On the other hand, Mr. Balfour denied that the mere
accumulation and transmission of *no/sledge has any necessary tendency to secure civilisation, and he denied that the cohesion of society is in any sense due to the knowledge and wisdom embodied in our political institutions. "A community founded upon argument would soon be a community no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent elements. Think of the thousand ties most subtly woven out of common sentiments,. common tastes, common beliefs, nay, common prejudices, by which from our very earliest childhood we are all bound un- consciously but indissolubly together into a compacted whole." "Imagine nicely adjusting our loyalty and our patriotism to the standard of a calculated utility. Imagine us severally suspending our adhesion to the Ten Command- ments until we have leisure and opportunity to decide between the rival and inconsistent philosophies which contend for the honour of establishing them ! " If Governments had to supply the essential framework of society, "it would be as idiotic to. govern by household suffrage as to design the Forth Bridge by household suffrage." Therefore Mr. Balfour rejected the accumulation' of knowledge as any guarantee for civilisation, —first, because knowledge does as much to dissolve social ties, and to stimulate social scepticisms, as to bind together, if not more ; next, because no knowledge exists by the magic of which men can really be guided and inspired and held together in close association. Mr. Balfour did not deal with the binding power of faith, for the obvious reason that a law depending on the continuous faith of men is evidently not a. law of necessary causation at all.
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