'ere tortoise is a hinsect.'

But it must constantly be remembered that quantitative thinking does
not necessarily or even generally mean thinking in terms of numerical
statistics. Number, which obliterates all distinction between the units
numbered, is not the only, nor always even the most exact means of
representing quantitative facts. A picture, for instance, may be
sometimes nearer to quantitative truth, more easily remembered and more
useful for purposes of argument and verification than a row of figures.
The most exact quantitative political document that I ever saw was a set
of photographs of all the women admitted into an inebriate home. The
photographs demonstrated, more precisely than any record of approximate
measurements could have done, the varying facts of physical and nervous
structure. It would have been easily possible for a committee of medical
men to have arranged the photographs in a series of increasing
abnormality, and to have indicated the photograph of the 'marginal'
woman in whose case, after allowing for considerations of expense, and
for the desirability of encouraging individual responsibility, the State
should undertake temporary or permanent control. And the record was one
which no one who had ever seen it could forget.

The political thinker has indeed sometimes to imitate the cabinet-maker,
who discards his most finely divided numerical rule for some kinds of
specially delicate work, and trusts to his sense of touch for a
quantitative estimation. The most exact estimation possible of a
political problem may have been contrived when a group of men, differing
in origin, education, and mental type, first establish an approximate
agreement as to the probable results of a series of possible political
alternatives involving, say, increasing or decreasing state
interference, and then discover the point where their 'liking' turns
into 'disliking.' Man is the measure of man, and he may still be using a
quantitative process even though he chooses in each case that method of
measurement which is least affected by the imperfection of his powers.
But it is just in the cases where numerical calculation is impossible or
unsuitable that the politician is likely to get most help by using
consciously quantitative conceptions.

An objection has been urged against the adoption of political reasoning
either implicitly or explicitly quantitative, that it involves the
balancing against each other of things