the history of political ideas

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The History of Political Ideas The Story of the Political Philosophers by George Catlin; Political Thought: The European Tradition by J. P. Mayer; R. H. S. Crossman; P. Kecskemeti; E. Kohn-Bramstedt; C. J. S. Sprigge; R. H. Tawney; Government and the Governed: A History of Political Ideas and Political Practice by R. H. S. Crossman; H. A. L. Fisher; After the Deluge: A Study of Communal Psychology. Vol. II. 1830 and 1832 by Leonard Woolf; Science and P ... Review by: C. B. Macpherson The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique et de Science politique, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Nov., 1941), pp. 564-577 Published by: Wiley on behalf of Canadian Economics Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/137230 . Accessed: 17/06/2014 22:58 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Wiley and Canadian Economics Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique et de Science politique. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.79.99 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 22:58:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: The History of Political Ideas

The History of Political IdeasThe Story of the Political Philosophers by George Catlin; Political Thought: The EuropeanTradition by J. P. Mayer; R. H. S. Crossman; P. Kecskemeti; E. Kohn-Bramstedt; C. J. S.Sprigge; R. H. Tawney; Government and the Governed: A History of Political Ideas andPolitical Practice by R. H. S. Crossman; H. A. L. Fisher; After the Deluge: A Study ofCommunal Psychology. Vol. II. 1830 and 1832 by Leonard Woolf; Science and P ...Review by: C. B. MacphersonThe Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique etde Science politique, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Nov., 1941), pp. 564-577Published by: Wiley on behalf of Canadian Economics AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/137230 .

Accessed: 17/06/2014 22:58

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Wiley and Canadian Economics Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique et deScience politique.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.99 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 22:58:59 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: The History of Political Ideas

REVIEW ARTICLE

THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL IDEAS

The Story of the Political Philosophers. By GEORGE CATLIN. New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1939. Pp. xviii, 802. (Text-book edition, $4.00; trade edition, $5.00)

Political Thought: The European Tradition. By J. P. MAYER, in co- operation with R. H. S. CROSSMAN, P. KECSKEMETI, E. KOHN- BRAMSTEDT, C. J. S. SPRIGGE. With an introduction by R. H. TAW- NEY. London [Toronto]: J. M. Dent and Sons. 1939. Pp. xxviii, 485. ($4.50)

Government and the Governed: A History of Political Ideas and Political Practice. By R. H. S. CROSSMAN, with a foreword by the Rt. Hon. H. A. L. FISHER. London: Christophers. 1939. Pp. xii, 306. (7s. 6d.)

After the Deluge: A Study of Communal Psychology. Vol. II. 1830 and 1832. By LEONARD WOOLF. London: The Hogarth Press [Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company]. 1939. Pp. vii, 317. ($4.50)

Science and Politics in the Ancient World. By BENJAMIN FARRINGTON. London: Allen and Unwin [Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons]. 1939. Pp. 243. ($3.50)

Modern Political Doctrines. Edited by SIR ALFRED ZIMMERN. London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press. 1939. Pp. xxxiv, 306. ($2.25)

Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe. By MICHAEL

JOSEPH OAKESHOTT. With a foreword by ERNEST BARKER. Cam-

bridge: At the University Press [Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada]. 1939. Pp. xxiv, 224. ($3.50)

THE recession of the liberal democratic tide in the last decade has given a new urgency to the study of the history of political thought. For those at least who value the basic elements of the liberal and democratic philosophies, it is more important now than at any time in the last hundred years to investigate the conditions for their effective main- tenance. One way of doing that is to study historically the ways in which political ideas are related to social and economic forces of change. The more one understands what these relations have been, the more hope there is of reaching some understanding of the limits and possibili- ties of different political philosophies today. The authors of these volumes have all written with a sense of the urgency of their subject. They have not been equally successful. Some have not formulated the problem clearly. Others have lost sight of the problem in the telling of the history. Yet others have subordinated analysis of the problem

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to assertion of their faith, using their history to show how long and honourable an ancestry that faith has. There is much of value in these studies but one is left with the feeling that they make a case for further investigation rather than for the prospects of liberalism or democracy today.

* * *

Mr. Catlin's The Story of the Political Philosophers is the longest and most ambitious of these volumes. It ranges from Confucius to the Chicago school in search of a tradition of civilized ideas and values by which we may take our bearings today. Although it "wears the fleece of a history of political philosophy . . . it is written as a philosophy of political history, a 'tiger burning bright' at enmity with other current philosophies" (p. x). Mr. Catlin has essayed the difficult if not impos- sible task of working out and presenting these complex ideas in a form suitable at once as a students' text-book and "a guide to political theory intelligible to the common reader." The task is made more difficult by the breadth of the author's learning and the profusion of his comment. He cannot resist, even in the compass of a single sentence, saying every- thing that occurs to him; nor can he resist dramatizing his material. That this is a crowded book and an over-dramatic one is not an accident of style; it follows from the author's abstract philosophy of history. As his title suggests, he treats political ideas as the products of particular minds, with all their prejudices and peculiarities, working on or in reaction against the ideas of previous thinkers. Hence his emphasis on personalities and anecdote. Social and economic influences on thought are generally mentioned but not followed up very far. Instead, the explanation of ideas is found mainly in the thinker's individual tempera- ment and situation, and in the influence of other ideas on him. The ideas themselves give battle.

One may question the usefulness of such an approach and of the philosophy of history implied in it. Its merits as an instrument of analysis, if not as a method of presentation, are more than doubtful, for it means that political ideas are taken as things in themselves, things whose importance for us depends mainly on their logical consistency, and on the adequacy of their ethical premises measured by some stan- dard taken as absolute. Mr. Catlin's criticism is mainly criticism of the ideas abstracted from their environment, and he proceeds simply by opposing his own views or accepted modern views on a particular point, without much attempt to show in terms of changes in the social and economic situation why we take a different view. Criticism of the consistency of a theory is a useful exercise in logic, but criticism can be far more useful if, after bringing out the ethical and scientific premises

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of the theory, it goes on to investigate how these premises are related to the problems set by the situation in which the theory was elaborated. Only by this sort of analysis is it likely, to be discovered whether the theories have any value or relevance now. The utility of the type of analysis here suggested depends on the assumption that the value of all political ideas is relative to the needs of different periods. The utility of Mr. Catlin's type of analysis depends on the assumption, which he makes explicit in his preface, that there are absolute standards in politi- cal theory. He argues that there is a unity in the whole history of political thought. If such a unity could be demonstrated, if it could be shown that there are any standards common to all political thought, it might be admitted that these have a permanent significance and value apart from particular situations.

It is perhaps unnecessary to say that no such unity is found. There is nothing essential in common between, for instance, the authoritarian, anti-rational philosophy of fascism and the rational doctrine of Locke and Bentham. What Mr. Catlin does find is "a Grand Tradition of Culture," a "main stream of tried and received values" to which "we can certainly set no precise limit or edge, of race, religion, school or class" (p. 768), from which there are from time to time currents moving away, but which nevertheless endures. The marks of this tradition are the appeal to reason as "logos," as the discovery of measure and harmony and of a pattern or order, the science of which gives control over nature; an opposition to violence; tolerance and the spirit of free enquiry. The tradition includes the Renaissance Humanists, the eighteenth-century philosophes, and, pre-eminently, the English empiric school from Bacon through Locke and Bentham to Dewey. It excludes the reactionary who encourages superstition in order to conserve his own interests, and it excludes the revolutionary, who, "seeking higher aims by lower means, rediscovers the old truth that every man, released from Divine Reason, is ruled by the Original Sin of swine and jackal ... ." (p. 769). To the "Grand Tradition" there has always been a heretical fringe, including such men as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Nietzsche, who "have held that power makes values and, among values, makes truth" (p. 770). And finally there is "a counter-tradition of storm and fury, Gothic, romantic, worshipping Thor and Woden, an inspiration towards the incommensur- able and uncircumscribed by reason, contemptuous of law and order as being hostile to the spirit of power-loving life . .. and power-vindica- ting death "(p. 771).

The "Grand Tradition," then, is grand because it stands for "liberal and humane values," and not because it is a set of values which are found in all political thinking. What then is the use of arranging the

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history of political ideas in this way-a "Grand Tradition," a heretical fringe, and a counter-tradition? Mr. Catlin uses it to emphasize the historical weightiness of liberal and humane values. But if these values are to be made more real today we need to know something more about the conditions of their acceptability than Mr. Catlin, with his abstract philosophy of history, can give us. He thinks in terms of a recurring emergence of a rational tradition. He argues that the condition for its re-emergence today is that men of goodwill should reassert its values and organize themselves to re-establish them.1 And the men of good- will are to be found primarily in the new, technical, middle class. Therefore society must be organized on technocratic lines. It is not surprising that Mr. Catlin's philosophy of history leads him to a tech- nocratic conclusion.

. * *

Political Thought: The European Tradition, the work of J. P. Mayer and four collaborators, while not intended to be a complete history of

political thought, is an attempt similar to Mr. Catlin's to show that there is an intellectual and spiritual unity in western civilization-a European tradition underlying and penetrating the diverse modern national traditions. The whole work, and not least Mr. Tawney's introduction, is a confession of faith in the value of this tradition and an attempt to win a wider recognition for it. The authors survey the

development of political ideas since the Greeks, with emphasis on the elements of unity. Each of the chapters is an able and extremely read- able discussion of the political thought of its period or country. But the volume as a whole leaves an impression of weakness, since the findings of the survey implicitly contradict the affirmation of the unity of a

European tradition. Throughout the survey the authors recognize that what unity of thought and belief there has been in previous centuries has depended largely on economic unity, and they recognize that this economic unity has disappeared today. The only basis for Mr. Mayer's concluding reaffirmation of faith in the possibility of a new unity is the

lAnother prerequisite according to Mr. Catlin, is that a new science of politics should be developed which will make power subservient to these values. In an inter-

esting discussion of the prospects for a new science of politics, he recommends the method of what he calls the Chicago school, with which he identifies himself. This method, as seen in his summary, is abstract and unhistorical. It deals with "the political man" and "the political act," and with political power relations abstracted from economic

power relations. The measure of abstraction in the analysis is the measure of the

inapplicability of the results to the complex world. The method can of course be defended insofar as the complexities from which the political man is abstracted are

re-introduced; but the method itself is not conducive to the historical induction which this requires.

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assumption that thought and belief can triumph, as independent factors, over economic forces which are driving in a different direction. But this assumption is not made explicit or examined closely, in spite of its ap- parent inconsistency with the historical analysis. In these circumstances, one could wish that in the historical analysis even more attention had been given to the relations which have existed between changes in political ideas and changes in the economic structure.

Some of the chapters on the political thought of particular countries since the seventeenth century have good analysis of this kind. Mr. Mayer, in his chapter on German thought, attributes the small part rationalism and individualism have played in German thought to the comparatively late development of capitalism in Germany. If one considers only the British and French experience, rationalist individual- ism seems to be the natural creed of the bourgeois revolution and the bourgeois state. But when one turns to German (and Italian) thought, one finds the bourgeoisie has needed an authoritarian and nationalist creed where it has had to build a unified nation-state before it could build a capitalist economy. Britain and France went through similar periods in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and when their national unity was established, liberal individualism came to the fore and flourished with an expanding capitalism.2 We cannot expect the same development in Germany for obvious reasons.

Mr. Kecskemeti draws attention to a significant difference between European and American political thought. Americans, at least since the Civil War, have tended to concern themselves less with fundamental principles than have Europeans. The difference is not as great as Mr. Kecskemeti. implies when he says, for instance, "the fundamental principles laid down in the Constitution are never questioned; they are taken for granted. The interpretation of the Constitution, however, has often been the object of bitter and violent struggle" (p. 423). The interpretation has, of course, involved appeal to fundamental principles not laid down in the Constitution. The Supreme Court has thus devel- oped a political philosophy-or a series of philosophies-centring around the fundamental question of the right of property, to meet the require- ments of the different stages through which American capitalism has passed. However, this has been a concealed political philosophy. It probably remains true that there has been less systematic fundamental political thinking in America than in Europe. Mr. Kecskemeti attri- butes this mainly to the fact that class divisions have been less sharp in America. He then asks whether the difference between American and European thought is due to disappear as soon as class division in America

2Cf. Mr. Crossman's analysis discussed on p. 570.

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becomes as rigid and sharp as in Europe, and whether this will mean that democracy must give way to either a proletarian or a fascist dicta- torship. While granting that class divisions are becoming more marked in America, he finds two reasons for expecting that democracy may survive there. First, the strength of the democratic tradition; "a long- established democracy has the advantage that it provides for changes of policy without changing the entire system of government" (p. 426). Secondly, in America, "the social instincts of farmers do not impel them to seek the friendship and support of capitalists," and the farmers "are equally unlikely to support a dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus there seems to exist a 'triangle situation'.... in which two rival groups compete to win the support of a third one. Such situations have always tended to favour the development and maintenance of democratic institutions" (pp. 426-7). Mr. Kecskemeti's whole analysis is perhaps more applicable to Canada than to the United States. We have the same "triangle situation," but we have even less of basic political philosophy, since what appears to be the refuge of the political philosophy of this continent- the final court of appeal in constitutional cases-is for us outside the country altogether.

* * *

Government and the Governed: A History of Political Ideas and Political Practice, by R. H. S. Crossman, which deals only with the period since the Renaissance, is more successful in bringing out the main lines of the modern development than either of the volumes already discussed. Mr. Crossman emphasizes continually the relation between political ideas and practice and economic development. The main political theories built up around each of the revolutionary political and economic changes of the modern period are considered in three aspects: (i) as interpretations of the changes and answers to the problems which the need for change or the change itself has presented; (ii) as propaganda for or against such change; and (iii) he enquires as to the degree of permanent significance of various theories. Here he shows very effec- tively that their "permanent" significance is usually only a recurrent significance. Hobbes's premises, for instance, were drawn from, and his conclusions were apt for, a society in transition to mercantilism and exhibiting the stresses caused by the attendant change in the class struc- ture. After 1688 Hobbes's picture of society and man is no longer as accurate as it was. With nineteenth-century imperialism and twentieth- century mercantilism, Hobbes's insight becomes important and his con- clusions significant once more. We cannot give here even a brief out- line of Mr. Crossman's whole analysis, but we may recommend as an

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excellent example of his method his treatment of those staples of every historian of political ideas, Hobbes and Locke.

His analysis of nineteenth-century developments leads him to the conclusion that democracy has survived the impact of industrialism and applied science in precisely those countries where bourgeois nation- states with stable structures of bourgeois law and order, and national tradi- tions of individualism were already established, and where, consequently, the industrial economy was built up by individual enterprise. This meant that a tradition of individualism became strongly developed in these countries and took root in every class. In other countries, such as Germany, where industrialization was from the first under state guidance and control, there was no economic basis for individualism, and it never developed except among the petit bourgeoisie. Thus, al- though today the prevailing form of industrial and financial organization in all countries is highly centralized, there is a marked difference between those countries which passed through the individualist "centrifugal" stage and those which did not. "This difference is displayed in political organization and in the reactions of public opinion to continued con- centration of control. In America and England widespread opposition can be aroused in all classes, in countries like Germany it is only felt among the petit bourgeoisie. Fascism occurs precisely in those countries where the centrifugal liberal tendencies found no industrial basis in the economic development of the 19th century" (p. 173). This argument is very much to the point today, but the conclusion is not as reassuring as in Mr. Crossman's statement. How long can the tradition of individu- alism, which is here held to be the basis of the strength of democracy, outlive the disappearance of economic individualism everywhere? Or can a new basis be found? Mr. Crossman does not attempt to give a complete and definite answer to these questions, but from his whole analysis one other principle emerges which is relevant here, a principle which is usually forgotten in eras of peace and plenty and remembered sometimes in revolutionary periods, as by Machiavelli and Hobbes. This is that power is the first necessity in any state. Only when the power of the state is so firmly established that everybody can take it for granted, do and can we make liberty and constitutional safeguards our main concern. Thus Locke and the Utilitarians could do so, Hobbes and Machiavelli could not; and Mr. Crossman argues that we can not, since the power of the state is again insecure. The structure and purpose of democratic states no longer corresponds closely enough to the economic needs and possibilities. Until a new correspondence is established liberty and constitutional government are likely to be in eclipse. "Politi- cal freedom is a luxury which can only be enjoyed in very favourable circumstances."

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Mr. Crossman's approach is so close to the Marxian that it is especi- ally interesting to see what he has to say about Marxian theory. After giving an able summary of it he criticizes it as being itself a product of nineteenth-century ideas and environment which have lost their relevance today. Specifically, he points out that Marx took over the postulates of his economic and political theory from the liberals without enquiring whether those postulates were sound. He shared with the Utilitarians and liberals their faith in the power of applied science to solve the problems of society, their "exclusive" interest in economic problems and economic freedom, their optimistic belief in human nature, and their treatment of politics as being fundamentally concerned with property relations. This led him to underestimate the strength of other factors. "Religion, nationalism, ambition, and humanity were all in his eyes genuine motives of action, values for which men would strive disinterestedly: but none of them could stand against the dynamic of economic change" (p. 231). Mr. Crossman argues that this was a natural view to hold in the middle of the nineteenth century:

The whole history of Europe since the 14th century seemed to support it; for 450 years economic interests had fought tradition and religion and conquered them or twisted them to their convenience; and the history of the Greek city state seemed to confirm the view. Obsessed by these two instances, Marx generalized them into a philosophy of history which included all human experience past, present and to come. To-day with a far wider knowledge of anthropology and a larger experience of capitalism, we can see the dangers of this generalization. What was really a unique phenomenon (the rise of capitalism) was made the standard by which all history was measured, at precisely the moment when, the Liberal period of economic emancipation over, the older forces of tradition were once more asserting themselves. These elements of tradition, which Marx and every progressive believed would disappear as rational man outgrew his superstitions, reasserted themselves and decisively influenced economic developments at the end of the 19th century (pp. 231-2).

The implication is that Marx's philosophy of history is itself inap- plicable to the twentieth century, and was never applicable except to the period of the Greek city state and the period from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, because only in these two periods were economic forces stronger than the forces of traditional and economically irrational beliefs. This is surely a superficial view. The elements of traditional belief (nationalism, idealism, racial doctrines), which "reas- serted themselves and decisively influenced economic developments at the end of the 19th century," were themselves suited, if not calculated, to serve the interests of the economic forces then stirring in England and on the continent. They influenced economic developments but they did not "stand against the dynamic of economic change" any more than the liberal ideas of the previous centuries had done. Indeed, Mr. Cross- man himself, when dealing with these new currents of thought, explains

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them in terms of the economic changes which brought economic imperial- ism, economic nationalism, and the social service state. Surely, then, that "unique phenomenon," the "rise" of capitalism, has not been super- seded by elements of tradition as the main driving force of political change and an essential clue to its understanding.

* * *

Volume I of Mr. Woolf's After the Deluge: A Study of Communal Psychology3 dealt with the origin of democratic ideas and beliefs in the eighteenth century and their place in the American and French revolu- tions. Volume II deals with their development in the nineteenth cen- tury, in England in the Reform movement culminating in 1832, and in France in the movement leading to the revolution of 1830. Mr. Woolf calls his work a study of communal psychology. He is interested in the currents of ideas and beliefs which move different classes of men to political action rather than in the systematic theories of political philosophers. He finds his material mainly in the journals and letters of the period which record contemporary changes in opinion. For England he uses largely Greville, Creevy, Place, and Brougham materials; for France he refers chiefly to Barante, Guizot, Pasquier, and Lam- menais. Some of these were men who made political decisions; all of them represented the opinion of classes whose weight was significant in the forming of political decisions. By matching their reflections on the events and the problems of the period with our retrospective knowledge of the economic and political trends, Mr. Woolf seeks to show how the decisions of the period were made out of class interests, modifying and being modified by the force of the democratic ideology or "communal psychology" which had come down from the eighteenth century. Taking the spread of the democratic ideology as given for the period of the Reform movement, he shows how each of the classes and groups on the Reform side interpreted that ideology in a way consistent with their class interests. ". . . the new capitalists used the beliefs that all men should be politically free and equal against the existing regime ... and demanded parliamentary reform.... The proletariate at the same time were doing the same thing, logically translating the beliefs and ideals into a demand for the ballot and universal suffrage" (p. 146). But the capitalist middle class was faced with a dilemma: it thought in terms of democratic ideas yet it "believed that the proletariate was a perpetual menace to property and order, and that if the working classes were admitted to political power through the ballot and universal suff-

3Leonard Woolf, After the Deluge: A Study of Communal Psychology, vol. I (London, New York, 1931).

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rage, it would be the end of property as well as of the monarchy and aristocracy" (p. 146). The middle class met, or rather, avoided, this dilemma by stressing the democratic ideas of liberty and individuality and forgetting the ideal of equality, or, more simply, by identifying the middle class with "the people" and so finding that the ideal of a people governing itself could be attained by putting political power into the hands of the middle class. The same basic pattern is found in France, in an elaborate study of the period 1815-30.

Mr. Woolf's study is one of the most valuable and suggestive that we have had on any period. His analysis of the interplay of class inter- ests and the "communal psychology of democracy" in such minds as Brougham's and Guizot's is masterly. But he draws some general conclusions as to the role of ideas in political change which do not seem to be justified by the facts which he analyses. His thesis is that while economic facts (mainly class interests) are the most important facts modifying political ideas and ideals at the point when the latter become influential for political change, yet the ideas and ideals are part of a communal psychology which existed before the economic facts and which was mainly independent of economic conditioning. He refers to "the fantastic myth in which economic facts determine the whole psychology of communities, classes and individuals-a myth which could only have been taken seriously in a society where economic barbarism had made men blind to truth and to all but economic values" (p. 143). He argues that "the communal psychology of democracy became what the Marxist calls a 'bourgeois ideology,' but it is not true that it was created by the economic facts, by the bourgeois capitalist system. It existed in its primal form, the form in which we have studied it in the first volume, before the economic facts existed. That primal form was an attitude of mind which we have seen to crystallize later into various political and social beliefs and desires or ideals" (pp. 143-4). Mr. Woolf is most vehement about this, but his evidence is not conclusive. Granted that the communal psychology of democracy existed before the industrial revolution and that it was the industrial revolution which crystallized it into the demands for reform which culminated in 1832, it does not follow that the communal psychology existed before the capitalist system and the bourgeois class existed. The earlier commercial revolu- tion had produced a bourgeoisie which in England had risen to economic power under the Tudors and had attained its share of political power by the Whig revolution. In the interests of this class the ideas of in- dividual natural rights and limited constitutional government had been developed and had become the common currency of political thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Surely this is the origin

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of the communal psychology of democracy, for although these ideas were not democratic they contained the essential notions which were easily developed into a democratic attitude.4 The economic conditioning of the general attitude which the nineteenth century inherited from the eighteenth seems clear. Mr. Woolf's scorn for the exclusively economic interpretation, which he sometimes identifies with the Marxian, has led him to take up a position unnecessarily far in the opposite direc- tion. It is time that the straw man of strict economic determinism was let alone.

* * *

Mr. Farrington's Science and Politics in the Ancient World is a study of the relation between natural philosophy and the exigencies of the political structure in the Greek and Roman civilizations. More specifi- cally it is an attempt to find an adequate cause for the decline of scientific activity in the ancient world from its flourishing in sixth-century Ionia, and for the concomitant disappearance of the spirit of enquiry into the nature of things. This cause he finds in the attitude of the governing classes. He argues that they prevented the spread of science because it tended to spread ideas and attitudes of mind incompatible with the general acceptance of the police religion which the governing classes found necessary in the sharply class-divided society of the time. There is plenty of evidence that the ruling classes of Greece and Rome took an oligarchic view of religion and of education. The classic instance is Plato's doctrine of the noble lie and his reservation of lying as a pre- rogative of the rulers only, and, in the Laws, his advocacy of a police religion for the multitude. Following Plato, Aristotle took it for granted that there should be a mythical religion for the multitude and an intel- lectually defensible one for the ruling class. Cicero and Varro urged that there should be one religion for the rulers and one for the masses, as a means of keeping the power and property of the rulers secure. And their case for imposing superstition on the multitude was in harmony with the actual practice of the Roman state at the time, as testified by Polybius who admired it. It is obvious that ruling classes which had such beliefs would be hostile to the spread of an empirical tradition of science, especially when the proponents of that tradition were outspoken advocates of popular enlightenment. Mr. Farrington devotes about half his book to arguing that Epicurus and Lucretius were such advocates.

4In volume I Mr. Woolf shows that democratic ideas developed out of the new attitude towards, and consciousness of, individuality, which became marked in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He does not, however, investigate the sources of this new attitude, nor its connection with previous economic and class change.

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"It is the specific originality of Epicurus that he is the first man known to history to have organized a movement for the liberation of mankind at large from superstition" (pp. 125-6). Lucretius is seen as a great disciple in this work of enlightenment. "Only incidentally is [the De Rerum Natura] a war on popular superstition; the real object of its attack is the state cult, that cult of which Mommsen said that the essential characteristic was 'the conscious retention of the principles of the popular belief, which were recognized as irrational, for reasons of outward convenience' " (p. 179).

If we accept this view we can agree with the author's contention that the conscious hostility of the ruling class to the teachings of these philosophers was one of the main reasons for the failure of the movement of enlightenment for which they stood. But Mr. Farrington's explana- tion of the decline of Greek science and of the failure of its attempted revival gives rise to other questions. Granting that the position of the state in these class-divided societies made the state necessarily an enemy of the Ionian-Epicurean enlightenment, why was it the enlighten- ment which was defeated? The same enmity was evident in eighteenth- century France, yet there the enlightenment won and the state was defeated. An answer to this question would involve an analysis of the dynamics of the class structures in the ancient world which Mr. Farring- ton has considered beyond the scope of his enquiry in this volume. Part of the answer might be found in relating the explanation he has put forward in this volume with another explanation which he mentions but does not follow up, namely, that Greek science decayed because of its divorce from productive activities, which in turn resulted from the existence of a slave economy which made advances in applied science unnecessary and undesirable. Both explanations find the basic cause in the class structure; the one in its political aspect, the other in its economic aspect. It may be that in the latter aspect, in the fact of a slave economy, is to be found the cause of the failure of the Epicurean enlightenment in its contest with the state. The relationship between changes in scientific thought and practice and changes in the economic and political structure, is an important question in any period. It is to be hoped that Mr. Farrington will publish the results of further research into this relationship in the ancient world.

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Sir Alfred Zimmern and Mr. Oakeshott have each edited a volume of selections of original sources to represent the conflict of political doc- trines in the world today. Most of the material will be familiar to the student of modern political doctrines, but both volumes, reproducing

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the main doctrines in their authentic forms, will find a place. Sir Alfred's Modern Political Doctrines is arranged in four sections: "Government"; "The Economic Problem"; "Nationality, Nationalism and Racialism"; "The Problem of the International Order." The last two sections occupy about half the volume. The material on government and the state, taken as a whole, is rather heavily weighted on the non-democratic side. It is unfortunate that there is no statement from the democratic side in answer to the authoritarian case. The few extracts from demo- cratic thought are on the value of civil liberty and free discussion, but not on the capacity of democratic government to meet contemporary problems.

Mr. Oakeshott's Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe does not deal separately with nationalism or international problems, but is confined to material illustrating what he considers to be the main doctrines today, namely, Representative Democracy, Catholicism, Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism. His material on these is therefore generally fuller and more satisfactory than Zimmern's. But it is notable that this volume, like the other, does not include any democratic statement to answer the authoritarian attacks on the capacity of democratic government to cope with contemporary problems. Is this lack in both volumes a reflection of a real gap in the body of democratic theory? There is some indication that Mr. Oake- shott thinks so, for he has included one extract (from Lincoln) specifi- cally to illustrate a fundamental defect in the democratic doctrine, "its peculiarly erroneous view of the nature and causes of dictatorship in the modern world" (p.4). A more important omission must be noted. There is no analysis of the implications of the property structure for democracy, or of the place of the concept of property in democratic theory. The extracts of democratic doctrine deal with democracy abstracted from capitalism. Mr. Oakeshott's justification is ingenious but does not meet the problem.

The apparent omission of any statement of the doctrine of Property belonging to Representative Democracy perhaps needs some justification. My defence is that while the concept of property which belongs to this social doctrine is of the first importance, it is, in this doctrine, in the nature of a deduction from a more fundamental concept, the concept of the individual.... A genetic treatment of this doctrine might show the

conception of individuality springing from the conception and institution of property; but... I am not concerned with questions of genesis, and there can be no doubt that in the logical structure of this doctrine the conception of property is subordinate [pp.3-4]. If the concept of property which belongs to the democratic doctrine is of the first importance, the fact that it is found in the doctrine in a logically subordinate position is insufficient ground for omitting any statement of it. For not only the genesis of democracy but also its

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present and future are bound up with the problem of property relations. An examination of the presuppositions of democratic theory with regard to property is therefore of major importance. It is perhaps unfair to criticize the editor of an introductory selection of texts for refraining from entering into the question of the relation of democracy and property. It is one of the most complicated questions of political theory, and it is in such a state of change and uncertainty that its presentation would require both a historical treatment and the inclusion of a wide range of present opinions. This is understandably beyond the scope of this volume. But the weakness which the exclusion of material on this problem involves may be taken to indicate the impossibility of analysing the fundamental problems of democracy, indeed of politics generally, without using an inclusive historical method.

C. B. MACPHERSON The University of Toronto.

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