POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 311 







same that it ever has been, and always will be, so long as it exists 

 at all. Those who deny this (as does, for instance, Professor Howe, 

 who says that "it is impossible to formulate a political terminology 

 applicable to all times and to all countries ") deny not only the pos- 

 sibility of a philosophy of politics in any sense of the word, but, by 

 necessary implication, deny the possibility of framing definitions in 

 political science whose validity may be unquestionably accepted. 

 If law and sovereignty change at different times, not only in form but 

 in character, what criteria are afforded for determining at any given 

 time what their real characters are, and therefore the tests by which 

 their presence may be infallibly detected; or what possible basis 

 is there left for comparison between institutions of different times 

 or of the same time, but among nations upon different planes of 

 civilization? What hope will there be, reasoning from such a basis, 

 of finally determining political legitimacy in any individual case, or of 

 founding systems of constitutional law or international procedure 

 upon anything but empirical and therefore largely arbitrary bases? 



A .survey of the history of political speculation shows that, up to 

 comparatively recent times, political philosophy received almost no 

 attention upon what we have termed its analytical side. The ideal, 

 the ethical, or, as one might almost say, the metaphysical method, 

 saw the one almost exclusively followed. The nature of the state, 

 and especially its relation to the church, its ethical right to existence, 

 the legitimate sphere and content of its law, the character and 

 extent of the authority properly exercisable by its rulers, and the 

 reciprocal rights and duties of its subjects, these, rather than the 

 examination of the ideas of sovereignty and law as positive legal 

 concepts, were the questions that were over and over again discussed, 

 and the answers to them sought not in a utilitarian consideration of 

 existing needs and conditions, but in purely subjective examinations 

 of the essential nature of men and the contents and character of 

 divine or natural law. 



Thus, during all this time, political philosophy, in so far as it was 

 not theological or metaphysical, was ideal or ethical. Its inquiries 

 extended little beyond the domain of Naturrecht or Naturrecktlehre. 

 The existence of these so-called natural laws, absolutely binding in 

 their force, and possible of exact and definite statement, being 

 assumed, speculators, one after another, essayed the elaboration of 

 codes of conduct that should govern rulers and ruled in the es- 

 tablishment, organization, and maintenance of political relations. 

 Absoluteness was the one characteristic of all the systems that were 

 elaborated. Ideal forms of government, applicable at all times and 

 to all peoples, and systems of law, complete, and in conscience 

 absolutely binding upon every one, were almost uniformly the results 

 reached. Being almost purely subjective in character, the freest 



