I
am supposing represents only a change of method and spirit, it can
achieve no great results in actual assignable truth. Well! a change of
method and spirit is, in my opinion, of considerable importance, and
very vague results would still imply an improvement in the chaos of
what now passes for political philosophy. I will try to indicate very
briefly the kind of improvement of which we need not despair.

First of all, I conceive that, as I have indicated, a really scientific
habit of thought would dispel many hopeless logomachies. When Burke,
incomparably the greatest of our philosophical politicians, was arguing
against the American policy of the Government, he expressed his hatred
of metaphysics--the "Serbonian bog," as he called it, in which whole
armies had been lost. The point at which he aimed was the fruitless
discussion of abstract rights, which prevented people from applying
their minds to the actual facts, and from seeing that metaphysical
entities of that kind were utterly worthless when they ceased to
correspond to the wants and aspirations of the peoples concerned. He
could not, as he said, draw up an indictment against a nation, because
he could not see how such troubles as had arisen between England and
the Colonies were to be decided by technical distinctions such as
passed current at _nisi prius_. I am afraid that the mode of reasoning
condemned by Burke has not yet gone out of fashion. I do not wish to
draw down upon myself the wrath of metaphysicians. I am perfectly
willing that they should go on amusing themselves by attempting to
deduce the first principles of morality from abstract considerations of
logical affirmation and denial. But I will say this, that, in any case,
and whatever the ultimate meaning of right and wrong, all political and
social questions must be discussed with a continual reference to
experience, to the contents as well as to the form of their metaphysical
concepts. It is, to my mind, quite as idle to attempt to determine the
value, say, of a political theory by reasoning independent of the
character and circumstances of the nation and its constituent members,
as to solve a medical question by abstract formulae, instead of by
careful, prolonged, and searching investigation into the constitution of
the human body. I think that this requires to be asserted so long as
popular orators continue to declaim, for example, about the "rights of
man," or the doctrines of political equali