His sole wish is to discover the right side in each contested issue, and to fix upon the best man among competing candidates.

His common sense, aided by a knowledge of the constitution of his country, enables him to judge wisely between the arguments submitted to him, while his own zeal is sufficient to carry him to the polling booth.'[35] [35] Ostrogorski, vol.i.p.

xliv.
A few lines further on Mr.Bryce refers to 'the democratic ideal of the intelligent independence of the individual voter, an ideal far removed from the actualities of any State.' What does Mr.Bryce mean by 'ideal democracy'?
If it means anything it means the best form of democracy which is consistent with the facts of human nature.

But one feels, on reading the whole passage, that Mr.
Bryce means by those words the kind of democracy which might be possible if human nature were as he himself would like it to be, and as he was taught at Oxford to think that it was.

If so, the passage is a good instance of the effect of our traditional course of study in politics.
No doctor would now begin a medical treatise by saying, 'the ideal man requires no food, and is impervious to the action of bacteria, but this ideal is far removed from the actualities of any known population.' No modern treatise on pedagogy begins with the statement that 'the ideal boy knows things without being taught them, and his sole wish is the advancement of science, but no boys at all like this have ever existed.' And what, in a world where causes have effects and effects causes, does 'intelligent independence' mean?
Mr.Herman Merivale, successively Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, under-Secretary for the Colonies, and under-Secretary for India, wrote in 1861: 'To retain or to abandon a dominion is not an issue which will ever be determined on the mere balance of profit and loss, or on the more refined but even less powerful motives supplied by abstract political philosophy.