THE METHOD OF POLITICAL REASONING The traditional method of political reasoning has inevitably shared the defects of its subject-matter.

In thinking about politics we seldom penetrate behind those simple entities which form themselves so easily in our minds, or approach in earnest the infinite complexity of the actual world.

Political abstractions, such as Justice, or Liberty, or the State, stand in our minds as things having a real existence.

The names of political species, 'governments,' or 'rights,' or 'Irishmen,' suggest to us the idea of single 'type specimens'; and we tend, like medieval naturalists, to assume that all the individual members of a species are in all respects identical with the type specimen and with each other.
In politics a true proposition in the form of 'All A is B' almost invariably means that a number of individual persons or things possess the quality B in degrees of variation as numerous as are the individuals themselves.

We tend, however, under the influence of our words and the mental habits associated with them to think of A either as a single individual possessing the quality B, or as a number of individuals equally possessing that quality.