the particular form of democracy most likely to be conducive to its wellbeing. Grant that we

know all that the most confident of scientific historians Iwould claim to know of the irresistible tendencies of social and political development; the question still remains, What, within the limits set by these tendencies, is the best mode of organising government and directing its action? And the more we believe in a law of development tending to make the future specifically unlike the past, the less direct assistance can be expected from our knowledge of what the structure and functions of government have been, in determining what they ought to be.

§ 3. I conclude, then, that in framing the precepts or maxims of Practical Politics, induction from the political experiences which history records can only be employed in a secondary way, as a useful and important, though necessarily imperfect, test of the results otherwise obtained.' But if this be so, by what other rational method can we deal with the questions of Practical Politics? According to my view it must be a method mainly deductive: we must assume certain general characteristics of man and his circumstances,

characteristics belonging not to mankind universally, but to civilised man in the most advanced stage of his development and we must consider what laws and institutions are likely to conduce most to the wellbeing of an aggregate of such beings living in social relations. According to this method, Politics is not based primarily upon History but on Psychology: the fundamental assumptions in our political reasonings consist of certain propositions as to human motives and tendencies, which are derived primarily from the ordinary experience of civilised life, though they find adequate confirmation in the facts of the

1 Such, I may observe, is the method actually employed, not only by Bentham and James Mill, but even by J. S. Mill in his treatise on Representative Government-notwithstanding the views expressed in his Logic of the Moral Sciences to which I have above referred. I have no right to suggest that Mill had consciously abandoned the general conception of the relation of Politics to History which we find in his Logic: but when he came to treat with a view to practical conclusions the question of the best form of Government, he certainly dealt with it by a method not primarily historical: a method in which history seems to be only used either to confirm practical conclusions otherwise arrived at, or to suggest the limits of their applicability.

current and recent history of our own and other civilised countries. These propositions, it should be observed, are not put forward as exactly or universally true, even of contemporary civilised man; but only as sufficiently near the truth for practical purposes. As instances of these fundamental assumptions, I may give what Bentham1 calls the "pathological propositions upon which the good of Equality is founded," viz. that caeteris paribus " each portion of wealth has as corresponding to it a portion"-or rather a "certain chance"-of happiness: that" of two individuals, with equal fortunes, he that has the most wealth has the greatest chance of happiness"; but that "the excess in happiness of the richer will not be so great as the excess of his wealth." Of these propositions the last, as Bentham says, is not likely to be disputed but the first two, if universally stated, any one with any wide experience of human beings will probably be disposed to contradict: it is easy to find both persons to whom it has manifestly been a misfortune to have been made suddenly richer, and persons who have not appreciably lost happiness by having become suddenly poorer. But it remains true that an overwhelming majority of the most sensible and reasonable persons whom we know would always prefer caeteris paribus a larger income to a smaller, both for themselves and for those whom they desire to benefit, and all that Bentham is concerned to maintain-all that he requires to assume for the establishment of general rules of legislation is that this great majority of sensible persons would be right in the great majority of cases.

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As another of these fundamental assumptions, let us take a proposition of J. S. Mill's, viz. that "each person is the only safe guardian of his own rights and interests." This proposition, of course, is only intended by Mill to apply to sane adults-and, to avoid controversy, I will for the present suppose (what, I hardly need say, is not Mill's view) that it is only applicable to adult males: since it is not clear that the common sense of mankind considers women generally to 1 Principles of the Civil Code, ch. vi.

2 Representative Government, ch. iii.

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