Thus in a free modern state, the political system, fundamental property rights and the like are settled, so far as they are settled, not because they are sacred or authoritative, but because the public mind is convinced of their soundness. Though we may not reason about them they are, so to speak, potentially rational, inasmuch as they are believed to rest upon reason and may at any time be tested by it.
The advantages and disadvantages of this sort of institutions are well understood. They do not afford quite the sharp and definite discipline of a more arbitrary system, but they are more flexible, more closely expressive of the public mind, and so, if they can be made to work at all, more stable.
The free element in institutions also tends to become better informed, better trained, better organized, more truly rational. We have so many occasions to note this that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it here.
FOOTNOTES:
[134] Wordsworth, Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, etc.
[135] In a paper on The Personal and the Factional in the Life of Society. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 1905, p. 337.
[136] By Mantegna.
[137] Page [30]. See also the [last chapter].
[138] I mean by mechanism anything in the way of habit, authority or formula that tends to dispense with choice.
[139] Baring-Gould, Germany, i, 350 ff.