第148章 SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SOCIAL ART(4)

Yet this is done incessantly and quickly, if not easily.Even when it is claimed that some duties are so paramount that a good man will refuse to 'weigh' any other claim against them, assigning them a value which, he says, is 'infinite,' the marginal economist will not admit the claim to exemption.'This only means that to him the total difference between the command of things in the circle of exchange that he already enjoys, and an indefinite, or unlimited command of them, does not weigh as heavy in his mind as the dishonour or the discomfort of the specific thing he is required to do.It does not mean that his objection is "infinite." it merely means that it is larger than his estimate of all the satisfaction that he could derive from unlimited command of articles in the circle of exchange, and this is a strictly, perhaps narrowly, limited quantity.'2But though there are men whose honour is so incorruptible as always to 'outweigh' other considerations, the ethics of bribery make it clear that a weaker sense of honour can be measured against material satisfaction, and that is all that seems necessary to support the view that such qualitative distinctions can 'be reduced to questions of quantity.' Nor is it merely a matter of the monetary valuation through expenditure of incomes.Precisely the same problem arises in the disposal of one's time or energy.How much shall be given to the performance of this or that personal or family duty, to recreation, or to study? In what proportions shall we combine these activities? If a curtailment of money or of time is necessary, how much shall be taken from this, how much from that employment?

But it is needless to multiply examples.When any scientific valuation is taken, all qualities are abstracted and quantities only are compared and estimated.As in economics, so in ethics.The moral struggle to resist a temptation is nearly always set in scientific psychology as a mechanical problem, for when the ethicist professes to introduce some imponderable 'freedom of the will' he has to throw overboard his science.A 'conflict of duties,' as Mr.Wicksteed recognises, implies that 'duty itself is a quantitative conception.'3§5.Similarly with the scientific politician who seeks to make full use of quantitative analysis.He too is compelled to visualise and represent the psychological operation through which a political judgment is reached as a mechanical one, conceived in terms of size, weight, strain or intensity.In his Human Nature in Politics Mr.Graham Wallas gives a very interesting example of the scientific valuation of a process of political thinking, viz., the process by which Mr.Gladstone, in the autumn and winter of 1885-6, must be conceived to have arrived at his Home Rule policy, 'thinking incessantly about the matter' and 'preparing myself by study and reflection.'

After describing, with the aid of Lord Morley's Life, the various studies and courses of reflection employed, the 'calculations' of the state of feeling in England and Ireland, the examination of various types of federation, as found in past and current history, the statistical reports upon finance, law and other concrete issues, considerations of the time and opportunity, the play of the emotional valuations, 'the irresistible attraction for him of all the grand and external commonplaces of liberty and self-government,'

Mr.Wallas sees the results of all this acquisition of knowledge and reflection gathering and being coordinated into a problem in which the factors are quantities and the solution 'a quantitative solution,' 'a delicate adjustment between many varying forces.'4 'A large part of this work of complex coordination was apparently in Mr.Gladstone's case unconscious,' an operation he declares, 'rather of art than of science.' Now, since 'the history of human progress consists in the gradual and partial substitution of science for art,' it is desirable to bring out with clearer consciousness, and fortify with greater accuracy of knowledge, the processes of political thinking.'Quantitative method must spread in politics and must transform the vocabulary and the associations of that mental world into which the young politician enters.

Fortunately, such a change seems at least to be beginning.Every year larger and more exact collections of detached political facts are being accumulated;and collections of detached facts, if they are to be used at all in political reasoning, must be used quantitatively.'5 Since the problems of political conduct are thus essentially quantitative, they can, in theory at any rate, be 'solved' by science.'The final decisions which will be taken either by the Commons -- or by Parliament in questions of administrative policy and electoral machinery must therefore involve the balancing of all these and many more considerations by an essentially quantitative process.'6§6.Now how far is it true that any political problem is essentially quantitative and soluble by a quantitative process? it is of course to be admitted at once that the science of statistics will feed a statesman's mind with a variety of ordered and measured facts.But will this mind, working either scientifically or artistically, consciously or subconsciously, go through a distinctively mechanical process of balancing and measuring and register a quantitative judgment? A scientific setting of the process must indeed so present it.But, then, a scientific setting of any process whatsoever sets it thus in purely quantitative form.The real issue is how far this scientific setting is competent to interpret and explain the facts, and to deliver a judgment which shall be authoritative for the conduct of an individual or a society.