throughout regretfully contrasted with ’free reason,’[31] ’the general idea of liberty,’[32] ’the sentiments which inspired the men of 1848,’[33] and the book ends with a sketch of a proposed constitution in which the voters are to be required to vote for candidates known to them through declarations of policy ’from which all mention of party is rigorously excluded.’[34] One seems to be reading a series of conscientious observations of the Copernican heavens by a loyal but saddened believer in the Ptolemaic astronomy.

[31] Passim, e.g., vol. ii. p. 728.

[32] Ibid., p. 649.

[33] Ibid., p. 442.

[34] Ibid., p. 756.

Professor Ostrogorski was a distinguished member of the Constitutional Democratic Party in the first Duma of Nicholas II., and must have learnt for himself that if he and his fellows were to get force enough behind them to contend on equal terms with the Russian autocracy they must be a party, trusted and obeyed as a party, and not a casual collection of free individuals.  Some day the history of the first Duma will be written, and we shall then know whether Professor Ostrogorski’s experience and his faith were at last fused together in the heat of that great struggle.

The English translation of Professor Ostrogorski’s book is prefaced by an introduction from Mr. James Bryce.  This introduction shows that even in the mind of the author of The American Constitution the conception of human nature which he learnt at Oxford still dwells apart.

‘In the ideal democracy,’ says Mr. Bryce, ’every citizen is intelligent, patriotic, disinterested.  His sole wish is to discover the right side in each contested issue, and to fix upon the best man among competing candidates.  His common sense, aided by a knowledge of the constitution of his country, enables him to judge wisely between the arguments submitted to him, while his own zeal is sufficient to carry him to the polling booth.’[35]

[35] Ostrogorski, vol. i. p. xliv.

A few lines further on Mr. Bryce refers to ’the democratic ideal of the intelligent independence of the individual voter, an ideal far removed from the actualities of any State.’

What does Mr. Bryce mean by ‘ideal democracy’?  If it means anything it means the best form of democracy which is consistent with the facts of human nature.  But one feels, on reading the whole passage, that Mr. Bryce means by those words the kind of democracy which might be possible if human nature were as he himself would like it to be, and as he was taught at Oxford to think that it was.  If so, the passage is a good instance of the effect of our traditional course of study in politics.  No doctor would now begin a medical treatise by saying, ’the ideal man requires no food, and is impervious to the action of bacteria, but this ideal is far removed from the actualities of any known population.’  No modern treatise on pedagogy begins with the statement that ’the ideal boy knows things without being taught them, and his sole wish is the advancement of science, but no boys at all like this have ever existed.’