English economist and political analyst (1826-1877)
What separates the author from his readers, will make it proportionably difficult for him to explain himself to them. Secluded habits do not tend to eloquence; and the indifferent apathy which is so common in studious persons is exceedingly unfavourable to the liveliness of narration and illustration which is needed for excellence in even the simpler sorts of writing.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Commerce brings this mingling of ideas, this breaking down of old creeds, and brings it inevitably.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
When other sources of leisure become possible, the one use of slavery is past. But all its evils remain, and even grow worse.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
In true metaphysics I believe that, contrary to common opinion, unbelief far oftener needs a reason and requires an effort than belief.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The power of a government by discussion as an instrument of elevation plainly depends—other things being equal—on the greatness or littleness of the things to be discussed.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The grave question now is, How far will this peculiar old system continue and how far will it be altered? I am afraid I must put aside at once the idea that it will be altered entirely and altered for the better. I cannot expect that the new class of voters will be at all more able to form sound opinions on complex questions than the old voters. There was indeed an idea—a very prevalent idea when the first edition of this book was published—that there then was an unrepresented class of skilled artisans who could form superior opinions on national matters, and ought to have the means of expressing them. We used to frame elaborate schemes to give them such means. But the Reform Act of 1867 did not stop at skilled labour; it enfranchised unskilled labour too. And no one will contend that the ordinary working man who has no special skill, and who is only rated because he has a house, can judge much of intellectual matters. The messenger in an office is not more intelligent than the clerks, not better educated, but worse; and yet the messenger is probably a very superior specimen of the newly enfranchised classes. The average can only earn very scanty wages by coarse labour. They have no time to improve themselves, for they are labouring the whole day through; and their early education was so small that in most cases it is dubious whether even if they had much time, they could use it to good purpose. We have not enfranchised a class less needing to be guided by their betters than the old class; on the contrary, the new class need it more than the old. The real question is, Will they submit to it, will they defer in the same way to wealth and rank, and to the higher qualities of which these are the rough symbols and the common accompaniments?
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The worst judge, they say, is a deaf judge; the most dull Government is a free Government on matters its ruling classes will not hear.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Though the leaders of party no longer have the vast patronage of the last century with which to bribe, they can coerce by a threat far more potent than any allurement—they can dissolve. This is the secret which keeps parties together.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
A perfectly poetic appreciation of nature contains two elements, a knowledge of facts, and a sensibility to charms. Everybody who may have to speak to some naturalists will be well aware how widely the two may be separated. He will have seen that a man may study butterflies and forget that they are beautiful, or be perfect in the " Lunar theory" without knowing what most people mean by the moon.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Many a battered Minister may be seen to think much more of the vicissitudes which make him and unmake him, than of any office matter.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The trained official hates the rude, untrained public. He thinks that they are stupid, ignorant, reckless—that they cannot tell their own interest—that they should have the leave of the office before they do anything. Protection is the natural inborn creed of every official body; free trade is an extrinsic idea alien to its notions, and hardly to be assimilated with life; and it is easy to see how an accomplished critic, used to a free and active life, could thus describe the official.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Cautious men have many adverbs, "usually," "nearly," "almost ": safe men begin, " it may be advanced " : you never know precisely what their premises are, nor what their conclusion is; they go tremulously like a timid rider; they turn hither and thither; they do not go straight across a subject, like a masterly mind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
As we gaze on the faces of those whom we love; as we watch the light of life in the dawning of their eyes, and the play of their features, and the wildness of their animation; as we trace in changing lineaments a varying sign; as a charm and a thrill seem to run along the tone of a voice, to haunt the mind with a mere word; as a tone seems to roam in the ear; as a trembling fancy hears words that are unspoken; so in Nature the mystical sense finds a motion in the mountain, and a power in the waves, and a meaning in the long white line of the shore, and a thought in the blue of heaven, and a gushing soul in the buoyant light.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
As yet the few rule by their hold, not over the reason of the multitude, but over their imaginations, and their habits; over their fancies as to distant things they do not know at all, over their customs as to near things which they know very well.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
Gamblers to this day are, with respect to the chance part of their game, in much the same plight as savages with respect to the main events of their whole lives. And we well know how superstitious they all are. To this day very sensible whist-players have a certain belief—not, of course, a fixed conviction, but still a certain impression—that there is 'luck under a black deuce,' and will half mutter some not very gentle maledictions if they turn up as a trump the four of clubs, because it brings ill-luck, and is 'the devil's bed-post.' Of course grown-up gamblers have too much general knowledge, too much organized common sense to prolong or cherish such ideas; they are ashamed of entertaining them, though, nevertheless, they cannot entirely drive them out of their minds. But child gamblers—a number of little boys set to play loo-are just in the position of savages, for their fancy is still impressible, and they have not as yet been thoroughly subjected to the confuting experience of the real world and child gamblers have idolatries—at least I know that years ago a set of boy loo-players, of whom I was one, had considerable faith in a certain 'pretty fish' which was larger and more nicely made than the other fish we had. We gave the best evidence of our belief in its power to 'bring luck;' we fought for it (if our elders were out of the way); we offered to buy it with many other fish from the envied holder, and I am sure I have often cried bitterly if the chance of the game took it away from me. Persons who stand up for the dignity of philosophy, if any such there still are, will say that I ought not to mention this, because it seems trivial; but the more modest spirit of modern thought plainly teaches, if it teaches anything, the cardinal value of occasional little facts. I do not hesitate to say that many learned and elaborate explanations of the totem—the 'clan' deity—the beast or bird which in some supernatural way, attends to the clan and watches over it—do not seem to me to be nearly akin to the reality as it works and lives among—the lower races as the 'pretty fish' of my early boyhood. And very naturally so, for a grave philosopher is separated from primitive thought by the whole length of human culture; but an impressible child is as near to, and its thoughts are as much like, that thought as anything can now be.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
A man of business hates elaborate trifling. "If you do not believe your own senses," he will say, "there is no use in my talking to you." As to the multiplicity of arguments and the complexity of questions, he feels them little. He has a plain, simple, as he would say, practical way of looking at the matter; and you will never make him comprehend any other.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The man of the modern world is used to speak what the modern world will hear; the writer of the modern world must write what that world will indulgently and pleasantly peruse.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The terrible difficulty of early life—the use of pastors and masters—really is, that they compel boys to a distinct mastery of that which they do not wish to learn.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A man who is always rushing into the street will become familiar with the street. One who is forever changing from subject to subject will not become painfully acquainted with any one, but he will know the outsides of them all, and the road from each to the other.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Biographical Studies
But why is one nation stronger than another? In the answer to that, I believe, lies the key to the principal progress of early civilization, and to some of the progress of all civilization. The answer is that there are very many advantages—some small and some great—every one of which tends to make the nation which has it superior to the nation which has it not; that many of these advantages can be imparted to subjugated races, or imitated by competing races; and that, though some of these advantages may be perishable or inimitable, yet, on the whole, the energy of civilization grows by the coalescence of strengths and by the competition of strengths.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics