The statesman who places before himself these lofty aims has undertaken
a task which will call forth all his powers. He must control himself
before he can control others; he must know mankind before he can manage
them. He has no private likes or dislikes; he does not conceal personal
enmity under the disguise of moral or political principle: such
meannesses, into which men too often fall unintentionally, are absorbed
in the consciousness of his mission, and in his love for his country
and for mankind. He will sometimes ask himself what the next generation
will say of him; not because he is careful of posthumous fame, but
because he knows that the result of his life as a whole will then be
more fairly judged. He will take time for the execution of his plans;
not hurrying them on when the mind of a nation is unprepared for them;
but like the Ruler of the Universe Himself, working in the appointed
time, for he knows that human life, “if not long in comparison with
eternity” (Republic), is sufficient for the fulfilment of many great
purposes. He knows, too, that the work will be still going on when he
is no longer here; and he will sometimes, especially when his powers
are failing, think of that other “city of which the pattern is in
heaven” (Republic).
The false politician is the serving-man of the state. In order to
govern men he becomes like them; their “minds are married in
conjunction;” they “bear themselves” like vulgar and tyrannical
masters, and he is their obedient servant. The true politician, if he
would rule men, must make them like himself; he must “educate his
party” until they cease to be a party; he must breathe into them the
spirit which will hereafter give form to their institutions. Politics
with him are not a mechanism for seeming what he is not, or for
carrying out the will of the majority. Himself a representative man, he
is the representative not of the lower but of the higher elements of
the nation. There is a better (as well as a worse) public opinion of
which he seeks to lay hold; as there is also a deeper current of human
affairs in which he is borne up when the waves nearer the shore are
threatening him. He acknowledges that he cannot take the world by
force—two or three moves on the political chess board are all that he
can fore see—two or three weeks moves on the political chessboard are
all that he can foresee—two or three weeks or months are granted to him
in which he can provide against a coming struggle. But he knows also
that there are permanent principles of politics which are always
tending to the well-being of states—better administration, better
education, the reconciliation of conflicting elements, increased
security against external enemies. These are not “of to-day or
yesterday,” but are the same in all times, and under all forms of
government. Then when the storm descends and the winds blow, though he
knows not beforehand the hour of danger, the pilot, not like Plato’s