BOOKS.
THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS.*
THE sketch which is the subject of the present review con- tains the substance of Sir Frederick Pollock's lectures delivered at the Royal Institution in 1882, and afterwards published in a series of articles in the Fortnightly Review, Hier intention, which we may hope he has not yet abandoned, was- to expand the work from its previous form into a more elaborate work. Meantime, we cannot but think that the issue of the unauthorised American reprint of the original' essays, which has caused the publication of the work in its present shape, has unwittingly done us a service. It would be difficult to speak too highly of the general sketch under. review. In a concise and clear style, it gives a, brilliant outline. of the history of political science from Aristotle to the present day ; and though eight years have elapsed since the essays were thrown into shape, the author has sufficient con- fidence in the maturity of his views then expressed, to leave them almost in their original form. His readers will probably agree that this confidence is justified: There. is a freshness and vigour, both in the descriptive and
* The Science of Politica, By Sir Frederick Pollook,13art, London: Macmillan, and Co,
speculative parts, which bring them at once into relation with the problems of the day, and there is no portion of the his- torical data selected from which the author cannot suggest some practical conclusion ; and if our "masters" will only read it, it may do much to clarify and extend their ideas on legislation. Political' theories have from time to time exer- cised a considerable direct influence in public affairs, and it is only by scientific criticism that they can be established or refuted. Political science therefore must and does exist, if only for this purpose ; and with such a necessity for its justifi- cation, and with Aristotle as its founder and first exponent, the practical interest of the inquiry may be taken as estab- lished, That Aristotle seriously discussed it, is itself one of the surest marks of its practical value; and Sir Frederick Pollock rightly insists on the great and surviving importance of his work. Not only did he separate ethics from politics, but he at once adopted the historic method—the natural history of the State as it is—by which, Burke and Sir Henry Maine have subsequently been able to meet and overthrow the successive fictions of Original Contracts. Sir Frederick Pollock reminds us that "even those points in Aristotle's work which are so trite by quotation and allusion that we are now apt to think them obvious, have been repeatedly shown to be neither obvious nor superfluous by the most conclusive of all evidence,—the mistakes of clever men who have disregarded them." Take, for instance, his aphorism on Com- munism: "Carefulness is least in that which is common to most : for men take thought in the chief place for their own, and less for the common stock ;" or the pregnant phrase by which he dismisses the arguments for a universal and equal distribution of property : "It is more important to equalise men's wants than their substance." The nobility of Aristotle's conception of the State stands out in strong contrast to the sordid individualism which has been grafted on to the formula) of writers whose intentions were not less excellent, bat whose conclusions were more material. "It is formed to secure life, it continues to improve life ;" and, again, "Man is born to be a citizen." "There is hardly a saying in Greek literature so well worn as this," remarks Sir Frederick Pollock," nor is there any which has worn better." It contradicts by anticipation the worst errors of the Social Contract. The otroTi;, the clanless and masterless man whom Aristotle "regards as a kind of monster, is identical with the natural man of Hobbes and Rousseau. He is the unit out of whom, if there be orily enough of them, the theorists of the Social Contract school undertake to build up the State. This is an enterprise at which Aristotle would have stared and gasped. We have seen pretty well what comes of it, Rousseau and Hobbes have had their innings in revolutionary France ; and I think we have by this time ample warrant of experience for saying that Aristotle was right, and Hobbes and Rousseau (assuming for the moment that we have the real mind of Hobbes in Hobbes as commonly understood) were altogether wrong." We have quoted enough to show that if there is not much that is new in Sir Frederick Pollock's presentation of Aristotle's views, the appreciation of their practical and immediate bearing on modern political theories is at once new and striking ; and we shall find that his main conclusion from an exhaustive review of political theories may be best expressed in the words, " Back to Aristotle."
How political speculation dropped to sleep in the universal acquiescence in the fact of Roman dominion, not to awaken till the Renaissance, and without practical results till the writings of Hobbes, is admirably told in the opening of the second chapter. That the relations of men and States in the Middle Ages under the feudal system were personal, not political, was sufficient reason for the non-revival of the science even after the break-up of the Roman Empire. But on the controversy between the temporal power of the Emperor and the spiritual power of the Pope, the author Las much curious information to give, especially of the part taken by Dante in the dispute. In defending the claims of the Emperor, Dante advanced the strange argument that the title of the Roman Empire was "confirmed by the highest possible authority in the passion of Christ. The sin of Adam was punished in Ohrist,hut there is no punishment without a com- petent jurisdiction ; and since Christ represented all mankind, a jurisdiction extending to all mankind was the only com- petent one. Such a universal jurisdiction was that of Rome as exercised by Pilate!" Perhaps this is not an exaggerated instance of the verbal subtleties of media3val controversy. But if the writings of Dante had for their object the establishment of a God-directed despotism, they also suggested an inter- national tribunal in which the Emperor should arbitrate. between States and potentates. The past year has seen suggestions for the submission of international disputes to the decision of the spiritual power of the Pope, and of social questions indirectly through the prelates of the Church.
Nothing in the work under review is more suggestive than the clear statement of the practical results of political theories during the last century. Hobbes, who made the original contract for self-preservation a law of Nature, created a Levia- than monarch to enforce it. • He expressed the doctrine of political sovereignty, and of the force of law, in the clearest possible manner. "Law in general is not counsel but com- mend," and those commands must be enforced. Rousseau, to avoid Hobbes's consequences, devised a new form of original contract, destined to be "a great and dangerous deceit of nations," to quote Sir Frederick Pollock's words, of which we have not yet heard the last. It purported to create a common sovereign power, and yet to leave every contracting party as' free as he was before, owing obedience only to himself. The
of the contract are as follows : "Each of us puts his person and faculties in a common stock under the sovereign direction of the general will, and we receive each member as
an inseparable part of the whole Whoever refuses, to obey the general will is to be compelled by the whole. body to obey it ; which is as much as to say that he will be com- pelled to be free." Thus, the surrender is to the whole society, not to the Sovereign. How useless, except for mischief, such a theory was, may be gathered from the fact that Rousseau himself declared modern States "too large" for the exercise of sovereign power according to his notion. The "general will" could only be expressed by a meeting of all his citizens, for he denounced representative government as a makeshift, and considered the English people the slave of the Parliament which it makes. Yet the fiction of the social Contract was in a great measure answerable for the Declaration of the Rights of Man. "It would be unjust," says Sir Frederick Pollock, "to deny all merit to the Declaration. The 7th, 8th, and 9th Articles express, in language fairly free from objection,. important maxims of legislative and administrative juris- prudence. But so far as the Declaration involves a political theory, it is a standing warning to nations and statesmen not to commit themselves to formulas. The effect of the Prin- ciples of 1789, as the Declaration of the Rights of Man is often called, has been to hinder and prevent the development of politics in France, in practice as well as in theory, to an almost incalculable extent."
Rousseau's theory was contradicted in anticipation by Montesquieu, and explicitly by Burke, both of whom were, in method and theory, followers of Aristotle. Like him, Montes- quieu tried to find a theory of polities based on the observa- tion of actual systems in different ages and states. Burke, "mistrusting formalism even to excess," left neither formulas, nor dogma, nor a school ; yet, in rejecting the notion that "a number of vague, loose individuals," "a multitude told by heads," can make or unmake a nation, and by maintaining that the artificial social organism into which we are born is. the " natural " state, for that "art is man's nature," he identi- fied himself with the fundamental axiom of Aristotle. It might be of present service if the crop of political formulas now so. common could be examined in the spirit of Burke. There is. no doubt that many of the words and phrases now forced into- political currency gain much of their weight from the idea that they are the logical outcome of accepted political theory. Phrases such as "One man, one vote," or "The right of the Irish to govern exclusively Irish affairs," are accepted largely from a puzzled notion that they are the reasoned results of political reflection, instead of theses which are but just in shape for submission to scientific criticism. In the vexed question of the limits of State interference, Sir Frederick Pollock refuses to follow J. S. Mill and Mr. Herbert Spencer._ This follows from his acceptance of the Aristotelian view of the State, that it exists for preservation, but not for' preservation only, but for improvement. Both theories belong- to their time, and both must be tried by the event.
Aristotle's (i.e., Burke's) is the finer, and it has the advantage of putting a rational face on much of the modern action of the Legislature, which the term " State Socialism" does not..
With the action of local governing bodies accepted as part of this idea, much will be possible; but probably too much will be undertaken. There will be loss, too, on the side of self- help and the aggressive independence which Mill's theory encourages. Probably we shall end by getting an illogical combination of the two, which will be open to criticism, no -doubt—what is not P—but which will do, and will have to do. These results will flow from political theory—when recognised. But they have already begun without any theory, so far as statesmen" have declared themselves.
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