CONSERVATISM IN BRITAIN
551
down from parent to child and perhaps only in the second or third
generation achieves fruition, and only then, at the moment and place
of this late flowering, is it really
there.
Oakeshott indeed reserves some
of his finest irony for those blundering traditionalists and conserva–
tives who would fight the Rationalist with his own blunt weapons
and desperately try to develop an ideology of tradition, a technique
of conservatism-as though they can't see that such things are con–
tradictions in terms. Secondly, practical knowledge is always par–
ticular. There is no general skill we can learn that will serve us as
well in this country as in that, in one age as in another. To be wise
in politics is, roughly, to be able to do the right kind of thing in
one's own country in one's own age: it is an acquisition of 'munici–
pal,' not 'universal,' validity, and it is not therefore surprising that
the only way of acquiring it is through that most particular of all
studies, History. Thirdly, practical knowledge is in its essence non–
teleological: it eschews all conceptions of end or perfection, and so
could not possibly provide us with any final or static vision of so–
ciety by reference to which radical visions can be judged and found
wanting. Practical knowledge equips us to deal with the particular
problems and particular disharmonies of our particular society, but
it contains no method, not even potentially, for arriving at an ulti–
mate solution or for producing eternal harmony-if, that is, it even
allows us to attach significance to such expressions. In other words,
the correct form of any political question and the only form in
which it admits of an answer, is, Where do we go from here?: never,
Whither are we bound?
One very effective device in Oakeshott's style of arguing-some–
thing that couldn't altogether be kept out even of this very jejune
summary-is the way he introduces the note of personality, the typo–
logical issue, into the most abstract argument. So for instance he
doesn't say "According to Rationalism ..." or "A further implica–
tion of Rationalism is ..." but prefers "The Rationalist would
say ..." or "The Rationalist would go on to claim ...," and so
gives one the feeling that he is fighting not with a certain body of
doctrine but with a certain kind of person, i.e. the kind of person
who would take to the doctrine in question like a duck to water. Now,
it seems to me that in the nature of things the typical upholder of
any
doctrin~
is always bound to be less attractive than that doctrine
