generalization as possible”—this is Buckle’s formulation. “Nothing can be more fatal in politics than a preponderance of the philosophical, or in philosophy than a preponderance of the political spirit,” says Lecky. Mr. Fiske, in commenting upon the relations of Huxley and Gladstone (whom Huxley himself spoke of as a “copious shuffler”), says: “One could no more expect a prime minister, as such, to understand Huxley’s attitude in presence of a scientific problem, than a deaf-mute to comprehend a symphony of Beethoven.”
And yet these occupations are not mutually exclusive; philosophy and politics are not December and May, and the temperate zone, in which (in theory at least) we pass our existence, is a composite of the two. Indeed, a divorce of theory and practice is disastrous to both parties of the alliance; theory is the more real and vital for its consideration of and adaptation to tangible conditions; and practice is more rational and more liberal, embraces a larger expediency than if responsive only to the status quo. Learning dissociated from doing is threatened with the decadence of mere erudition, pedantry and disputation. Exercise is equally good for mind and body; but there is danger of falling in love with the mere mechanism of thought—the absorption in the feeling of one’s mental muscles contracting and of plodding in treadmill routine, ever moving, but never advancing. The danger of practice dissociated from principle is that of becoming time-serving, narrow, partisan, short-sighted; it tacks for every wind, loses its bearings, and sacrifices larger for smaller gains. Emerson said of the English some fifty year ago: “They are impious in their skepticism of a theory, but kiss the dust before a fact”; and Emerson’s own countrymen are curiously like and curiously unlike the people whose traits he characterizes. Mr. Morley deplores the same tendency from a more modern point of view. He notes the inclination to reply to an advocate of improvement by “some sagacious silliness about recognizing the limits of the practical in politics, and seeing the necessity of adapting theories to facts. As if the fact of taking a broader and wiser view than the common crowd disqualifies a man from knowing what the view
