XXXIX.—IS PERFECTION IN POLITICS POSSIBLE?
It is sometimes asked whether, after all the struggling of public life, perfection in politics is possible. But in what department of human affairs is perfection possible? Is it in medicine? Mark the proportion of those born who die before they are five years old. Is it in science? The scientist is still engaged, as Newton was, in picking up shells on the shore of a vast ocean of knowledge which he is unable yet to navigate. Is it in religion? Ask the Christian and the Confucian, the Mahommedan and the Buddhist to define the word, before giving an answer. When medicine, and science, and religion have reached universally acknowledged perfection, politics may be hoped to follow in their wake; but until that period it is needless to expect it.
The very idea that it is possible has been the cause of many delusions, and delusions are dangerous. Read Plato’s “Republic,” More’s “Utopia,” and Harington’s “Oceana,” and you will perceive how far the ideal is removed from any conceivable real. It may be that from these works good has flowed, since the evident impossibility of making the whole plan of use has not prevented political thinkers taking from them such ideas as were practicable, and grafting these upon existing institutions, with benefit to the State. But the dreamy schemes of the eighteenth century, the influence of which has not yet died away, were of a different order. For, in the endeavour to change society at a stroke, blunders were made which have caused lasting injury; and these should teach us that the true ideal in politics is that which does not attempt to bend men, or break them if necessary, to suit the machine, but makes the machine to fit the men. The philosopher is a useful personage, but the attempt to rule men from a library customarily results in disaster. The problem of life cannot be solved like a proposition in Euclid; there, squares always are squares and circles never anything else; but in every-day existence the square is often forced to be circular by the rubbing off of the angles. And too often it will be found that the philosopher, because of his lack of practical acquaintance with his fellow men, exaggerates both what he knows and what he does: he blows a bubble and calls it the globe; lighting a candle, he thinks it the sun.
All history teaches that the road to heaven does not lie through Acts of Parliament, and that under the best laws the saints would not be many and the sinners would be far from few. No more pernicious nonsense is talked than that all our social misery, crime, and degradation is due to bad laws. The political student cannot doubt that much misery may be mitigated, crime prevented, and degradation made impossible by good laws, and it is that knowledge which should stimulate every Liberal to lose no opportunity of improving the conditions under which we live. But it is to display an ignorance of human nature that is really lamentable, or a desire to flatter human weakness that is beneath contempt, to tell the people that, if only certain changes were made in the constitution of the State or of society, all would be well, none would suffer, and crime and poverty would be known only as traditions of the past.
It is not necessary to assert the old theological dogma that, left to himself, man is irredeemably bad, in order to believe that a great many bearing the name are very far from good. There is, unhappily, hardly a family in the country that has not one black sheep—or, at the best, one speckled specimen—to deplore. Do we not all know the idle worthless son of good and hard-working parents, a curse to his own and to all with whom he comes in contact? The laws affecting him are the same as those which affect his brothers: they prosper, he fails. Why? Because they are worthy, he is worthless; and there is no conceivable state of society in which he could be, or ought to be, served as well as they. Certainly there are bad men who flourish, and good who wither away; but the political system which should prevent the possibility of this has not yet been invented—and never will be.
Therefore it is one of the most dangerous of political delusions to believe that any possible reform can make all men prosperous and contented. It is just as likely as that this would be brought about by the universal practice of the old distich—
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,
as if chimney sweeps, milkmen, and market gardeners had a monopoly of those excellent qualities. The possession of an ideal is a good thing, as long as it is not allowed to overshadow the real; and those whose ideal causes them to ignore the indolence and vice of their fellows are blind guides who would lead us into a ditch.