plifies the author's
characteristic tendency to look upon political ideas as if speculative
writers got them out of their own heads, or out of the heads of other
people, apart from the suggestions of events and the requirements of
circumstance, Calvin was the builder of a working government, and
Locke was the defender of a practical revolution.

Nor does the error stop at the literary sources of political theories.
A point more or less in an estimate of a writer or a book is of
trivial importance compared with what strikes us as Sir Henry
Maine's tendency to impute an unreal influence to writers and books
altogether. There is, no doubt, a vulgar and superficial opinion that
mere speculation is so remote from the real interests of men, that it
is a waste of time for practical people to concern themselves about
speculation. No view could be more foolish, save one; and that one is
the opposite view, that the real interests of men have no influence
on their speculative opinions, and no share either in moulding those
opinions or in causing their adoption. Sir Henry Maine does not push
things quite so far as this. Still he appears to us to attribute
almost exclusive influence to political theories, and almost entirely
to omit what we take to be the much more important reaction upon
theory, both of human nature, and of the experience of human life and
outward affairs. He makes no allowance among innovating agencies for
native rationalism without a formula. His brilliant success in other
applications of the Historic Method has disposed him to see survivals
where other observers will be content with simpler explanations.
The reader is sometimes tempted to recall Edie Ochiltree's rude
interruption of Mr. Oldbuck's enthusiasm over the praetorium of the
Immortal Roman camp at Monkbarns. "Praetorian here, Praetorian there!
I mind the bigging o 't!"

Sir Henry Maine believes that the air is thick with ideas about
democracy that were conceived _a priori_, and that sprung from the
teaching of Rousseau. A conviction of the advantages of legislative
change, for example, he considers to owe its origin much less to
active and original intelligence, than to "the remote effect of words
and notions derived from broken-down political theories." There are
two great fountains of political theory in our country according to
the author: Rousseau is one, and Bentham is the other. Current
thought and speech Is infested by the floating fragments of