THE LITERATURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. It has been intimated with some truth that politics has not as yet fully made good its claim to rank as a science, because political literature lacks that succession of effort which constitutes the progres sive element in the natural sciences. In the latter an investigator will take up the work where his predecessor has left off. In politics there has been no such development by successive, long Con tinued effort; any writer considers himself well qualified to contribute a valuable discussion on a subject with which all men of common sense are supposed to be competent to deal. In fact. some of the most fatuous writers on polities. such as. for instance, Locke and Rousseau, had no cal or legal training whatever. In many eases great philosophers have aimed to give complete ness to their general system of thought by con, strutting a part on political science, which is, however, in such cases usually composed merely of deductions from general theoretical principles.
The constitutional studies of Aristotle and the principles developed in his Polities form a sound basis for the science of the State; but, unfortu nately, he had no successors to carry on the work in his spirit for almost two thousand years.
During the Middle Ages Aristotle exercised a profound influence upon scholastic philosophy, which followed his doctrines very closely. Machi avelli took up the thread, and on the basis of a keen study of political facts, both in the rec ords of Roman history and in the life of hi, own times, constructed his principles of practical polities. His work is founded upon actual ob servation, but, like Adam Smith, he deals ex clusively with certain definite human activities and characteristics to the exclusion of all others, and constructs for us the Political Man—ani mated solely by the will to gain political power. Jean Bodin lived in the thick of the religious struggles in France, and his work is a direct result of the need he felt for a definite basis of authority in the shifting circumstances of his time. His theory of sovereignty may be called the portal of modern political science, because it first clearly focuses all political action in the sovereign and places the source of political power within the State itself; hut the theory is pri marily juristic and has given rise subsequently, to ninny theoretical constructions which do not accurately express the forces of political life.
Three of the great philosophers of the seventeenth century, Hobbes. Spinoza. and Locke, developed political theory as a part of their philosophical system; but, though start big from similar prem ises. they arrive at entirely different conclusions. The thought of their age was primarily mathe matical, and their method is purely deductive, developing a system of political structure from a few principles assumed as axiomatic, in the man ner of a theorem in geometry. The impulse which was given at this time to the mathematical sci ences. and through them to the physical, led to an effort on the part of Alontesquieu to explain the connection between political institutions and physical environment. Scientific in the sense of basing his results upon induction from facts, Montesquieu lacks the critical spirit of the His torical School and is often captivated by mere fanciful analogies. Burke has a scientific con ception of politics in the sense of seeing in insti tutions a natural development and of basing his political principles upon a careful study of politi cal experience; but he idealizes the past and looks upon the present rather with the eyes of the statesman who is Ilefending certain forms of political life than in the spirit of the scientific investigator. Rousseau, Kant, and the entire Classical Liberal School. are all given to a priori reasoning; taking as their starting point the ra tional individual, they endeavor to construct a system of government in which his independence may be preserved. The fact that llousseau's the ory has by varying interpretations been made the basis of Liberalism, of democracy, and even of State socialism indieates the ease with whieh the deductive method may be used to produce any result desired.