Following the general premises laid down above, another highly significant proposition advanced by Montesquieu, in which he was thoroughly in accord with modern social theory, was that in which he relinquished the contem porary absolutism regarding social and political organization and maintained the then novel doctrine of the relativity of the excellence of institutions. The excellence and effectiveness of laws and of social and political institutions he held to be dependent not upon any intrinsic superiority, but upon their specific adaptability to the particular social environment in which they are found or in which they may be in tended for application. Now the social en vironment, according to Montesquieu, is essen tially determined by the historical conditions of the development of the particular society and by the surrounding physical environment. In accordance with this type of reasoning he endeavored to discover and indicate the relative excellence of the different forms of law, politi cal organization and social institutions among the diverse peoples of the earth according to their relation to the various conditions of the physical environment and the resulting national of social and political phenomena, and he pre sented what was by far the most complete and accurate interpretation of social processes and political institutions in terms of environmental influences that had been developed by any traits and customs. This led him into the most comprehensive inductive and descriptive study writer. His treatment of the significance of climatic conditions upon mankind was especially exhaustive and has had a wide influence. But while Montesquieu's studies along this line gave an added impetus to the development of that school of ((environmentalists° which has been most notably represented by Ritter, Buckle, Ratzel, Semple and Huntington, his theories were by no means original. As Dedieu has re cently shown in a most convincing manner, Montesquieu took over his environmental theories bodily from the English physician Arbuthnot's 'Essays on the Effects of Air on Human Bodies> and drew his descriptive ma terial almost wholly from Chardin's (Travels in Persia.> While Montesquieu has received the respect ful attention of sociological writers chiefly on account of his emphasis upon the element of descriptive analysts and his environmental theories, his past reputation and his present notoriety among political theorists has been founded upon his famous doctrine of the sep aration of governmental powers as the chief safeguard of political liberty. This theory, again, was not original as it was taken almost directly from Locke's differentiation of the powers of government into the legislative, executive and federative branches; but Mon tesquieu brought his analysis more into har mony with modern political terminology, and his treatment was so vigorous and elaborate that the doctrine has become inseparably con nected with his name. Accepting this tripartite division of governmental powers as a logical and fundamental necessity, Montesquieu argued that each function must be exercised by a sep arate and independent organ if any guarantee of political liberty was to be secured by the cit izens. This famous doctrine was deeply ab sorbed by the framers of the Constitution of the United States, and it was given a more impor tant place in that document than any other single dogma of political science. Famous and
influential as this theory may have been, how ever, it is now generally recognized to be his torically inaccurate and practically unworkable. Montesquieu derived his dogma from a super ficial study of the externals of the English Con stitution, while, in reality, by 1748 the totality of governmental powers in England had be come absorbed by the single branch of the Parliament and the Cabinet, viewed as a com mittee of the Parliament. Not only was it thus, in its origin and derivation, the result of a misinterpretation, but, as Professors Ford, Goodnow and Powell have so clearly pointed out, it has proved unworkable in practice : and most of the advances which the United States has made in effective national administration since 1787 been effected by gradually break ing away from the practical application of the doctrine of the separation and independence of governmental powers.
One more specific contribution made through the