TIIE PURPOSES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. The pri mary purpose of political science is the under standing of the general laws of State life. This, however, does not involve the tracing back of political institutions to primal impulses in ani mal life and to dominant influences exerted by inanimate nature, a work which sociology and social psychology are attempting to do. Political science takes interest, motives, and purposes as it finds them, investigates their relations to each other, traces their mutual influence, and studies the political actions and institutions created by them. Thus in a modern State it will investi gate the grouping of interests in parties, observe the leading personalities who embody the pur poses of large groups of men, and study the meth ods through which these purposes are expressed in legislation and realized through administra tive action. The necessity of a scientific basis for all political study would not seem to he in need of emphasizing. Without it the doors are thrown wide open to artifieial construction, vague generalization, and the gradual sterilizing of originally fruitful concepts through meehanical repetition. Political science must constantly draw new life from the facts of history and of contemporary action.
The second purpose of political science is the understanding of the forces, forms, and practices of contemporary political life. Although the aid of history is essential toward a thorough un derstanding of contemporary institutions, a nd nute analysis of their actual workings is equally indispensable in political science. This need not
be purely empirical, but by the comparison of modes of action in various States a basis for seientitic indnetion and generalization will he furnished. This purpose will therefore best be achieved by the combination of two methods— the detailed analytical study of institutional forms and administrative technique in any one nation and the comparison of the results thus obtained with institutions and practices in other states.
A third object of political science consists in the formation of political purposes and in pro riding a basis for political action. Far from involving merely a priori reasoning about human nature and about the actions proper to it, this pursuit is concerned with the establishment of practical conclusions upon the basis of wide and accurate information. Practical life, however, differs from history and sociology. where the in. vestigator in his study of the connection of facts is led on along a seemingly endless chain of causation. Here resolutions have to be formed and action taken before the basis of induction is complete. In this aspect politics is an applied science—both normative and teleological—whieh determines the best mode of political action upon the basis of the most complete scientific informa tion procurable.