Note (return) — Chapter IV

Mr. Bryce has been perhaps prevented by the presence in his mind of such a half-belief from making that constructive contribution to general political science for which he is better equipped than any other man of his time. 'I am myself,' he says in the same Introduction, 'an optimist, almost a professional optimist, as indeed politics would be intolerable were not a man grimly resolved to see between the clouds all the blue sky he can.'[37] Imagine an acknowledged leader in chemical research who, finding that experiment did not bear out some traditional formula, should speak of himself as nevertheless 'grimly resolved' to see things from the old and comfortable point of view!