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AUDIENCES— POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
almost forgotten letter to Malone (Burke, we must not forget, was a close friend of Garrick) who had sent him his History of the Stage: 'A History of the Stage is no trivial thing to those who wish to study human nature, in all shapes and positions. It is of all things the most instructive to see not only the reflection of manners and characters, at several periods, but the modes of making this reflection, and the manner of adapting it at those periods to the taste and disposition of mankind. The Stage may be considered as the republic of active literature, and its history as the history of that State" (my italics).
There is another important passage in Burke's mature writings where he clearly reflects on the moral influence of the theatre.1 Moreover Burke draws our attention to the Athenian theatre, its audience, and 'to the moral constitution of the heart'. A more convincing argument for the principal thesis of this study can hardly be found.
Burke still had a clear conception that political and social philosophy cannot be divided into watertight compartments with no relation whatsoever to each other. It is not surprising that Alexis de Tocqueville who, as I have shown elsewhere, was deeply steeped in Burke's writings, should write the important chapter on the theatre in his De la Democratic en Amerique, which we reprint fully in our Appendix I. Perhaps Alexis de Tocqueville was the last great European political philosopher before the age of specialisation became finally triumphant.
Yet there is one notable exception amongst our contemporary specialists: Lord Keynes, the great economist.2 Perhaps he alone carries on the great European tradition that a social scientist must not necessarily confine himself to his Fach, as the Germans say. It is not just difagon de parler when we read in Lord Keynes's Treatise on Money3 a remark on Shakespeare: 'We were just in a financial position to afford Shakespeare at the moment he presented himself. ... I offer it as a thesis for examination by those who like rash generalisations, that by far the larger proportion of the world's great writers and artists have flourished in the atmosphere of buoyancy, exhilaration and the freedom from economic cares felt by the governing class which is engendered by profit inflations.'
1 Cf. Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution, ed. by F. G. Selby, London 1 900, p. 90 sq.
2 While reading the proofs of this book I must say with profound regret that the following sentences appear now as an obituary notice.
3 II, p. 154.
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