Island_ at the theatre, is
more likely than his father, who only saw _The Shaughraun_, to realise
that one's feelings on the Irish question can be thought about as well
as felt.

In so far as this change extends, the politician may find in the future
that an increasing proportion of his constituents half-consciously 'see
through' the cruder arts of emotional exploitation.

But such an unconscious or half-conscious extension of self-knowledge is
not likely of itself to keep pace with the parallel development of the
political art of controlling impulse. The tendency, if it is to be
effective, must be strengthened by the deliberate adoption and
inculcation of new moral and intellectual conceptions--new ideal
entities to which our affections and desires may attach themselves.

'Science' has been such an entity ever since Francis Bacon found again,
without knowing it, the path of Aristotle's best thought. The conception
of 'Science,' of scientific method and the scientific spirit, was built
up in successive generations by a few students. At first their
conception was confined to themselves. Its effects were seen in the
discoveries which they actually made; but to the mass of mankind they
seemed little better than magicians. Now it has spread to the whole
world. In every class-room and laboratory in Europe and America the
conscious idea of Science forms the minds and wills of thousands of men
and women who could never have helped to create it. It has penetrated,
as the political conceptions of Liberty or of Natural Right never
penetrated, to non-European races. Arab engineers in Khartoum, doctors
and nurses and generals in the Japanese army, Hindoo and Chinese
students make of their whole lives an intense activity inspired by
absolute submission to Science, and not only English or American or
German town working men, but villagers in Italy or Argentina are
learning to respect the authority and sympathise with the methods of
that organised study which may double at any moment the produce of their
crops or check a plague among their cattle.

'Science,' however, is associated by most men, even in Europe, only with
things exterior to themselves, things that can be examined by test-tubes
and microscopes. They are dimly aware that there exists a science of the
mind, but that knowledge suggests to them, as yet, no ideal of conduct.

It is true that in America, where politicians have learnt more
successfully than elsewhere the