a real man, is so idealized by the flattery of the artist, that all the characteristic marks of the individual subject are obliterated.(43) Hence (as we shall see in the next chapter) the historical pictures of the state of nature, and the poetical pictures of the golden age, melt into one another by imperceptible transitions, and embody the same images.

Mr. Macaulay has justly remarked, that the tendency to admire an imaginary antiquity springs from the same source as the tendency to progressive amelioration.(*) Men are dissatis

(43) With respect to the state of nature, see Puffendorf, b. 2, c. 2; Zacharia, Vom Staate, vol. i. p. 49. Upon Rousseau's theory of the superiority of the state of nature to civilization, see Say, Cours d'Econ. Pol. tom. i. p. 105-9, and C. Comte, Traité de Législation, liv. iv. c. 15; also, liv. i. c. 4. Compare his description of the social and moral state of the American savages, ib. liv. iii. c. 17 to 21, and particularly the note in c. 20. An excellent sketch of the savage state is given in Volney's account of the North American Indians, subjoined to his work on America. The character of savage man is faithfully depicted by M. Comte, Phil. Pos. tom. iv. p. 627. In the infancy of society (he says), the instincts relative to selfpreservation and the acquisition of food are in the ascendant, and even predominate over the sexual appetite, though the latter is still in its coarsest form. Savages are distinguished by an unbounded voracity, and a taste for physical stimulants, which is only kept in check by the frequent intervals of destitution to which they are subject. Moreover, their love of ornament, notwithstanding the scantiness of their dress, is much stronger than the same feeling in a civilized people. Their domestic affections are feeble; and their social affections are limited to a very narrow fragment of mankind, without which everything is alien, and even hostile. The various malignant passions are, after the physical appetites, the chief habitual motives of action in the savage state. On the state of savages, see likewise Cooke Taylor's Natural History of Society, c. 2-10.

D'autres ont exclusivement transporté à la naissance de l'univers le bonheur, la justice, et la vertu. Qui ne connoît les tableaux que des poètes ingénieux ont faits des premiers âges du monde? On aime à les lire, et on voudroit y croire. Des philosophes chagrins ont aussi célébré avec quelque enthousiasme ce qu'ils appellent l'état de nature, l'état antérieur à cette formation des sociétés civiles, qu'ils regardent comme la dégénération des hommes, comme une source féconde de malheurs et de crimes; déclamateurs en délire, qui ne louent ce qu'ils ignorent que par haine de ce qu'ils connoissent, qui font mentir le passé pour calomnier le présent; hors de la société, n'est encore que l'enfance de l'homme; la civilisation est l'âge mûr de l'espèce humaine.'-Pastoret, Histoire de la Législation, tom. i. p. 3.

(44) History of England, c. 3 ad fin. (vol. i. p. 426.) A similar remark is made by Machiavel (ibid.) : Sendo oltra di questo gli appetiti umani insaziabili, perchè hanno dalla natura di potere e voler desiderare ogni cosa, e dalla fortuna di potere conseguirne poche; ne risulta continuamente una mala contentezza nelle menti umane, ed un fastidio delle cose che si posseggono; il che fa biasimare i presenti tempi, laudare i passati, e desiderare i futuri, ancorchè a far questo non fussino mossi da alcuna ragionevole cagione.'

fied with their present condition, and seek to improve it; but, instead of advancing into an untried ideal future, they wish to recede to an idealized past. While the impatience of their present lot urges some persons to invent a pattern constitution, to which they attempt to lead on society, others are prompted by the same feeling to see an imaginary state of perfection in the past, to which they desire that society should return. In this manner, a mythico-historical age-a generation of heroic warriors, benevolent princes, and wise statesmen, whose heads are encircled with a dim but luminous halo, whose existence is real, but whose acts and character are unreal-may serve the purpose of an Utopia. There is, besides, a general disposition to admire what is remote and imperfectly known, and to fill up the voids of information with ideal excellences, which extends to other subjects than ancient states of society.("")

Accordingly, when the region is remote, or little visited, the same effect may be produced by distance in space as by distance in time. Tacitus, in his Germania, drew an embellished picture of the simple manners of the barbarous Germans, as a foil to the corrupt manners of polished Rome. (46) Some eminent writers of the eighteenth century found a model of political and social excellence in the Chinese, whose remoteness, and exclusion of strangers, afforded a free scope to an active imagination; (7)

(45) τὰ διὰ πλείστου πάντες ἴσμεν θαυμαζόμενα, καὶ τὰ πεῖραν ἥκιστα τῆς dóns dóvra. Thucyd. vi. 11. 'Major e longinquo reverentia.'—Tacit. Ann. i. 47. Omne ignotum pro magnifico est.-Agric. c. 30.

Men admire what is absent (says Aristotle), and admiration is pleasing.' θαυμασταὶ τῶν ἀπόντων εἰσίν· ἡδὺ δὲ τὸ θαυμαστόν ἐστι.—Rhet. iii. 2, 3.

There are two modern proverbs expressive of this truth: Far folks fare well, and fair children die' (Ray's Proverbs, p. 105); and Far awa fowls hae aye fair feathers,' Henderson's Scottish Proverbs, p. 111. Obscurity may be a cause of fear as well as of admiration; hence the proverb, Semper plus metuit animus ignotum malum.'-Publ. Syrus 715. -Plus nominis horror,

Quam tuus ensis aget. Minuit præsentia famam.'
Claudian de Bell. Gild. 384.

(46) Bähr, Geschichte der Römischen Literatur, § 329. See particularly the words of Tacitus, Germ. c. 19: 'Nemo enim illic vitia videt; nec corrumpere et corrumpi, sæculum vocatur.' Again, Plus ibi valent boni mores, quam alibi bonæ leges.' By alibi is meant Rome.

(47) Wolf considered China as the ideal perfection of human society -See Raumer, Recht, Staat, und Politik, p. 72; Buhle, Hist. de Phil.

while the system of forced labour and virtual slavery established by the Jesuits in Paraguay has been metamorphosed into an Utopia of community and equality. (48) Under the imperfect system of communications which existed in antiquity, the Platonists of the age of Justinian, expelled from the Roman empire, expected to find a real image of the republic of Plato in the kingdom of Persia, governed by the despotic sceptre of Chosroes.(49) Distant or rarely-visited communities may thus be so highly idealized, as almost to resemble the innocent and sacred nation of the Hyperboreans, which the fables of the Greeks placed in a sunny region, beyond the influence of the icy Boreas. (50) Hence, models of society and of institutions which profess to be real are often, in fact, ideal, and properly belong to the subject of the next chapter. An idealized reality scarcely differs from a pure ideal.

§ 12

We have now examined the nature of the argument

Moderne, tom. iv. p. 499, 567. Montesquieu, though his praises are qualified, sometimes refers to the institutions of China with eulogy—vii. 7 ; x. 15; viii. 21; xiv. 5; xviii. 6; xxix. 18. Benjamin Constant comments upon the absurd eulogies of Chinese institutions by Filangieri and others, remarking that, as the writers of the last century were prevented from direct censure of their own governments, they resorted to the indirect censure conveyed in the commendation of remote countries, and ancient states of society.-Euvres de Filangieri, tom. iii. p. 265, 309-11.

Speaking of Dryden's tragedy of Aurengzebe, Johnson says: His country is at such a distance, that the manners might be safely falsified, and the incidents feigned; for the remoteness of place is remarked, by Racine, to afford the same conveniences to a poet as length of time.'Life of Dryden.

(48) See Comte, Traité de Législation, liv. v. c. 32.

(49) Seven friends and philosophers, Diogenes and Hermias, Eulalius and Priscian, Damascius, Isidore, and Simplicius, who dissented from the religion of their sovereign, embraced the resolution of seeking in a foreign land the freedom which was denied in their native country. They had heard, and they credulously believed, that the republic of Plato was realized in the despotic government of Persia, and that a patriot king reigned over the happiest and most virtuous of nations. They were soon astonished by the natural discovery, that Persia resembled the other countries of the globe; that Chosroes, who affected the name of a philosopher, was vain, cruel, and ambitious; that bigotry, and a spirit of intolerance, prevailed among the magi; that the nobles were haughty, the courtiers servile, and the magistrates unjust; that the guilty sometimes escaped, and that the innocent were often oppressed.'-Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 40. See Agathias, ii. 30, from whom the account is derived. (50) Pindar, Pyth. x. 56; Mela, iii. 5.

from practical example or precedent, and it only remains for us to consider the relation which it bears to theory and to general precepts.

As we have seen, there are two modes of political practice; one, in which the judgment is guided by a general maxim; the other, in which the argument is from a singular, through an universal but unexpressed proposition, to a singular. The main difference between the Dogmatic, or doctrinal politician, and the Empiricist, or practical man, is, that the former states his principle, but omits the facts on which it is founded; while the latter states his precedent, and suppresses his principle.

Archbishop Whately, in exposing the inconsistencies of those who condemn the study of political economy, has remarked that all persons who discuss and decide questions relating to national wealth are, in fact, though not in name, political economists. The objectors to political economy, when they discuss subjects included within the limits of this science, would thus assume the very character of which they themselves disapprove.(51) There is, however, this material difference between persons who discuss a practical question upon grounds of political economy, and those who discuss it upon grounds of common sense and simple experience. The former have certain principles, a certain rationale, or system of doctrine, to which they refer as their ultimate criterion and guide: the latter refer only to certain facts, or a certain practice, by which they profess to be determined. It is true that the latter must, in reality, assume certain general propositions by which the two sets of facts are connected; but these are not distinctly expressed-they are not reduced into a dogmatic form, and they must be first stated by the antagonist as premises involved in the practical man's argument, before their truth can be examined. The practical man, in short, who discusses a question of political economy by a reference to precedents and individual cases, may be a political economist, but he is not a theorist. He is not a political economist, in the sense in which

(51) Lectures on Political Economy, lect. 3, p. 73-5.

Adam Smith and Say are political economists: he does not lay down universal scientific propositions on the subject.

However difficult and liable to error may be the process of applying political theory to practice, as described in the previous chapter, yet, if it be properly performed, the logical result is much clearer to the understanding than in the argument from one case to another. The reason of this comparative obscurity

is, that in the argument from example or precedent, the principle upon which the inference rests is usually suppressed. The reasoning is much more perspicuous when the general principle is stated first, the particular case is placed under it, and the conclusion is then drawn. In order to argue from one case to another, it is necessary to reject from each the circumstances immaterial to the matter in hand, and to compare those in which they agree. In complex cases, this process is often extremely difficult. Much sagacity and knowledge of the subject are required, in order to discriminate between material and immaterial facts-to reject enough, but not more than enough. For if immaterial facts are retained, the comparison becomes obscure and uncertain; if material facts are rejected, it becomes fallacious. This process,

which, in the argument from precedent, must often be performed mentally, though it may be easy and sure to the experienced practician, perplexes the tiro. Hence, students of the law have great difficulty in collecting legal rules from cases, though they are soon able to apply a rule of law, laid down in general terms, to a particular case of practice.

It happens not unfrequently that a politician professes a belief in certain theoretical principles, and even recommends them to others, while he in fact governs his conduct by precedents involving principles wholly inconsistent with those which he proclaims. A remarkable example of this species of inconsistency is often furnished by discussions upon laws for the relief of the poor: principles are in general broadly laid down by advocates for a liberal system of relief, which would lead to a division of all property among the working classes. The same persons, however, when they proceed to frame a practical measure, or to