You can tell that only
to shipmasters on dry land. In the crisis, the only advice is to use a
gun, or make a speech, utter a stirring slogan, offer a compromise,
employ any quick means available to quell the mutiny, the sense of
evidence being what it is. It is only on shore where men plan for many
voyages, that they can afford to, and must for their own salvation,
deal with those causes that take a long time to remove. They will be
dealing in years and generations, not in emergencies alone. And
nothing will put a greater strain upon their wisdom than the necessity
of distinguishing false crises from real ones. For when there is panic
in the air, with one crisis tripping over the heels of another, actual
dangers mixed with imaginary scares, there is no chance at all for the
constructive use of reason, and any order soon seems preferable to any
disorder.
It is only on the premise of a certain stability over a long run of
time that men can hope to follow the method of reason. This is not
because mankind is inept, or because the appeal to reason is
visionary, but because the evolution of reason on political subjects
is only in its beginnings. Our rational ideas in politics are still
large, thin generalities, much too abstract and unrefined for
practical guidance, except where the aggregates are large enough to
cancel out individual peculiarity and exhibit large uniformities.
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