of which success depends; and we must test the character of the instruments by the work they have to do. A constitution, and the whole equipment, personal and impersonal, of government, must be judged not in themselves alone—for in themselves they have no meaning—but according to the people whose constitution and equipment they are, and according to the problems in politics that have to be grappled with at the time, and by the measure of suitability of the constitution and its organs for dealing with these problems successfully. We can never evade circumstance—that unspiritual god—in politics. Intellectually possible, no doubt, it is, and an exercise of high intellect it can become, to study politics, if politics it then be, apart from conditions in fact and circumstance: possible it is to construct a scheme of politics, or a system of thought on polity, that shall not be shaped and determined by realities and by what is practicable—to write at large of ‘the’ State without ever having clearly observed a State, and compared one State at work with others, both in their methods and in their achievements. There is a philosophy of politics that starts from an inspiration or an assumption, builds on principles, and leads up, it hopes, to Truth. Students of history and observers of politics, in their mundane view, do not aspire to that freedom of movement, nor, it may be, to the glory of the non-terrestrial vision, even while they do not interpret the real in history as the merely material, even while they allow for psychological and ethical factors in the life and politics of a people, and are not unmindful of the City of God of St. Augustine and of the De Monarchia of Dante, nor are scornful of the Utopias of politics. The politics with which they have to do start from conditions in time and place, with the tyranny, it may be, of circumstance, build on policy, and lead, it is hoped, to success. That success may approximate to intellectual certitude and philosophic truth where a wise
