experience. In the midst of a bustle of activity,
politics appeared to have no center to which its
thinking and doing could be referred. The truth
was driven home upon him that political science
is a science of human relationship with the human
beings left out. So he writes that "the thinkers
of the past, from Plato to Bentham and Mill, had
each his own view of human nature, and they
made these views the basis of their speculations
on government." But to-day ''nearly all students
of politics analyze institutions and avoid the anal-
ysis of man." Whoever has read the typical book
on politics by a professor or a reformer will
agree, I think, when he adds: "One feels that
many of the more systematic books on politics by
American University professors are useless, just
because the writers dealt with abstract men,
formed on assumptions of which they were un-
aware and which they have never tested either by
experience or by study."
An extreme example could be made of Nicholas
72
THE CHANGING FOCUS
Murray Butler, President of Columbia Univer-
sity. In the space of six months he wrote an im-
passioned defense of ''constitutional govern-
ment," beginning with the question, "Why is it
that in the United States the words politics and
politician have associations that are chiefly of evil
omen," and then, to make irony complete, pro-
ceeded at the New York State Republican Con-
vention to do the jobbery of Boss Barnes. What
is there left but to gasp and wonder whether the
words of the intellect have anything to do with
the facts of life? What Insight into reality can
a man possess who is capable of discussing poli-
tics and ignoring politicians? What kind of
naivete was it that led this educator into asking
such a question?
President Butler is, I grant, a caricature of the
typical professor. Yet what shall we say of the
annual harvest of treatises on "labor problems"
which make no analysis of the mental condition
of laboring men; of the treatises on marriage
and prostitution which gloss over the sexual life
of the individual? "In the other sciences which
deal with human affairs," writes Mr. Wallas, re-
ferring to pedagogy and criminology, "this di-
vision between the study of the thing done and
the study of the being who does it is not found."
73
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
I have in my hands a text-book of six hundred
pages which Is used In the largest universities as
a groundwork of political economy. This re-
markable sentence strikes the eye: "The motives
to business activity are too familiar to require
analysis/' But some sense that perhaps the "eco-
nomic man" is not a self-evident creature seems
to have touched our author. So we are treated
to these sapient remarks: "To avoid this criticism
we will begin with a characterization of the typ-
ical business man to be found to-day in the United
States and other countries in the same stage of
industrial development. He has four traits
which show themselves more or less clearly in all
of his acts*' They are first "self-interest," but
"this does not mean that he is steeped in selfish-
ness . . ."; secondly, "the larger self," the
family, union, club, and "in times of emergency
his country" ; thirdly, "love of independence," for
"his ambition is to stand on his own feet";
fourthly, "business ethics" which "are not usually
as high as the standards professed in churches,
but they are much higher than current criticisms
of business would lead one to think." Three-
quarters of a page Is sufficient for this penetrat-
ing analysis of motive and Is followed by the re-
mark that "these four characteristics of the eco-
!T4f
THE CHANGING FOCUS
nomic man are readily explained by reference to
the evolutionary process which has brought Indus-
trial society to Its present stage of development."
If those were the generalizations of a tired
business man after a heavy dinner and a big cigar,
they would still seem rather muddled and useless.
But as the basis of an economic treatise in which
"laws" are announced, "principles" laid down, re-
forms criticized as "impracticable," all for the
benefit of thousands of college students, it is
hardly possible to exaggerate the folly of such an
exhibition. I have taken a book written by one
eminent professor and evidently approved by oth-
ers, for they use It as a text-book. It Is no queer
freak. I myself was supposed to read that book
pretty nearly every week for a year. With hun-
dreds of others I was supposed to found my eco-
nomic understanding upon It. We were actually
punished for not reading that book. It was given
to us as wisdom, as modern political economy.
But what goes by the name to-day is a pot-
pourri In which one can distinguish descriptions
of legal forms, charters and Institutions; com-
parative studies of governmental and social ma-
chinery; the history of institutions, a few "princi-
ples" like the law of rent, some moral admoni-
tions, a good deal of class feeling, not a little
75
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
timidit}' — but almost no attempt to cut beneath
these manifestations of social life to the creative
impulses which produce them. The Economic
Man — that lazy abstraction — is still paraded in
the lecture room; the study of human nature has
not advanced beyond the gossip of old wives.
Graham Wallas touched the cause of the
trouble when he pointed out that political science
to-day discusses institutions and ignores the na-
ture of the men who make and live under them.
I have heard professors reply that it wasn't their
business to discuss human nature but to record
and interpret economic and political facts. Yet if
you probe those "interpretations" there is no es-
caping the conclusion that they rest upon some
notion of what man is like. "The student of
politics," writes Mr. Wallas, "must, consciously
or unconsciously, form a conception of human
nature, and the less conscious he is of his concep-
tion the more likely he is to be dominated by it."
For politics is an interest of men — a tool which
they fabricate and use — and no comment has
much value if it tries to get along without man-
kind. You might as well try to describe food by
ignoring the digestion.
Mr. Wallas has called a halt. I think we may
say that his is the distinction of having turned
76
THE CHANGING FOCUS
the study of politics back to the humane tradition
of Plato and Machlavelll — of having made man
the center of political investigation. The very
title of his book — "Human Nature in Politics" —
is significant. Now in making that statement, I
am aware that It is a sweeping one, and I do not
mean to imply that Mr. Wallas Is the only mod-
ern man who has tried to think about politics
psychologically. Here in America alone we have
two splendid critics, a man and a woman, whose
thought flows from an Interpretation of human
character. Thorstein Veblen's brilliant descrip-
tions penetrate deeply into our mental life, and
Jane Addams has given new hope to many of us
by her capacity for making ideals the goal of
natural desire.
Nor is it just to pass by such a suggestive
thinker as Gabriel Tarde, even though we may
feel that his psychology is too simple and his
conclusions somewhat overdriven by a favorite
theory. The work of Gustav Le Bon on
"crowds" has, of course, passed into current
thought, but I doubt whether anyone could say
that he had even prepared a basis for a new politi-
cal psychology. His own aversion to reform, his
fondness for vast epochs and his contempt for
current effort have left most of his "psychological
77
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
laws** in the region of interesting literary com-
ment. There are, too, any number of "social
psychologies," such as those of Ross and Mc-
Dougall. But the trouble with them is that the
''psychology" is weak and uninformed, distorted
by moral enthusiasms, and put out without any
particular reference to the task of statesmanship.
When you come to special problems, the litera-
ture of the subject picks up. Crime is receiving
valuable attention, education is profoundly af-
fected, alcoholism and sex have been handled for
a good while on a psychological basis.
But It remained for Mr. Wallas to state the
philosophy of the matter — to say why the study
of human nature must serve politics, and to point
out how. He has not produced a political
psychology, but he has written the manifesto for
it. As a result, fragmentary investigations can
be brought together and applied to the work of
statecraft. Merely by making these researches
self-conscious, he has made clearer their goal,
given them direction, and kindled them to prac-
tical action. How necessary this work is can be
seen in the writing of Miss Addams. Owing to
keen insight and fine sympathy her thinking has
generally been on a human basis. Yet Miss Ad-
dams is a reformer, and sympathy without an
:78
THE CHANGING FOCUS
explicit philosophy may lead to a distorted en-
thusiasm. Her book on prostitution seems rather
the product of her moral fervor than her human
insight. Compare it with ''The Spirit of Youth"
or "Newer Ideals of Peace" or "Democracy and
Social Ethics" and I think you will notice a very
considerable willingness to gloss over human need
in the interests of an unanalyzed reform. To put
it bluntly, Miss Addams let her impatience get
the better of her wisdom. She had written bril-
liantly about sex and its "sublimation," she had
suggested notable "moral equivalents" for vice,
but when she touched the white slave traffic its
horrors were so great that she also put her faith
in the policeman and the district attorney. "A
New Conscience and an Ancient Evil" is an hys-
terical book, just because the real philosophical
basis of Miss Addams' thinking was not delib-
erate enough to withstand the shock of a poig-
nant horror.
It is this weakness that Mr, Wallas comes to
remedy. He has described what political science
must be like, and anyone who has absorbed his
insight has an intellectual groundwork for politi-
cal observation. No one, least of all Mr. Wallas,
would claim anything like finality for the essay.
These labors are not done in a day. But he has
79
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
deliberately brought the study of politics to the
only focus which has any rational interest for
mankind. He has made a plea, and sketched a
plan which hundreds of investigators the world
over must help to realize. If political science
could travel in the direction suggested, its criti-
cism would be relevant, its proposals practical.
There would, for the first time, be a concerted
effort to build a civilization around mankind, to
use its talent and to satisfy its needs. There
would be no more empty taboos, no erecting of
institutions upon abstract and mechanical analo-
gies. Politics would be like education — an effort
to develop, train and nurture men's impulses. As
Montessori is building the school around the
child, so politics would build all of social life
around the human being.
That practical issues hang upon these investiga-
tions can be shown by an example from Mr.
Wallas's book. Take the quarrel over socialism.
You hear it said that without the private owner-
ship of capital people will lose ambition and sink
into sloth. Many men, just as well aware of
present-day evils as the socialists, are unwilling to
accept the collectivist remedy. G. K. Chesterton
and Hilaire Belloc speak of the *'magic of prop-
erty" as the real ^stacle to socialism. Now ob-
80
THE CHANGING FOCUS
viously this is a question of first-rate importance.
If socialism will destroy initiative then only a doc-
trinaire would desire it. But how is the question
to be solved? You cannot reason it out. Eco-
nomics, as we know it to-day, is quite incapable
of answering such a problem, for it is a matter
that depends upon psychological investigation.
When a professor says that socialism is imprac-
ticable he begs the question, for that amounts to
assuming that the point at issue is already set-
tled. If he tells you that socialism is against hu-
man nature, we have a perfect right to ask where
he proved the possibilities of human nature.
But note how Mr. Wallas approaches the de-
bate: "Children quarrel furiously at a very early
age over apparently worthless things, and collect
and hide them long before they can have any clear
notion of the advantages to be derived from in-
dividual possession. Those children who in cer-
tain charity schools are brought up entirely with-
out personal property, even in their clothes or
pocket handkerchiefs, show every sign of the bad
effect on health and character which results from
complete inability to satisfy a strong inherited in-
stinct. . . . Some economist ought therefore
to give us a treatise in which this property instinct
is carefully and quantitatively examined. . .
81
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
How far can It be eliminated or modified by edu-
cation? Is It satisfied by a leasehold or a life-In-
terest, or by such an arrangement of corporate
property as is offered by a collegiate foundation,
or by the provision of a public park? Does it re-
quire for its satisfaction material and visible
things such as land or houses, or is the holding,
say, of colonial railway shares sufficient? Is the
absence of unlimited proprietary rights felt more
strongly in the case of personal chattels (such as
furniture and ornaments) than in the case of land
or machinery? Does the degree and direction of
the Instinct markedly difier among different indi-
viduals or races, or between the two sexes?*'
This puts the argument upon a plane where dis-
cussion is relevant. This Is no trumped-up Issue:
it is asked by a politician and a socialist seeking
for a real solution. We need to know whether
the "magic of property" extends from a man's
garden to Standard Oil stocks as anti-socialists
say, and, conversely, we need to know what is
happening to that mass of proletarians who own
no property and cannot satisfy their Instincts
even with personal chattels.
For if ownership Is a human need, we certainly
cannot taboo it as the extreme communists so dog-
matically urge. 'Tending ... an Inquiry,"
82
THE CHANGING FOCUS
writes Mr. Wallas, *'my own provisional opinion
is that, like a good many instincts of very early
evolutionary origin. It can be satisfied by an
avowed pretense; just as a kitten which is fed
regularly on milk can be kept In good health if
it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct by play-
ing with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant sat-
isfies his instinct of combat and adventure at
golf."
Mr. Wallas takes exactly the same position as
William James did when he planned a ''moral
equivalent" for war. Both men illustrate the
changing focus of political thought. Both try to
found statesmanship on human need. Both see
that there are good and bad satisfactions of the
same impulse. The routineer with his taboo does
not see this, so he attempts the impossible task of
obliterating the Impulse. He differs fundamen-
tally from the creative politician who devotes
himself to Inventing fine expressions for human
needs, who recognizes that the work of statesman-
ship is in large measure the finding of good sub-
stitutes for the bad things we want.
This is the heart of a political revolution.
When we recognize that the focus of politics is
shifting from a mechanical to a human center we
shall have reached what is, I believe, the most es-
83
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
sentlal idea in modern politics. More than any
other generalization it illuminates the currents of
our national life and explains the altering tasks
of statesmanship.
The old effort was to harness mankind to ab-
stract principles — liberty, justice or equality — and
to deduce institutions from these high-sounding
words. It did not succeed because human nature
was contrary and restive. The new effort pro-
poses to fit creeds and institutions to the wants of
men, to satisfy their impulses as fully and bene-
ficially as possible.
And yet we do not begin to know our desires or
the art of their satisfaction. Mr. Wallas's book
and the special literature of the subject leave no
doubt that a precise political psychology is far off
indeed. The human nature we must put at the
center of our statesmanship is only partially un-
derstood. True, Mr. Wallas works with a psy-
chology that is fairly well superseded. But not
even the advance-guard to-day, what we may call
the Freudian school, would claim that it had
brought knowledge to a point where politics could
use it in any very deep or comprehensive way.
The subject is crude and fragmentary, though we
are entitled to call it promising.
Yet the fact had better be faced: psychology
84
THE CHANGING FOCUS
has not gone far enough, Its results are still too
vague for our purposes. We know very little,
and what we know has hardly been applied to
political problems. That the last few years have
witnessed a revolution in the study of mental life
is plain: the effects are felt not only in psycho-
therapy, but In education, morals, religion, and
no end of cultural interests. The impetus of
Freud Is perhaps the greatest advance ever made
towards the understanding and control of human
character. But for the complexities of politics It
is not yet ready. It will take time and endless
labor for a detailed study of social problems in
the light of this growing knowledge.
What then shall we do now? Must we con-
tinue to muddle along In the old ruts, gazing rap-
turously at an Impotent Ideal, until the works of
the scientists are matured?
85
CHAPTER IV
THE GOLDEN RULE AND AFTER
IT would Indeed be an intolerably pedantic per-
formance for a nation to sit still and wait for
its scientists to report on their labors. The notion
is typical of the pitfalls in the path of any theorist
who does not correct his logic by a constant refer-
ence to the movement of life. It Is true that
statecraft must make human nature its basis. It
is true that its chief task is the invention of forms
and institutions which satisfy the inner needs of
mankind. And it Is true that our knowledge of
those needs and the technique of their satisfac-
tion is hazy, unorganized and blundering.
But to suppose that the remedy lies in waiting
for monographs from the research of the labora-
tory is to have lost a sense of the rhythm of actual
affairs. That is not the way things come about:
we grow into a new point of view: only after-
wards, In looking back, do we see the landmarks
86
THE GOLDEN RULE AND AFTER
of our progress. Thus it Is customary to say that
Adam Smith dates the change from the old mer-
cantilist economy to the capitalistic economics of
the nineteenth century. But that is a manner of
speech. The old mercantilist policy was giving
way to early. Industrialism : a thousand unconscious
economic and social forces were compelling the
change. Adam Smith expressed the process,
named It, Idealized it and made it self-conscious.
Then because men were clearer about what they
were doing, they could in a measure direct their
destiny.
That is but another way of saying that great
revolutionary changes do not spring full-armed
from anybody's brow. A genius usually becomes
the luminous center of a nation's crisis, — men see
better by the light of him. His bias deflects their
actions. Unquestionably the doctrine-driven men
who made the economics of the last century had
much to do with the halo which encircled the
smutted head of Industrialism. They put the
stamp of their genius on certain Inhuman prac-
tices, and of course It has been the part of the
academic mind to Imitate them ever since. The
orthodox economists are In the unenviable posi-
tion of having taken their morals from the ex-
ploiter and of having translated them into the
87
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
grandiloquent language of high public policy.
They gave capitalism the sanction of the Intellect.
When later, Carlyle and Ruskin battered the econ-
omists into silence with invective and irony they
were voicing the dumb protest of the humane peo-
ple of England. They helped to organize a form-
less resentment by endowing it with intelligence
and will.
So it is to-day. If this nation did not show an
unmistakable tendency to put men at the center
of politics instead of machinery and things; If
there were not evidence to prove that we are turn-
ing from the sterile taboo to the creation of finer
environments; If the Impetus for shaping our des-
tiny were not present in our politics and our life,
then essays like these would be so much baying
at the moon, fantastic and unworthy pleas for
some irrelevant paradise. But the gropings are
there, — vastly confused In the tangled strains of
the nation's Interests. Clogged by the confusion,
half-choked by stupid blockades, largely unaware
of their own purposes, it Is for criticism, organ-
ized research, and artistic expression to free and
to use these creative energies. They are to be
found In the aspirations of labor, among the awa-
kened women. In the development of business, the
diffusion of art and science, in the racial mixtures,
88
THE GOLDEN RULE AND AFTER
and many lesser interests which cluster about these
greater movements.
The desire for a human politics is all about us.
It rises to the surface in slogans like ''human
rights above property rights," "the man above the
dollar." Some measure of its strength is given
by the widespread imitation these expressions
have compelled: politicians who haven't the slight-
est intention of putting men above the dollar, who
if they had wouldn't know how, take off their hats
to the sentiment because it seems a key to popular
enthusiasm. It must be bewildering to men
brought up, let us say, in the Hanna school of poli-
tics. For here is this nation which sixteen years
ago vibrated ecstatically to that magic word
*Trosperity" ; to-day statistical rhetoric about
size induces little but excessive boredom. If you
wish to drive an audience out of the hall tell it
how rich America is; if you wish to stamp your-
self an echo of the past talk to us young men
about the Republican Party's understanding with
God in respect to bumper crops. But talk to us
about "human rights," and though you .talk rub-
bish, we'll listen. For our desire is bent that way,
and anything which has the flavor of this new in-
terest will rivet our attention. We are still un-
critical. It is only a few years since we began to
89
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
center our politics upon human beings. We have
no training in that kind of thought. Our schools
and colleges have helped us hardly at all. We
still talk about "humanity" as if it were some
strange and mystical creature which could not pos-
sibly be composed of the grocer, the street-car
conductor and our aunts.
That the opinion-making people of America
are more interested In human welfare than In em-
pire or abstract prosperity is an item that no
statesman can disregard in his thinking. To-day
it is no longer necessary to run against the grain
of the deepest movements of our time. There is
an ascendant feeling among the people that all
achievement should be measured in human happi-
ness. This feeling has not always existed. His-
torians tell us that the very Idea of progress In
well-being Is not much older than, say, Shake-
speare's plays. As a general belief It Is still
more recent. The nineteenth century may per-
haps be said to mark its popularization. But as
a fact of Immediate politics, as a touchstone ap-
plied quickly to all the acts of statecraft In
America It belongs to the Twentieth Century.
There were any number of people who long be-
fore 1900 saw that dollars and men could clash.
But their insight had not won any general accep-
90
THE GOLDEN RULE AND AFTER
tance. It is only within the last few years that
the human test has ceased to be the property of a
small group and become the convention of a large
majority. A study of magazines and newspapers
would confirm this rather broad generalization.
It would show, I believe, how the whole quality
of our most impromptu thinking is being influ-
enced by human values.
The statesman must look to this largely unor-
ganized drift of desire. He will find it cluster-
ing about certain big revolts — the unrest of
women, for example, or the increasing demands
of industrial workers. Rightly understood, these
social currents would, I believe, lead to the cen-
tral Issues of life, the vital points upon which
happiness depends. They come out of necessities.