Our Indian experiment shows, however, that all men, however carefully selected and trained, must still inhabit ‘the ostensible world.’  The Anglo-Indian civilian during some of his working hours—­when he is toiling at a scheme of irrigation, or forestry, or famine-prevention—­may live in an atmosphere of impersonal science which is far removed from the jealousies and superstitions of the villagers in his district.  But an absolute ruler is judged not merely by his efficiency in choosing political means, but also by that outlook on life which decides his choice of ends; and the Anglo-Indian outlook on life is conditioned, not by the problem of British India as history will see it a thousand years hence, but by the facts of daily existence in the little government stations, with their trying climates, their narrow society, and the continual presence of an alien and possibly hostile race.  We have not, it is true, yet followed the full rigour of Plato’s system, and chosen the wives of Anglo-Indian officials by the same process as that through which their husbands pass.  But it may be feared that even if we did so, the lady would still remain typical who said to Mr. Nevinson, ’To us in India a pro-native is simply a rank outsider.’[67]

[67] The Nation, December 21, 1907.

What is even more important is the fact that, because those whom the Anglo-Indian civilian governs are also living in the ostensible world, his choice of means on all questions involving popular opinion depends even more completely than if he were a party politician at home, not on things as they are, but on things as they can be made to seem.  The avowed tactics of our empire in the East have therefore always been based by many of our high officials upon psychological and not upon logical considerations.  We hold Durbars, and issue Proclamations, we blow men from guns, and insist stiffly on our own interpretation of our rights in dealing with neighbouring Powers, all with reference to ’the moral effect upon the native mind.’  And, if half what is hinted at by some ultra-imperialist writers and talkers is true, racial and religious antipathy between Hindus and Mohammedans is sometimes welcomed, if not encouraged, by those who feel themselves bound at all costs to maintain our dominant position.

The problem of the relation between reason and opinion is therefore one that would exist at least equally in Plato’s corporate despotism as in the most complete democracy.  Hume, in a penetrating passage in his essay on The First Principles of Government, says:  ’It is ... on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and the most popular.’[68] It is when a Czar or a bureaucracy find themselves forced to govern in opposition to a vague national feeling, which may at any moment create an overwhelming national purpose, that the facts of man’s sublogical nature are most ruthlessly exploited.  The autocrat then becomes the most unscrupulous of demagogues, and stirs up racial, or religious, or social hatred, or the lust for foreign war, with less scruple than does the proprietor of the worst newspaper in a democratic State.