To take a moral illustration, the will to suppress
misconduct and secure efficiency in work is general and salutary;
but the notion that the best and only effective way is by
complaining, scolding, punishing, and revenging is equally
general. When Mrs Squeers opened an abscess on her pupil's head
with an inky penknife, her object was entirely laudable: her heart
was in the right place: a statesman interfering with her on the
ground that he did not want the boy cured would have deserved
impeachment for gross tyranny. But a statesman tolerating amateur
surgical practice with inky penknives in school would be a very
bad Minister of Education. It is on the question of method that
your expert comes in; and though I am democrat enough to insist
that he must first convince a representative body of amateurs that
his way is the right way and Mrs Squeers's way the wrong way, yet
I very strongly object to any tendency to flatter Mrs Squeers into
the belief that her way is in the least likely to be the right
way, or that any other test is to be applied to it except the test
of its effect on human welfare.
THE SCIENCE AND ART OF POLITICS
Political Science means nothing else than the devizing of the best
ways of fulfilling the will of the world; and, I repeat, it is
skilled work.
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