nd organised efforts of hundreds of
learned men, may not only deepen and widen our knowledge of political
institutions, but open an unworked mine of political invention.

PART I

_The Conditions of the Problem_

CHAPTER I

IMPULSE AND INSTINCT IN POLITICS

Whoever sets himself to base his political thinking on a re-examination
of the working of human nature, must begin by trying to overcome his own
tendency to exaggerate the intellectuality of mankind.

We are apt to assume that every human action is the result of an
intellectual process, by which a man first thinks of some end which he
desires, and then calculates the means by which that end can be
attained. An investor, for instance, desires good security combined with
five per cent interest. He spends an hour in studying with an open mind
the price-list of stocks, and finally infers that the purchase of
Brewery Debentures will enable him most completely to realise his
desire. Given the original desire for good security, his act in
purchasing the Debentures appears to be the inevitable result of his
inference. The desire for good security itself may further appear to be
merely an intellectual inference as to the means of satisfying some more
general desire, shared by all mankind, for 'happiness,' our own
'interest,' or the like. The satisfaction of this general desire can
then be treated as the supreme 'end' of life, from which all our acts
and impulses, great and small, are derived by the same intellectual
process as that by which the conclusion is derived from the premises of
an argument.

This way of thinking is sometimes called 'common sense.' A good example
of its application to politics may be found in a sentence from
Macaulay's celebrated attack on the Utilitarian followers of Bentham in
the _Edinburgh Review_ of March 1829. This extreme instance of the
foundation of politics upon dogmatic psychology is, curiously enough,
part of an argument intended to show that 'it is utterly impossible to
deduce the science of government from the principles of human nature.'
'What proposition,' Macaulay asks, 'is there respecting human nature
which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one: and that
is not only true, but identical; that men always act from
self-interest.... _When we see the actions of a man, we know with
certainty what he thinks his interest to be_.'[3] Macaulay believes
himself to be opposing Benthamism root and branch, bu