rang from that
formulated distrust of the energetic rational judgment in comparison
with the emotional, affective, contemplative parts of man, which
underlies the various forms of religious mysticism. If you look closely
into our present mood, it is seen to be the product mainly and above all
of a shrinking deference to the _status quo_, not merely as having a
claim not to be lightly dealt with, which every serious man concedes,
but as being the last word and final test of truth and justice. Physical
science is allowed to be the sphere of accurate reasoning and distinct
conclusions, but in morals and politics, instead of admitting that these
subjects have equally a logic of their own, we silently suspect all
first principles, and practically deny the strict inferences from
demonstrated premisses. Faith in the soundness of given general theories
of right and wrong melts away before the first momentary triumph of
wrong, or the first passing discouragement in enforcing right.

Our robust political sense, which has discovered so many of the secrets
of good government, which has given us freedom with order, and popular
administration without corruption, and unalterable respect for law along
with indelible respect for individual right, this, which has so long
been our strong point, is fast becoming our weakness and undoing. For
the extension of the ways of thinking which are proper in politics, to
other than political matter, means at the same time the depravation of
the political sense itself. Not only is social expediency effacing the
many other points of view that men ought to take of the various facts of
life and thought: the idea of social expediency itself is becoming a
dwarfed and pinched idea. Ours is the country where love of constant
improvement ought to be greater than anywhere else, because fear of
revolution is less. Yet the art of politics is growing to be as meanly
conceived as all the rest At elections the national candidate has not
often a chance against the local candidate, nor the man of a principle
against the man of a class. In parliament we are admonished on high
authority that 'the policy of a party is not the carrying out of the
opinion of any section of it, but the general consensus of the whole,'
which seems to be a hierophantic manner of saying that the policy of a
party is one thing, and the principle which makes it a party is another
thing, and that men who care very strongly about anything are to