and would
then introduce into the room without notice, and in chance order, a
bishop, a well-known general, the greatest living man of letters, and a
minor member of the royal family. The resulting records of immediate
pulse disturbances would be of real scientific importance, and it might
even be possible to continue the record in each case say, for a quarter
of a minute, and to trace the secondary effects of variations in
political opinions, education, or the sense of humour among the
students.

At present almost the only really scientific observation on the subject
from its political side is contained in Lord Palmerston's protest
against a purely intellectual account of aristocracy: 'there is no
damned nonsense about merit,' he said, 'in the case of the Garter.'
Makers of new aristocracies are still, however, apt to intellectualise.
The French government, for instance, have created an order, 'Pour le
Merite Agricole,' which ought, on the basis of mere logic, to be very
successful; but one is told that the green ribbon of that order produces
in France no thrill whatever.

The impulse to laugh is comparatively unimportant in politics, but it
affords a good instance of the way in which a practical politician has
to allow for pre-rational impulse. It is apparently an immediate effect
of the recognition of the incongruous, just as trembling is of the
recognition of danger. It may have been evolved because an animal which
suffered a slight spasm in the presence of the unexpected was more
likely to be on its guard against enemies, or it may have been the
merely accidental result of some fact in our nervous organisation which
was otherwise useful. Incongruity is, however, so much a matter of habit
and association and individual variation, that it is extraordinarily
difficult to forecast whether any particular act will seem ridiculous to
any particular class, or how long the sense of incongruity will in any
case persist. Acts, for instance, which aim at producing exalted
emotional effect among ordinary slow-witted people--Burke's dagger,
Louis Napoleon's tame eagle, the German Kaiser's telegrams about Huns
and mailed fists--may do so, and therefore be in the end politically
successful, although they produce spontaneous laughter in men whose
conception of good political manners is based upon the idea of
self-restraint.

Again, almost the whole of the economic question between socialism and
individualism turns on the natur