and during the last few
years many democratic movements have failed.

This dissatisfaction has led to much study of political institutions;
but little attention has been recently given in works on politics to the
facts of human nature. Political science in the past was mainly based,
on conceptions of human nature, but the discredit of the dogmatic
political writers of the early nineteenth century has made modern
students of politics over-anxious to avoid anything which recalls their
methods. That advance therefore of psychology which has transformed
pedagogy and criminology has left politics largely unchanged.

The neglect of the study of human nature is likely, however, to prove
only a temporary phase of political thought, and there are already signs
that it, is coming to an end.

_(PART I.--Chapter I.--Impulse and Instinct in Politics, page 21)_

Any examination of human nature in politics must begin with an attempt
to overcome that 'intellectualism' which results both from the
traditions of political science and from the mental habits of ordinary
men.

Political impulses are not mere intellectual inferences from
calculations of means and ends; but tendencies prior to, though modified
by, the thought and experience of individual human beings. This may be
seen if we watch the action in politics of such impulses as personal
affection, fear, ridicule, the desire of property, etc.

All our impulses and instincts are greatly increased in their immediate
effectiveness if they are 'pure,' and in their more permanent results if
they are 'first hand' and are connected with the earlier stages of our
evolution. In modern politics the emotional stimulus which reaches us
through the newspapers is generally 'pure,' but 'second hand,' and
therefore is both facile and transient.

The frequent repetition of an emotion or impulse is often distressing.
Politicians, like advertisers, must allow for this fact, which again is
connected with that combination of the need of privacy with intolerance
of solitude to which we have to adjust our social arrangements.

Political emotions are sometimes pathologically intensified when
experienced simultaneously by large numbers of human beings in physical
association, but the conditions of political life in England do not
often produce this phenomenon.

The future of international politics largely depends on the question
whether we have a specific instinct of hatred for human beings of a