This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION Dominant interest in political science to-day is in contemporary and practical aspects of the subject. Many problems appearing within this field require for their solution, however, careful reasoning in terms which are general and abstract; this applies not so much to definitions as to considerations of the purposes and means of government. It seems manifest, for example, that for both our national and our commonwealth politics we need deliberate discussion concerning our intent as to the functions of our political system. Such an examination is of immediate practical consequence; but it cannot be completed through considerations of experience alone. However fully and precisely we record, compare and systematize our observations of experience, we cannot speak conclusively of the success or failure of this or that governmental design or of the justification of the state's entrance into a proposed new sphere of action, until we attain better founded ideas than most of us now possess as to what in general we expect to accomplish through our agencies of civil government. The issue between conservatism and progressivism has, in this country as in England, come to be very much less than it once was a question of formal rights and precedents. Whether or not that issue can cease entirely to be such a question, it seems clear that discussion of differences involved in the issue will continue to be highly opportunist and tentative unless we are brought to realize that the argument must proceed from and tend toward general propositions as to the character and province of government. What is here said is not so much a plea for abstract speculation as for a neglected side of practical reflection concerning our expectations from political...