Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/127

 made in checking these changes and fostering those. If there be lack of insight respecting the mutual dependence of many functions, which, taken together, make up the national life, unforeseen disasters will ensue from not perceiving how an interference with one will affect the rest. If there be no knowledge of the natural consensus at any time subsisting in the social organism, there will, of course, be impossible attempts to achieve ends which do not consist with its passing phase of organisation. Clearly, before any effort to regulate the myriad multiform changes going on throughout society can be rationally made, there must be an adequate comprehension of how these changes are really caused, and in what way they are related to each other, how this perplexed web of phenomena hangs together, how it came thus, and what it is becoming. That is to say, there must be an adequate acquaintance with social science,—the science involving all others,—the science standing above all others in subtlety and complexity,—the science which the highest intelligence alone can master."

It is but too obvious that the traditional method of filling the House of Commons,—suitable as it was in earlier times, when a few master minds directed all public affairs, and the people came together, not to reason, but simply to confirm what their leaders had done, or proposed to do, is unsuited to this day. The subjects which now arise, and in which the public both feel and take the deepest interest, are almost infinitely various, and require to be approached with great preparatory knowledge. The growth of populous cities—the conquests of science in the material world,—the activity of commercial intercourse,—the progress of mental development,—all tend to create, daily, new questions and new problems, which it requires more than merely empirical knowledge to solve. On one side, it is proposed that political science should be systematically taught, and a measure of