British statesman (1848-1930)
The greatest works which the world has seen have not been dedicated to an unknown posterity, but have been produced to satisfy the daily needs of their age, and have, therefore, of necessity conformed to the tastes, and usually to the fashion and the prejudices, of the period which gave them birth.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
We are all of us prone to regard a political institution, for instance, a representative chamber, as a machine whose character can be adequately expressed by defining its legal constitution. When we have mastered this, when we know the qualification of its electors, its legislative powers, its relation to other bodies in the State, and so forth, we conceive ourselves to have mastered its theory, and to be qualified to pronounce an opinion on the way it will work in practice. But, in truth, we have only mastered a certain modicum of constitutional law; and Constitutional law may (as I have said), be in some respects, an obstacle rather than an aid, to the construction of Political Science. The second is concerned with the reality of things, the first with their form. The subject-matter of one is Natural law, of the other Statute law. The assumed line between the theory of the political machine and its practical working, either cannot be drawn at all, or cannot be drawn at the place where legal definition and enactment end. No statute, for example, provides or could provide that a popular assembly shall work through a few large and well-disciplined parties, rather than through a number of small and independent groups. Yet its habits in this respect are incomparably more important than anything in its formal constitution. No statute provides or could provide that the representatives composing it shall, on the whole, be elected from among those who do not regard politics as a means of making money. Yet the habits of the electorate in this respect are incomparably more important than any mere question of the franchise. On the other hand, the constitution of most representative assemblies does assume that the units who elect and the units who are elected shall, as among themselves, possess equal fractions of political power: and, accordingly, the law is careful to draw no distinction between them. But here, again, Law is no guide to fact. Legal equality has no necessary connection with political equivalence, and the most cursory observations, not of constitutional forms, but of the realities of life, show that organization is the inevitable accompaniment of electoral institutions, and that organization, from the very nature of the case, is absolutely incompatible with uniformity.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Thus it comes about that we are divided from the great musical creations of bygone times by more than the inevitable veil which, talk as we may of the immortality of genius, does always somewhat alter, and must, in some cases, dim our perception of the artistic work of the generations which have preceded us. Whatever be the language in which these may speak, whether that of poetry, of painting, or of music, their voices come to us across the centuries with something, be it ever so little, of a foreign accent.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Arguments may be refuted, but who, it has been asked, can answer a sneer?
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
Though no one can, I think, pretend that science does not concern itself, and properly concern itself, with facts which are not to all appearance illustrations of law, it is undoubtedly true that for those who desire to extract the greatest pleasure from science, a knowledge, however elementary, of the leading principles of investigation and the larger laws of nature, is the acquisition most to be desired.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University, December 10, 1887
Fashions have changed; tastes have altered. In music, not less than in poetry and painting, each generation desires to have, and insists on having, that which best suits its moods--which most effectually appeals to the special quality of its emotions: and this universal principle of change ... makes it necessary that the artistic productions of every age, be they better or be they worse, shall at least be different from those of the preceding one.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
While there is, to say the least, no sufficient ground for expecting that our descendants will be provided by Nature with better "organisms" than our own, it is nevertheless not impossible to suppose that they may be able to provide themselves with a much more commodious "environment." And this is not on the face of it wholly unsatisfactory; for if, on the one hand, it seems to forbid us to indulge in visions of a millennium in which there shall not only be a new heaven and a new earth, but also a new variety of the human race to enjoy them; on the other hand it permits us to hope that the efforts of successive generations may so improve the surroundings into which men are born that the community of the far future may be as much superior to us as we are to our barbarian ancestors.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses