Sheldon Amos

“ A science need not be built on universal, nor even upon general, propositions; and partial, particular, or even probable premises may justify conclusions, drawn with logical correctness, which may be a firm basis for action. Where truths are by their nature restricted in time and place, or where evidence is yet lacking to demonstrate their actual generality, the assemblage of such truths will carry with it a fragmentary and hypothetical character which may to some seem incompatible with the rigid demands of Science. ”

“ The obstacles to at once applying even the best-established principles of government, in all conceivable emergencies, so soon as conscious attention happens to be awakened to the national needs, are sufficiently obvious. It is not only that the principles themselves usually demand modification in view of the circumstances of the people and of the day, but that the greatest allowance must always be made in all political reforms for the influence of fixed sentiments and habits. ”

“ It is obvious that the characteristic classes of facts, which have just been alluded to, are so general and simple, that their necessary occurrence at a certain epoch, in the progress of every state, may be predicted as a certainty. These facts, however, in themselves, are of the utmost possible moment, and involve, by their permanence and universality, the elementary ingredients of a science of law. ”

“ In the case of such states, the heart of the people, as estimated from generation to generation, has been sound, and the heads of their rulers wise. The laws have gradually been adapted to promote individual liberty, and not to impair it; and the province of government has been so mapped out as to make the government an institution conducive to the good of the people, and not a mere organ for the sacrifice of a nation to a class. ”

“ Probably the most real and enduring objection to the claims of Politics to assume the rank of a true science is the confessedly immature and imperfectly developed character of the component or preparatory studies, apart from which, in their combination with each other, the study of Politics can not be pursued. It has already been noticed that the complex and composite nature of political studies is of itself a presumption against the facility, if not against the possibility, of ever imparting to those studies the rigorous certainty essential to Science. ”

“ It appears, then, that not only does the imminent necessity for immediate action present serious obstacles to the pursuit of a policy founded on the teachings of critical observation and a wide-reaching experience—that is, on science—but the mere fact that statesmen are constantly impelled to act at once in directions which very imperfectly correspond to their own conceptions of what is really best throws a shadow of doubt and uncertainty over the scientific character of the studies concerned. ”

“ It has been very generally held that governments have been created by violence or accident, and have reflected the vices of their origin in the reckless selfishness of their legislation. It has been said again and again that force is the origin of all social institutions, and that the modes of directing that force have been determined in every state by the chance breath of political caprice or passion. ”

“ Akin to the token which the enlarged use of statistics affords of the growing recognition of Politics as a true science, is the ever-increasing disposition, at the present day, to await, at any political crisis, whether legislative or administrative, the result of a patient examination of evidence as to the state of the facts and the previous history of the question. ”

“ Thus, in the science of political economy, it is not universally true that, in all conditions of society, population tends to increase out of proportion to the means of subsistence; for the effective desire of individual self-enrichment constitutes in certain conditions a reparative and compensating force. So in law, it is not everywhere true that a human being is, in a legal sense, a person and not a thing ”

“ The statesman, in the one case as in the other, is bound to act—and this too without delay; and, though a scientific resolution can not be excluded, yet, from one cause or another, the temptations to deviate to this or that side are numerous and urgent. There have indeed been statesmen who have so far impressed their own personality on their policy, and communicated their views and aspirations to the bulk of the governing population that, at special exigencies, the public confidence previously won has enabled them to dictate a course scarcely comprehended by the people at large. ”

“ But, in the second place, if the researches of historians and the reports of travelers contain an endless and boundless mass of facts which seem rather to increase the list of human eccentricities than to reduce it by discovering a dominant order and an integral unit of progress and purpose, yet here again the problem of finding a scientific form for the theory of government is on the whole simplified rather than otherwise. ”

“ But the main basis of the arguments are the elements of human nature itself, as they are written, not only in the venerable documents of ancient history, but on the face of every traveler's narrative, of every ancient body of laws, of every honored institution subsisting in the midst of the national life of the most advanced countries of Europe. ”

“ It is, then, in this identity of structure of human society in every state, that law discovers for itself the basis of its constantly-recurrent methods of classification and its unchangeable conceptions. There are, however, certain other more obvious grounds for the permanence and invariability of legal ideas and methods which follow from the identity of man's physical, logical, and ethical structure in all times and in all parts of the world, within the limits to which observation has hitherto extended. ”

“ Could such a casualty occur without being long foreseen in a country enjoying a popular constitution, the question of remedies would be instantly debated in every kind of public assembly, and by all the organs of public opinion, with a ferment of party zeal which would daily gain in heat and vehemence, and would impel statesmen to select with over-much precipitation between the limited number of remedial measures which enjoyed, for one cause or another, the popular favor. ”

“ Nevertheless, it has become the fashion for all the more advanced Governments to rival each other in the breadth, fullness, arrangement, and clearness of the numerical information they obtain on all the groups of national facts which are susceptible of being tabulated in a systematic shape. These tables of statistics are periodically furnished by the Government, not only for purposes of contemplated legislation, but independently of all thought of immediate use. ”

“ For not only do custom and habit enable a people, or classes of a people, to work in long-established grooves with the smallest amount of friction and obstruction, but the mere fact of the long existence of a familiar usage so far fashions in its own image the mind and even the conscience of a people that a critical reformer has a hard and unpopular task to perform in assaulting even the most indefensible abuses. ”

“ At a very early period in the history of the community, the interest that each citizen has in the wise and effectual regulation of such matters as these becomes conspicuous to all, and more especially to those usually, or, on the average, more advanced and intelligent members of the community who find themselves charged, through, it may be, a series of political vicissitudes, with the duties of government. ”

“ It often, indeed, happens that after a laborious investigation, lasting for months or even for years, the popular interest in the once advocated policy is found to be exhausted, or diverted into new directions, and the thought of new legislation is abandoned, and a voluminous, costly, and invaluable report cast on one side. ”

“ The unscientific character of a policy adopted at any crisis has often been an exact measure of the amount of external pressure applied through the competition of factions, or through the impetuosity of a populace only jaded into an unwonted attention to political affairs by exceptional events. ”

“ Where this pressure is not at hand, rulers still may, indeed, through unworthy influences and motives, prefer the worse to the better way; but enough instances of the persistent maintenance of a deliberately adopted policy in the face of the most seductive allurements to fluctuation have been exhibited to show that it can not be fairly alleged that Politics must necessarily be unscientific because few in the real business of life have time, or liberty, or tenacity of purpose, sufficient to withstand the impetuous torrent of popular zeal generated by sudden crises or catastrophes. ”

“ On the one hand, the exact methods and indisputable conclusions of the sciences concerned with matter have inaugurated modes of study and inquiry which are believed to be of universal application. On the other hand, the standard of rigorous logic in all studies is so far exalted that those subjects of thought or investigation which do not conform to identically the same standard as that maintained for the study of matter are thought to be not worth pursuing with any regard to the claims of a severe logical process. ”

“ Admitting, as a provisional and practical postulate, the freedom of the human will, it might indeed seem to be impossible, on the face of it, to bring within the domain of stringent scientific methods any class of materials largely conversant with the direct actions and emotions of mankind. ”

“ Over the latter side, that touching the thoughts and feelings of individual members, the utmost direct pressure, consciously exerted by the community, is of the feeblest efficacy, and, at the best, indefinite and precarious in the highest degree. The sphere of action of the community, with respect to the former, or the acts of men, is that of law. The sphere of action with respect to the latter, that is, the thoughts and feelings, though not exclusive of acts, is morality. The relations of these two spheres to each other will be investigated in the next chapter. ”

“ So vast is the number of individual persons interested in these classes of matters, so well habituated are they, and consequently so deeply attached, to the recognized forms, usages, or even gestures, customarily in use—many of which are of a public nature and are daily witnessed by all men—that any vital reconstruction seems little short of sacrilege, and the most conclusive reasons in favor of it are scarcely comprehensible. ”

“ It is obvious that, according to this view, there can only be a Science of Law in a very restricted sense. In the largest sense of the expression there can be none. Instead of law having any precise and determined character impressed upon it and upon its operation, through the existence of a certain number of immovable social institutions, which react back as effectually upon law as law acts upon them, these institutions are nothing more than the creations of law itself, or rather the accidental shadows which law happens to cast. ”

“ It is needless to point out that the conception of Politics as a Science is much affected by the imperfections of Politics as a practical Art. It is not only by reason of the existence of ineradicable institutions and ideas that the scientific development of political studies is hampered and delayed. ”

“ It appears that the characteristic energy of every state consists in the reciprocal influence upon each other of the corporate whole, and the constituent elements, in respect of certain definitely assignable classes of human action. These classes of action will either have reference to things or physical substances, as objects of ownership or use, or have no such reference. The actually subsisting relationship to each other of the corporate whole, and the constituent personal elements, depends upon the form of government which casually happens to prevail. ”

“ It will be noticed that there are two distinct conceptions of human society which are both possible, if not both true, and that the existence of a Science of Law follows as a necessary consequence of the adoption of one conception, but does not follow from the adoption of the other. ”

“ These last-mentioned institutions have seldom been radically altered in any country by any process short of revolution, however persuasive the voice of right, of reason, and of utility, in favor of change. ”

“ The aggregate result is that the subject of Politics floats in the public mind either as a mere field for ingenious chicane or as a boundless waste for the evolutions of scholastic phantasy. If Politics are to be vindicated from the aspersions cast upon them from the opposite quarters here indicated, and are ever to be erected into a science, with its own appropriate methods and limitations, the foundation of these skeptical suspicions must be investigated and their real value strictly assessed. ”

“ But what is of importance to notice in this place is that the growing disposition to consult past and surrounding facts before inaugurating change belongs to the strictly scientific habit of mind; and if it is true that much laborious investigation seems for the time to be thrown away, yet it seldom happens that complicated and far-reaching changes are encountered without the assistance of a previous impartial and deliberate inquiry of the kind here adverted to. The scientific method, in Politics as elsewhere, is slowly and surely getting the better of the empiric. ”

“ As explorations of all sorts are multiplied and extend, they take the place of the logical instrument of experiment; and the result of them is, that a limited number of propositions are evolved which admit of being announced with a fair assurance of their universality. If the area of observation be limited, the truths reached will, indeed, be proportionately restricted in number, but within this area they will be none the less valid. ”

“ It is felt, not unreasonably, that if those who are most concerned to be acquainted with the best methods of political research forbear to turn these methods to account at the moment of the utmost need, this is at least as likely to result from the inherently imperfect and illogical nature of the branch of knowledge in question as from any other cause. ”

“ The tone of public thought and sentiment becomes proportionately infected, and all the claims which might otherwise be asserted on behalf of Politics to take its place, by the side of other sciences dealing with such moral elements as the human Will meet with a skeptical repudiation.
Where free representative institutions are not found, and absolutism of one type or another prevails, the way is more open for a deliberate choice of the policy to be pursued in any sudden emergency. ”

“ A Science of Politics, indeed, has its own special sources of embarrassment, owing, among other things, to the necessity of co-ordinating in one view all the conclusions deducible from those other, and as it were introductory, researches. ”