massed and generalized; desires felt simultaneously and continuously by thousands, or even by millions of men, who are by them simultaneously moved to concerted action. They are desires of what we may call the social mind in distinction from the individual mind, and they are chiefly for such ideal things as national power and renown, or conditions of liberty and peace. Transmuted into will, they become the phenomenon of sovereignty- the obedience-compelling power of the state. Political science describes these gigantic forces of the social mind and studies their action; but it concerns itself with their genesis no more than political economy concerns itself with the genesis of individual desires. It simply assumes for every nation a national character, and is content that the political constitution of the state can be scientifically deduced from the character assumed. It takes the fact of sovereignty and builds upon it, and does not speculate how sovereignty came to be, as did Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau. It starts exactly where Aristotle started, with the dictum that man is a political animal. 6. Political science and history. In the presidential address delivered by the Right Honorable James Bryce before a joint meeting of the American Political Science Association and the American Historical Association, held at Washington, D.C., January 28, 1908, the relation of political science to history was discussed as follows: Now let us see what the materials of Political Science are. They are the acts of men as recorded in history. In other words they are such parts of history as relate to the structure and government of communities. Political Science takes all the facts that history gives us on this subject and rearranges them under proper heads, describing institutions and setting forth those habits of men and tendencies of human nature which correspond to what in the sphere of inanimate nature we call natural laws. Thus Political Science may be defined as the data of political history reclassified and explained as the result of certain general principles. It is not any more a science than history is, because its certainty is no greater than the certainty of history. But whereas history takes the form of a record of facts and tendencies as they have occurred or shown themselves in past times, Political Science assumes the form of a systematic statement of the most important facts belonging to the political department of history, stringing these facts (so to speak) upon the thread of the principles which run through them. They are so disposed and arranged as to enable us more easily to comprehend what we call the laws that govern human nature in political communities, so that we can see these laws as a whole in their permanent action and can apply what we have learned from history to the phenomena of to-day and to-morrow. Thus Political Science stands midway between history and politics, between the past and the present. It has drawn its materials from the one, it has to apply them to the other. . . . From among the maxims which might be laid down for the student who wishes to turn political history into political science, I select three: He must be critical: must test his sources of information: never get his data at second-hand if he can (without too much expenditure of time) get them at first-hand. He must beware of superficial resemblances. So-called historical parallels are usually interesting, often illuminative. But they are often misleading. History never repeats itself. He must endeavor to disengage the personal or accidental from the general causes at work. By the personal cause I mean the presence of some wholly exceptional man who so much affects the situation as to disturb all calculations. People are wont to say that the time or the need produces the man. That is not true. The man often appears quite outside what people call the natural course of things: and often does not appear when the natural course of things seems to require him. He is, not indeed in reality, for there is no chance in Nature, but so far as our knowledge goes, an accident, i.e. the product of antecedents altogether unknown and unknowable. Only in a broad and rough sort of way can we say how much is due to the presence of such a person (or group of persons) and how much to the general causes at work. 7. Political science and history. The late Sir J. R. Seeley, in his lectures on political science before his students at Cambridge, was accustomed to introduce his subject by showing that history, since various of its phases were being shared by other sciences, tended to be limited specifically to a study of states.1 It is the first aphorism in the system of political science which I am about to expound to you, that this science is not a thing distinct from history but inseparable from it. To call it a part of history might do some violence to the usage of language, but I may venture to say that history without political science is a study incomplete, truncated, as on the other hand political science without history is hollow and baselessone word: History without political science has no fruit; 1 By permission of The Macmillan Company. or in In my view a science has for a very long time past been insensibly growing up by the side of history, and every one has perceived that it has some connection with history, and must draw a great part of materials from history; this is political science. On the other side, within the department of history itself, it has been more and more felt that the accumulation of facts suggested the possibility of a science; what was to be done with them if no generalizations were possible which might reduce them to order? But all this time it has been overlooked that the science which lay so near to history was itself the very science which historians were calling out for. . . . When, twenty years ago, Mr. Buckle succeeded in flashing upon the English mind the notion of a science of history, he threatened us with a revolution in historical writing. We were to read henceforth comparatively little about governments and parliaments and wars; history was to resolve itself into a discussion of the physical environment of a people, the climate, the geography, the food. The view I present, you see, is different, and it is not at all revolutionary. I do not dispute the importance of those physical inquiries, and the results of them must be used by the historian; but his own province, according to me, is distinct. He is not an anthropologist or an ethnologist, but if I may coin a word, he is a politicist. The political group or organism — the state is his study. On this principle it will appear that historians hitherto, instead of being wrong in the main, have been right in the main. Their researches into legislation and the growth of institutions have laid a firm basis for the first part of political science, which is concerned with the classification and analysis of states. Their investigation of wars, conquests, alliances, federations, have laid a basis for the second part, that which is concerned with the action of states upon each other. 8. Political science and economics. Seligman gives the following strong statement of the close relation existing between political science and economics: The study of politics or the science of the state has gone through several stages. For a long time history was dominated by the "great man" theory of politics; attention was centered chiefly in the kings and the battles, the court intrigues and military problems. At a later period more emphasis was put on the development of institutions compared. with which any individual, however eminent, was insignificant. Finally, it was recognized that political life itself is closely intertwined with the economic life, and that the forms as well as the practices of government are profoundly influenced by the conditions of production as well as by those of distribution. Economic facts would then be the cause; political phenomena the result. On the other hand, since all modern economic action is carried on within the framework of the state, when we deal with any practical economic institution no final solution of the problem can be reached until the effect of the political condition be weighed. In discussing the economic consequences of government ownership, for instance, the status of the governmental civil service is a potent consideration. Political facts may profoundly modify the economic conditions, instead of being modified by them. While, therefore, politics deals with the relation of the individual to the government, and economics with one aspect of the relations of individuals to each other, there is almost always a distinct interaction between the two. It is a necessity for the publicist to comprehend the economic basis of political evolution; it is the business. of the economist to remember the political conditions which affect economic phenomena. What has been said of politics applies with still greater force to jurisprudence. All systems of law are in the main the crystallization of longcontinued social usage. Social customs are coeval with the origin and growth of society itself; the mandatory force of the positive law comes at a later stage in the evolution. The unwritten gradually turns into the written law, until the positive enactment is invested with the sanction of a sovereign command. As society develops, the law is in a perpetual process of change. No code is final; it always represents a given stage of social life. The law is the outward manifestation; the social, and especially the economic, fact is the living force. The formal juristic conception may remain the same; its content must be modified by every change of economic life. Legal history is really a handmaid to economic history; legal development is inexplicable apart from economic forces. The economic fact in this sense is the cause; the legal situation is the result. At any given moment, however, economic phenomena take place within a legal framework. The elemental forces of economic life cannot indeed in the long run be conditioned by legal forms; but the law may for a time hold in check, or give a new direction to, economic forces. Take as an example the English law of primogeniture and of entailed estates as compared with the French laws which have led to the system of small farms. History is full of instances where the law has for good or for evil affected the economic environment. Just because the economic life, however, is prior to the legal system, there is always, at any given moment, the danger of a lack of harmony between the two. It is in the interval between the economic changes and the readjustment of the legal facts that the influence of law upon economics is keenly felt. Life indeed consists of a perpetual adaptation of outward forms to inner forces, and thus the economic basis of a legal system is really the important fact to the social philosopher. In practical life, however, we deal with outward forms, and thus the legal shape of the economic relations must never be lost from sight. In economics and jurisprudence there is continual action and reaction. 9. Political science and ethics. The following paragraph, entitled The Moral Value of the State, suggests the important relation of political science to ethics. If then we take modern social life in its broadest extent, as including not only what has become institutionalized and more or less fossilized, but also what is still growing (forming and re-forming), we may justly say that it is as true of progressive as of stationary society, that the moral and the social are one. The virtues of the individual in a progressive society are more reflective, more critical, involve more exercise of comparison and selection, than in customary society. But they are just as socially conditioned in their origin and as socially directed in their manifestation. In rudimentary societies, customs furnish the highest ends of achievement; they supply the principles of social organization and combination; and they form binding laws whose breach is punished. The moral, political, and legal are not differentiated. But village communities and city states, to say nothing of kingdoms and empires and modern national States, have developed special organs and special regulations for maintaining social unity and public order. Small groups are usually firmly welded together and are exclusive. They have a narrow but intense social code: - like a patriarchal family, a gang, a social set, they are clannish. But when large number of such groups come together within a more inclusive social unity, some institution grows up to represent the interests and activities of the whole as against the narrow and centrifugal tendencies of the constituent factors. A society is then politically organized; and a true public order with its comprehensive laws is brought into existence. The moral importance of the development of this public point of view, with its extensive common purposes and with a general will for maintaining them, can hardly be overestimated. Without such organization society and hence morality would remain sectional, jealous, suspicious, unfraternal. Sentiments of intense cohesion within would have been conjoined with equally strong sentiments of indifference, intolerance, and hostility to those without. In the wake of the formation |