ntil political psychology is more certain. We have to act on what we
believe, on half-knowledge, illusion and error. Experience itself will
reveal our mistakes; research and criticism may convert them into wisdom.
But act we must, and act as if we knew the nature of man and proposed to
satisfy his needs.

In other words, we must put man at the center of politics, even though we
are densely ignorant both of man and of politics. This has always been
the method of great political thinkers from Plato to Bentham. But one
difference we in this age must note: they made their political man a
dogma--we must leave him an hypothesis. That is to say that our task is
to temper speculation with scientific humility.

A paradox there is here, but a paradox of language, and not of fact. Men
made bridges before there was a science of bridge-building; they cured
disease before they knew medicine. Art came before aesthetics, and
righteousness before ethics. Conduct and theory react upon each other.
Hypothesis is confirmed and modified by action, and action is guided by
hypothesis. If it is a paradox to ask for a human politics before we
understand humanity or politics, it is what Mr. Chesterton describes as
one of those paradoxes that sit beside the wells of truth.

* * * * *

We make our picture of man, knowing that, though it is crude and unjust,
we have to work with it. If we are wise we shall become experimental
towards life: then every mistake will contribute towards knowledge. Let
the exploration of human need and desire become a deliberate purpose of
statecraft, and there is no present measure of its possibilities.

In this work there are many guides. A vague common tradition is in the
air about us--it expresses itself in journalism, in cheap novels, in the
uncritical theater. Every merchant has his stock of assumptions about the
mental habits of his customers and competitors; the prostitute hers; the
newspaperman his; P. T. Barnum had a few; the vaudeville stage has a
number. We test these notions by their results, and even "practical
people" find that there is more variety in human nature than they had
supposed.

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the
world--introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very
considerably--that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our
neighbors is to know ourselves. For after all, the only experience we
really understand