---
title: Preface
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/01-preface/
description: Preface, from Human Nature in Politics by Graham Wallas.
section: FRAME
---

![Illustration: a pre-1914 imperial intelligence-dossier collage of colonial telegraph logs, sepia field photography and empire maps.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-pre1914.jpg)

[Library](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/) · Book · [Human Nature in Politics](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/)

# Preface

This text

- **Work:** [Human Nature in Politics](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/)
- **Author:** Graham Wallas
- **Published:** 1908

Full details

- **Rights:** First published in Britain in 1908 and this text printed no later than 1920, so in the public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Project Gutenberg marks the ebook public domain in the USA. Wallas died in 1932, so the British term ended in 2003.

Chapters

1. [Preface](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/01-preface/)
2. [Preface to the Second Edition](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/02-preface-to-the-second-edition/)
3. [Preface to the Third Edition (1920)](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/03-preface-to-the-third-edition-1920/)
4. [Introduction](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/04-introduction/)
5. Part I: The Conditions of the Problem
6. [Part I, Chapter 1: Impulse and Instinct in Politics](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/05-part-i-chapter-1-impulse-and-instinct-in-politic/)
7. [Part I, Chapter 2: Political Entities](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/06-part-i-chapter-2-political-entities/)
8. [Part I, Chapter 3: Non-rational Inference in Politics](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/07-part-i-chapter-3-non-rational-inference-in-polit/)
9. [Part I, Chapter 4: The Material of Political Reasoning](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/08-part-i-chapter-4-the-material-of-political-reaso/)
10. [Part I, Chapter 5: The Method of Political Reasoning](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/09-part-i-chapter-5-the-method-of-political-reasoni/)
11. Part II: Possibilities of Progress
12. [Part II, Chapter 1: Political Morality](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/10-part-ii-chapter-1-political-morality/)
13. [Part II, Chapter 2: Representative Government](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/11-part-ii-chapter-2-representative-government/)
14. [Part II, Chapter 3: Official Thought](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/12-part-ii-chapter-3-official-thought/)
15. [Part II, Chapter 4: Nationality and Humanity](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/13-part-ii-chapter-4-nationality-and-humanity/)

[← About this text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/) [Preface to the Second Edition →](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/02-preface-to-the-second-edition/)

I offer my thanks to several friends who have been kind enough to read the proofs of this book, and to send me corrections and suggestions; among whom I will mention Professors John Adams and J.H. Muirhead, Dr. A. Wolf, and Messrs. W.H. Winch, Sidney Webb, L. Pearsall Smith, and A.E. Zimmern. It is, for their sake, rather more necessary than usual for me to add that some statements still remain in the text which one or more of them would have desired to see omitted or differently expressed.

I have attempted in the footnotes to indicate those writers whose books I have used. But I should like to record here my special obligation to Professor William James's *Principles of Psychology*, which gave me, a good many years ago, the conscious desire to think psychologically about my work as politician and teacher.

I have been sometimes asked to recommend a list of books on the psychology of politics. I believe that at the present stage of the science, a politician will gain more from reading, in the light of his own experience, those treatises on psychology which have been written without special reference to politics, than by beginning with the literature of applied political psychology. But readers who are not politicians will find particular points dealt with in the works of the late Monsieur G. Tarde, especially *L'Opinion et la Foule* and *Les Lois de l'Imitation* and in the books quoted in the course of an interesting article on 'Herd Instinct,' by Mr. W. Trotter in the *Sociological Review* for July 1908. The political psychology of the poorer inhabitants of a great city is considered from an individual and fascinating point of view by Miss Jane Addams (of Chicago) in her *Democracy and Social Ethics*.

GRAHAM WALLAS.

[← About this text](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/) [Preface to the Second Edition →](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/02-preface-to-the-second-edition/)

Human Nature in Politics, Graham Wallas. First published in Britain in 1908 and this text printed no later than 1920, so in the public domain in the United States (published before 1931); Project Gutenberg marks the ebook public domain in the USA. Wallas died in 1932, so the British term ended in 2003. [Provenance and rights](https://propagandaarchive.org/library/wallas-human-nature-in-politics-1908/).