Reason in politics is especially immature in predicting the behavior
of individual men, because in human conduct the smallest initial
variation often works out into the most elaborate differences. That,
perhaps, is why when we try to insist solely upon an appeal to reason
in dealing with sudden situations, we are broken and drowned in
laughter.
4
For the rate at which reason, as we possess it, can advance itself is
slower than the rate at which action has to be taken. In the present
state of political science there is, therefore, a tendency for one
situation to change into another, before the first is clearly understood,
and so to make much political criticism hindsight and little else. Both in
the discovery of what is unknown, and in the propagation of that which
has been proved, there is a time-differential, which ought to, in a much
greater degree than it ever has, occupy the political philosopher. We
have begun, chiefly under the inspiration of Mr. Graham Wallas, to
examine the effect of an invisible environment upon our opinions.
We do not, as yet, understand, except a little by rule of thumb, the
element of time in politics, though it bears most directly upon the
practicability of any constructive proposal. [Footnote: _Cf_. H. G.
Wells in the opening chapters of _Mankind in the Making._] We
can see, for example, that somehow the relevancy of any plan depends
upon the length of time the operation requires.
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