time and truth on their side, they have accomplished this again and again. But it is after the wave of emotion has subsided that the encroachments of reaction begin.

It must be pointed out at once that there is no third classification in addition to Liberalism and Conservatism into which human beings naturally fall. Labour, for instance, may represent, and indeed does represent, a class distinction vital enough in its social meaning to justify its separate political existence. But its divergence from the older parties is merely social, and is probably ephemeral. It always has had and always will have great difficulty in maintaining its identity, because it does not represent anything fundamental in human nature. Labour has, of course, external characteristics and points of view that appear to differentiate it from Liberalism. Those who take the narrow and superficial view that political division is always a class division, that a Conservative is always upper-class and a Liberal always middle-class, can easily draw the conclusion from so false a premise that Labour, representing the lower-class, is an inevitable third member of the political trinity. They point out that differences of education and environment, different desires produced by different conditions of life and work, make it impossible for the middle-class Liberal either

to understand or to legislate for lower-class Labour. By such an argument politics is placed on a low plane. It is degraded into a mere battle of selfish interests, in which the effort of the poor to down the rich is no nobler than the efforts of the rich to hold their own. Such a view of the functions of politics is not only vulgar and sterile, but has been proved untrue by the past experience of mankind. History is strewn with fierce conflicts in which class distinction had no part whatever. It never occurs to any one to inquire to what class the Conservative Dante or the Liberal Luther belonged; it never occurs to any one that the motive of class entered into the things they fought for. Class war is no explanation whatever of the prolonged struggle between Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus. We presume that the latter was upper-class because he was a king; but we know that he was a Liberal, just as well as we know that Wallenstein was a Conservative. Because at this particular moment there is an ephemeral conflict between the classes we are blind enough to imagine that such a conflict represents a permanent division. Labour is conscious of its place in this ephemeral conflict; it is conscious of its temporary interests. But the moment any large political question comes up for thought and discussion, it is forced by the nature of things to take either a Liberal

or a Conservative view of that question. Whenever Labour rises up to take an unselfish or a moral standpoint it loses its identity as a class, and, often to its annoyance, finds itself obliged to act with the older and more genuine political parties. As a general rule the instinct of Labour is towards Liberalism and liberty, but, as we shall see, in its attitude towards Socialism it has taken the road towards Conservative reaction.

The attitudes towards life which we label Liberal and Conservative do not change in the changing circumstances of evolution. Men either believe in progress, or they do not. The sceptical temperament of Mr. Balfour is more refined and more urbane than the irritable disgust of Moses, but they both share the profound instinct that mankind is an unchangeable mob, incapable of liberty, who must be forced by law and order into the path of virtue. The disbelief in progress rarely comes out into the open of actual expression. Hobbes, indeed, under the free influence of the Renaissance, and wishing to defend the monarchical system that he saw disappearing around him, took no trouble to disguise the fact that his theory rested on an estimate of mankind so low that the State was merely the outcome of its baseness. According to him men only desire to preserve themselves and to enjoy themselves, and govern

ment is necessary merely to restrain their selfish and indecent passions. The desire for liberty is only a desire to do what is wrong; if it were not, it would be unnecessary to ask for it. The necessity for a strong government to control this miserable mob is the justification of despotism.

But as a rule the Conservative temperament is not so frank; its processes are instinctive in so far that they are uninfluenced by philosophic thought. The splendid story of the Liberal youth of Moses, if we may be allowed by the historical purists to accept that story at its face value, is full of the passion for national liberty, and yet it is not as a Liberal that Moses set his most decisive mark on the history of the world. He did not retain his youthful outlook. His love of national liberty did not broaden into a love of individual liberty. On the contrary, the difficulties of his political leadership, the inevitable ignorance and stupidity of those he led, hardened his mind and character in a Conservative direction. During the forty years of struggle and difficulty in the wilderness the people often fell away into bad habits, were discontented and ungrateful. The promised land of Liberalism seemed always unattainable, and the food of liberty a very humble fare compared with the fleshpots of Egypt. They got tired of eating manna, and when they

asked their patriarchal food-controller for meat, he complained of the burden of ruling such a people. Moses had no real sympathy with them; on the contrary, they irritated him, and he grew to despise and distrust them. It was on the basis of this contempt and distrust that he built up that elaborate theocratic system that is the monument of his Conservative old age. The great figure that sits for ever immortalized by Michael Angelo in the church of S. Pietro in Vinculo is the Conservative origin of the dominion of authority over freedom of thought and action. Yet so deep was the disbelief in humanity in the heart of the lonely old man that he distrusted the efficacy even of his own hide-bound system, and in his dying speech he anticipated that the people would "turn aside from the way which he had commanded."

It is clear that the powerful, by merely denying the existence of progress, and by legislating on the basis of its impossibility, themselves tend to prevent the appearance of what they deny. The artificial Socialism of military Sparta, the long Conservative history of Rome, as an aristocratic Republic, as a military Empire, and as an Empire made holy by theocratic despotism, are proof enough that men who do not believe in progress can enormously delay, although they cannot prevent, the processes of evolution.