Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/428

412 conviction on such questions, the less there will be of "political skepticism." The mere conflict of opinions will never produce civil discord; it is when theories, in the strict sense, are flung aside, and interests confront one another in battle array, that real danger arises. The question is simply. Shall we or shall we not consult together like loyal citizens for the good of the state? If we determine to do so, we raise politics at once to the level of as noble and honorable a pursuit as any man can engage in. Our object, then, is truth in its application to national affairs, and politics becomes a branch of science. If, on the other hand, we can not, as citizens, summon up enough disinterestedness to think and labor for the general good, but allow ourselves to be marshaled into parties fighting for no determinate object save the spoils of office or the vain satisfaction of a party triumph, then, truly, the reign of political skepticism must ever become more absolute, and the country be brought yearly nearer to the edge of a dangerous convulsion.

We think there are signs of an awakening of the public mind to the evils of the party system; but something more is wanted for a true political equilibrium than the mere cessation of unmeaning party strife. We need to come down to more moderate views of what state action can reasonably be expected to effect. We need a truer perception of the methods by which, and the rate at which, great social reforms are accomplished. We need to repeat to ourselves continually that might does not make right, and that the might of a majority may be as fatally in the wrong as the might of an individual. Before invoking the power of the state, we should ask ourselves whether the case is one in which the power of the state ought to be exerted. The doctrine is now all but officially promulgated, that majorities can not possibly do wrong, and therefore that the power possessed by a majority may at any moment be rightly employed to enforce its will. This is political skepticism with a vengeance, substituting, as it does, the ballot-box for the moral law. The notion is one that we must unlearn, as we value our integrity as a people; for no community can long prosper that has once enthroned force in the place of justice. It is impossible to develop fully within the limits of an article like the present the idea here outlined, but we are convinced that many of the most discouraging characteristics of the present day, including the "political skepticism" above specially referred to, are in great part traceable to the growing habit of looking to the state to do things which, if done at all, should be done by private effort and the growth of opinion.

We find in "The Varsity," a weekly journal published at Toronto. Ontario, in the interest of Toronto University, a wonderful argument for the perpetual retention of the present arbitrary rules of English spelling. "It is a saddening reflection," says our contemporary, "that there should be men, our brothers, whose limbs should be stiffened by day-long labor of the body, and into whose minds no light shines through their lives; but the desire to utterly obliterate whatever may in any way serve to distinguish the man of culture from his illiterate brother must be looked on in no other light than as one of the many manifestations of that misty socialism which is clouding so many minds to-day." Here is intellectual snobbery with a vengeance. Forsooth, we must keep up a difficult and arbitrary mode of spelling in order that the poor man may spell badly, and so be distinguished from the man of culture! When we first began to read about those unhappy men, "our