THE _METHODS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. The sei entifie method of politics acquires its materials by the historic study of individual institutions, by the analysis of contemporary political life, by statistical investigation, and by the comparative study of institutions. On the basis of the facts thus secured it arrives by the process of induc tion at the general laws and principles of political action. The must distinctive features of this method are a sharp juristic analysis of institu tions and the discovery of true analogies in dif ferent :systems. By the application of this meth od the materials furnished by a number of aux iliary sciences are subjected to analysis and become the elements for a recomposition which results in a clear and definite grouping of social purposes in the form of political action. As the facts with which politics deals are much more definite than those of the general social sciences, and as political institutions and laws constitute, as it were, a precipitation of social forces, en dowed with great permanence and solidarity. the study of political development will always remain the backbone of historical work. Although we need not. accept Freeman's dictum that history is past polities, it. may be said that historical forces arc most clearly understood, although per haps not completely fathomed, when seen from the point of view of the growth and succession of political institutions and laws.
The principal methods auxiliary to political science are the historical, the statistical. the ex perimental. the analytical, and the deductive method. Political studies have always drawn their material chiefly from the recorded history of mankind, and are therefore assisted by the technique of the historical method—the critical scrutiny of documentary evidence and the mas tery of the laws of Cause and effect. But although politics, as indeed every other social science, has thus to make use of historical material, its problems ditTer distinctly from those of history. It is the function of history to explain a suc cession of events and actions through the dis covery of a causal relation. The function of
politics. on the other hand. is to explain a given institution through an investigation of its origins as well as through comparison with similar insti tutions elsewhere. To history all the transforma tions of a given institution are equally interest ing; to politics, only those which explain its present character. Thus in the study of the Eng lish parliamentary system of the present, politi cal science need not give consideration to the orig inal causes for instituting the British Parliament, as other causes have been substituted upon which the parliamentary r6gime is at present based. Therefore. in general, in a succession of substi tuted eouses, political science would not go back of the causes directly operative in the institution to be explained, while to history the whole series of substitutions is important.
The statistical method furnishes much valuable and trustworthy material to political science; and for the knowledge of the physical body of the State population statistics and detailed accounts of the economic products are indispensable. Sim ilarly the effect of certain modes of legislation and of political action can best be tested by a study of their numerical results; such as, for instance, the operation of the liquor laws and of laws to foster agriculture. irrigation. etc. But also the more specifically political activities may be approached by the statistical method, as when study the attendance upon elections, the votes upon constitutional amendments, aml the various groupings of political power. We must not, how ever. overlook the limitations of the quantitative method. An attempt to reduce political action entirely to quantitative form, and thus to trace it back to the working of physical causes, would result in failure, because the complex force of Sell timent, sympathy, tradition, and of other psycho logical factors cannot be quantitatively measured nor reduced with exactness to quantitative causes in the physical world.