quishing the paths traced by previous writers, has promoted divergence of thought, and has prevented different speculators from meeting on a common ground, even to the extent of their agreement. The determination of fixed methods of reasoning is, therefore, important, as directing the efforts of different inquirers to a common point. In proportion as similar modes of logical procedure are generally recognised, the labours of political investigators will more and more assume the character of a joint undertaking for a common purpose, instead of being, as heretofore, a series of desultory and unconnected attempts, destitute of the assistance afforded by a well-organised combination. "It is partly to this want of a common rule of action among political inquirers, that we may trace the inferior rate of progress which has marked political as compared with physical science since the commencement of the seventeenth century. The experimental methods of investigation suggested by Bacon, and exemplified by Galileo, were inapplicable to politics; and the modes of political reasoning adopted, even by eminent writers, were defective as models. The influence of the censorship exercised through the chief part of Europe-by the governments and by the church-likewise fell with great severity upon political speculation during this period, while a freer course was allowed to the physical inquirer. Besides, the facts in politics are more numerous, intricate, and fluctuating, and the reasonings founded on them are more liable to error, than in the physical sciences. These reasons will sufficiently explain the more rapid, decisive, and brilliant advance of physical as compared with political science in the last two centuries and a half, without recurring to the supposition that political science has been cultivated by persons of inferior ability, and that the master spirits of the time were all absorbed by physical researches. (3) (43) This is the explanation given by M. Comte, Phil. Pos. tom. iv. p. 164, 199. If it be true that a knowledge of human nature is the true measure of intelligence,(") the investigations of political science must always possess an attraction for men of speculative tendencies, unless they are repelled by the fear of civil or religious censures. Upon an impartial review of the efforts of political philosophers since the close of the seventeenth century, it can hardly be said that they have shown any want of intellectual power. There has been no deficiency of boldness, originality, invention, or sustained flights of reasoning. But there has been a want of a well-devised method, and of a systematic plan of operations. Hence there has been much waste of valuable labour; the most zealous efforts have been misdirected, and the result has not corresponded with the design. (44) See Comte, Phil. Pos. tom. iii. p. 440. 77 CHAPTER IV. ON THE TECHNICAL LANGUAGE OF POLITICS. §1 HA HAVING AVING taken a general view of the province of politics, and of its distribution into departments, we must, before we can investigate the methods of reasoning proper to the subject, endeavour to ascertain the character of the political vocabulary, and inquire how far it facilitates or retards the logical processes in which it is a necessary instrument. In so doing, we shall bear in mind the canons laid down by Dr. Whewell for trying the fitness of a scientific or technical language,(') which, though framed with a special reference to the physical sciences, admit, nevertheless, of being applied to our present subject. 'Every step in the progress of science' (says Dr. Whewell) 'is marked by the formation or appropriation of a technical term. Common language has, in most cases, a certain degree of looseness and ambiguity; as common knowledge has usually something of vagueness and indistinctness. In common cases, too, knowledge usually does not occupy the intellect alone, but more or less interests some affection, or puts in action the fancy; and common language, accommodating itself to the office of expressing such knowledge, contains, in every sentence, a tinge of emotion or of imagination. But when our knowledge becomes perfectly exact, and purely intellectual, we require a language which shall also be exact and intellectual; which shall exclude (1) See his aphorisms concerning the language of science (pp. xlviiicxx.) prefixed to his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. A technical term is properly a term of art; arts, however, have usually been prior, in point of time, to sciences; and hence a technical may be equivalent to a scientific term. More will be said on this subject below, in chap. xix. § 2. On the meaning of rexviên λégis, see Ernesti, Lex. Techn. Gr. in v., and Hermogenes, Teρì μeo. dew, c. 2; in Rhet. Gr. vol. iii. p. 403, ed. Walz. alike vagueness and fancy, imperfection and superfluity; in which each term shall convey a meaning steadily fixed and rigorously limited. Such a language that of science becomes, through the use of technical terms.'(2) The first efforts of science to form technical terms have naturally been made by the appropriation of those words in common discourse, whose meaning approached the nearest to that which it was desired to express. Such, for example, are the terms of geometry referred to by Dr. Whewell; many of which were formed by the Greeks in this manner, as an angle (ywvía) was only a corner; a cube (kúбoç) was a die; a sphere (opaipa) was a handball used in games; a cylinder (kúλwdpoç) was a roller; a trapezium (Tрaπéliov) was a table, so called because the Greek tables had one side shorter than the opposite one. Many astronomical terms, such as the pole, the horizon; and terms of anatomy and medicine, such as fever (πupɛτòs, febris), cranium, muscle, vein, heart; and of natural history, as the lion, tiger, panther, cat, dog, horse, ox, sheep, crocodile, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, &c. belong to the same class. 8 2 It was in this manner that a large number of political terms, and especially those most employed by theoretical writers -those which represent the most comprehensive ideas, and the highest abstractions of politics-were formed. The words current in the language of ordinary life, with vague and unprecise significations, were adopted by political philosophers for their scientific purposes, and were (if we may be allowed the expression), techni (2) Ibid. p. xlviii. The following remarks of Dr. Whewell present the same view: Though most readers, probably, entertain, at first, a persuasion that a writer ought to content himself with the use of common words in their common sense, and feel a repugnance to technical terms and arbitrary rules of phraseology, as pedantic and troublesome; it is soon found, by the student of any branch of science, that, without technical terms and fixed rules, there can be no certain or progressive knowledge. The loose and infantine grasp of common language cannot hold objects steadily enough for scientific examination, or lift them from one stage of generalisation to another. They must be secured by the rigid mechanism of a scientific phraseology.'-Hist. of Inductive Sciences, vol. iii. p. 307. On the utility of technical terms, see ibid. vol. i. p. 11, 16. calized. Hence, such terms as government, state, nation, republic, citizen, law, right, duty, freedom, punishment, reward, king, judge, enemy, war, siege, marriage, property, buying and selling, master and servant, money, rent, wages, profit, &c. were received into the technical vocabulary of politicians. As compared with the facility so extensively enjoyed by the physical sciences of coining new technical words for the particular idea this process is doubtless an imperfect one. 'The inadequacy of the words of ordinary language for the purposes of philosophy, (says Sir James Mackintosh,) is an ancient and frequent complaint; of which the justness will be felt by all who consider the state to which some of the most important arts would be reduced, if the coarse tools of the common labourer were the only instruments to be employed in the most delicate operations of manual expertness. The watchmaker, the optician, and the surgeon, are provided with instruments which are fitted, by careful ingenuity, to second their skill; the philosopher alone is doomed to use the rudest tools for the most refined purposes. He must reason in words, of which the looseness and vagueness are suitable, and even agreeable, in the usual intercourse of life, but which are almost as remote from the extreme exactness and precision required, not only in the conveyance, but in the search of truth, as the hammer and the axe would be unfit for the finest exertions of skilful handiwork: for it is not to be forgotten, that he must himself think in these gross words as unavoidably as he uses them in speaking to others. He is in this respect in a worse condition than an astronomer, who looked at the heavens only with the naked eye, whose limited and partial observation, however it might lead to error, might not directly, and would not necessarily, deceive. He might be more justly compared to an arithmetician compelled to employ numerals, not only cumbrous, but used so irregularly to denote different quantities, that they not only often deceive others, but himself. The natural philosopher and mathematician have in some degree the privilege of framing their own terms of art; though that liberty is daily nar |