Human Nature in Politics - Third Edition by Graham Wallas
page 16 of 260 (06%)
page 16 of 260 (06%)
|
against the exploitation of those processes in themselves by others, but
they become better able to control them from within. If, however, a conscious moral purpose is to be strong enough to overcome, as a political force, the advancing art of political exploitation, the conception of control from within must be formed into an ideal entity which, like 'Science,' can appeal to popular imagination, and be spread by an organised system of education. The difficulties in this are great (owing in part to our ignorance of the varied reactions of self-consciousness on instinct), but a wide extension of the idea of causation is not inconsistent with an increased intensity of moral passion. _(Chapter II.--Representative Government, page 199)_ The changes now going on in our conception of the psychological basis of politics will also re-open the discussion of representative democracy. Some of the old arguments in that discussion will no longer be accepted as valid, and it is probable that many political thinkers (especially among those who have been educated in the natural sciences) will return to Plato's proposal of a despotic government carried on by a selected and trained class, who live apart from the 'ostensible world'; though English experience in India indicates that even the most carefully selected official must still live in the 'ostensible world,' and that the argument that good government requires the consent of the governed does not depend for its validity upon its original intellectualist associations. |
|