BRIEF OUTLINE OF AN HISTORICAL SKETCH, BEING AN ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND THE SENTIMENTS OF THE HUMAN MIND WHICH HAVE THE THEORY OF HUMAN PROGRESSION. INTRODUCTION. PRELIMINARY EXPLANATION OF THE NATURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. BEFORE attempting to exhibit an argument to establish the possibility of a science of politics, and to prove also the probability that such a science may reasonably be expected to evolve at this period of man's progressive acquisition of knowledge, it is necessary to define exactly what we mean by a science of politics. Science is nature seen by the reason, and not merely by the senses. Science exists in the mind, and in the mind alone. Wherever the substantives of a science may be derived from, or whatever may be their character, they form portions of a science only as they are made to function logically in the human reason. Unless they are connected by the law of reason and consequent, so that one proposition is capable of being correctly evolved from two or more other propositions, called the premises, the science as yet has no existence, and has still to be discovered. Logic, therefore, is the universal form of all science. It is science with blank categories, and when these blank categories are filled up, either with numbers, quantities, and spaces, as in the mathematical sciences, or with the qualities and powers of matter, as in the physical sciences, mathematics and physics take their scientific origin, and assume an ordination which is not arbitrary. Science, then, wherever it is developed, is the same for the human intellect wherever that intellect can comprehend it. It abolishes diversity of credence, and reëstablishes unity of credence. We have then to ask, "What is the matter of political science?" Of what does it treat? What are its substantives? What is the general character of the truths it professes to develop? 1. It treats exclusively of men. 2. It treats exclusively of the relations between man and man. 3. It treats exclusively of the relations of men in equity. Equity or justice is the object-noun of the science of politics, as number is the object-noun of arithmetic; quantity, of algebra; space, of geometry; or value of political economy.*. * It must be observed that equity or justice is not itself capable of definition. If it were so, it could not be the object-noun of a science, as no science ever defines its object-noun. For instance, unity, quantity, space, force, matter, value, are all incapable of definition; but forms of unity, forms of quantity, forms of space, forms of force, forms of matter, forms of value, are capable of definition. Politics, then, is the science of EQUITY, and treats of the relations of MEN in equity. The fundamental fact from which its propositions derive a practical importance, is the following: "Men are capable of acting equitably or unequitably towards each other." To obliterate all unequitable (or unjust) action of one man towards another, or of one body of men towards another body of men, is therefore the practical ultimatum of the science of politics. Politics, then, professes to develop. the laws by which human actions ought to be regulated, in so far as men interfere with each other. Human actions may be viewed under various distinct aspects: 1. In their physiological aspect. In this aspect, to kill a man is to inflict such an injury on his bodily frame as causes the cessation of his functions. 2. In their economical aspect. In this aspect, to kill a man is to destroy a mechanism which possessed so much value; and, consequently, to inflict a greater or less injury to society, according to the value of the person killed. Men cost a considerable expense to On this subject we have some observations to offer hereafter; but if the reader should suppose that a science ought to define its object-noun, he has only to refer to the mathematical sciences, not one of which ever attempts to offer a definition of its noun-substantive major. Were a geometrician to offer the smallest speculation as to what space is, he would have departed altogether from the province of geometric science. Spurious definitions of value are occasionally set forth; that is, we are told not what value is, but what it does, a mode of definition altogether illicit. |