562 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 



of the law of the land, the authority of the courts of law can, there- 

 fore, hardly coexist with the separation des pouvoirs and with the 

 system of droit administratif as it prevails in France and in coun- 

 tries which have followed the French guidances. 



Not even Anson, in saying this, asserts that foreign forms of gov- 

 ernment are necessarily inferior to the English and American con- 

 stitutions or unsuited for a civilized and free people. 1 But the 

 question of method acquires a singular importance, and the consti- 

 tutional law in Continental Europe has problems more unknown 

 among you than in England, such that we are obliged to give our 

 attention also to the question of method, as to one of the cardinal 

 points of the science. 



Struggle is always strong in the sciences and even in the practice 

 of political institutions, between idealists and sociologists, between 

 the followers of juridical method and those upholding the compara- 

 tive. The ideal method advances with the rapidity of classic 

 spirit, following every research, with an unlimited confidence, the 

 principles of the mathematic. It extracts, limits, isolates some 

 simple and general notions, it compares and combines them, and 

 from the artificial result thus obtained deduces with reason the 

 consequences it perceives to be contained therein. 2 It is the meta- 

 physical manner of proceeding, 3 or the dogmatic manner, because 

 it derives from principles elevated to dogmas 4 with an unlimited 

 faith in a truth dominating political science, and determines all its 

 solutions. From the Heaven's Star of the Persian Vishnu Das 

 and from the Republica of Plato, with their numerous imitators, 

 to the Utopia of Thomas M6re, the New Atlantis of Bacon, the 

 Oceana of Harrington, and the Cities of the Sun of Campanella, to the 

 Looking Backward of Edward Bellamy, to the Freiland of Theodor 

 Hertzka, and to the other social modern romances, we perceive 

 a wealth of literature which has deluded, seduced, deceived, and 

 corrupted humanity. 



The mathematical constitution given by J. Locke to South Caro- 

 lina or that imposed by the Jesuits in Paraguay, and in Europe 

 the aberrations of the social contract of Jean Jacques Rousseau, have 

 shown of what corruption this literature is capable. When we assert 

 with presumption that the constitutions are the work of our reason 

 which is conceiving the fundament and deducing the system, and 

 of our will, which actuated the conceits of reason; when we admit 

 that the human mind enjoys principles, absolute truths, imposed 



1 Op. tit. pp. 397, 398. 



1 Taine, II., Les Origines de la France contemporaire, vol. i. L'ancien Regime, 

 pp. 262, ct seq. 



3 Liard, La Science Politique et la Mftaphysique, p. 47. 



4 Deslandres, op. cit. vol. xy, p. 395; and more diffusively, Vacherot, E., 

 La Democratic, preface, pp. viii, ix. 



