ABSTRACT
The central truth is the insight that there is no adequate rational explanation for the existence and effective working of government, much less for good or fairly good government. Moreover, apart from a few gross and almost self-evident cases, no one has found a purely rational theory to explain why some governments, though very different from each other, do well, whereas others, though closely similar, do badly. Government is then in part, though only in part, non-rational. Neither the source nor the justification of government can be put in wholly rational terms. According to the level of civilization in the peoples among whom they are current, the various political formulas may be based either upon supernatural beliefs or upon concepts which, if they do not correspond to positive realities, at least appear to be rational. Americans are fortunate in knowing the purposes of government, from which knowledge we may judge the quality of a particular government's performance.
