[In the following review, Ford considers Wallas's Human Nature in Politics as a work of "unique value. "]

This work is a philosophical inquiry by a practical politician into the nature of the forces that shape politics. Books of this class are rare. Few men have the combination of abundant knowledge with power of expression required to produce them. Hence they possess unique value.

The work is in two parts, the first of which may be characterized as a schedule of the bankruptcy of Liberalism as a political philosophy, and the second as a consideration of the possibility of obtaining from science a new system to take over the assets and continue the business as a going concern. The first part is, of course, more solid and complete. It deals with facts which Mr. Wallas illustrates from his own experience. The second part, which speculates on what might be, seems to be a groping in the fog to find a way out. But he does not claim that it is anything more than that. All he contends is that the fog is there and that the exploration is inevitable. He is on his guard against illusions, recalling Napoleon's warning of the pitfalls awaiting ideologues who see things as they wish them to be. He remarks that "if our imaginations ever start on the old road to Utopia, we are checked by remembering that we are blood-relations of the other animals, and that we have no more right than our kinsfolk to suppose that the mind of the universe has contrived that we can find the perfect life by looking for it." If bees should attain self-consciousness, and have dreams of political progress, nevertheless "as long as they were bees their life must remain bewildered and violent and short." Such reflections suggest to Mr. Wallas that perhaps no great improvement in politics is possible until we have altered the human type itself "through the hazardous experiment of selective breeding."

While Mr. Wallas is vague in dealing with what might be, his vision is distinct and clear in considering things as they are. He says (p. 15) that "many of the more systematic books on politics by American university professors are useless" for lack of grasp on reality. The advocates of direct primaries would do well to ponder his remarks on the futility of putting upon the people political tasks beyondhuman capacity. He mentions (p. 224) that in his own case he found it impossible to "give the time necessary for forming a real opinion on fifteen candidates" in a borough election, so he solved the problem by voting a "straight ticket." He is well aware that this meant that the successful candidates were really the appointees of party managers, and he draws the conclusion that in order that elections shall really elect they shall be few in number and concentrated in effect. Multiplication of elections, instead of increasing control of government by public opinion, destroys it. Mr. Wallas correctly attributes to this cause the prevalence of graft in American politics. In England the present tendency is to reduce the number of elections. Mr. Wallas (p. 226) says that "since 1888, parliament, in reconstructing the system of local government, has steadily diminished the number of elections, with the avowed purpose of increasing their efficiency." In this country we are multiplying them. The avowed purpose of the direct primary system is to strike down bosses and to extirpate corruption by giving the people the means of selecting good men for party offerings of candidacy. But results do not conform to the intentions with which causes are set in operation; they are always determined by the conditions that are actually established. Hence by increasing the complications and by adding to the expense of elections the direct primary system is certain to enlarge professional control of politics and to intensify corruption. It may be set down as an axiom of politics: the greater the number of elective offices, the greater the cost of government. The blunders now made in this country would hardly be possible were it not that political science has been eclipsed by sociology, and what Mr. Wallas characterizes as "non-rational inference" is in vogue. People who mistake feeling for thinking, and who thus impute to their projects the merit of their motives, may find in Mr. Wallas' chapter on "Representative Government" therapeutic aid such as their case requires.