A Treatise on the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics
by George Cornewall Lewis (9781459024854)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: labours consists in the determination of the subject-matter of politics, and of the methods by which it is to be investigated.' When we have settled what political theory and practice are, and how we ought to reason respecting them, we may hope to have made some progress towards the attainment of that end, which all men, whatever their opinions may be, must concur in thinking desirable, provided it be attainable. In the present treatise, therefore, an attempt will be made to survey this foreground of political philosophy, with the view of furnishing a guide to the political student who seeks to reason for himself, and to form an independent judgment upon any department of politics. On the one hand, it does not aim at establishing any political theory, or inculcating any system of political doctrine; on the other hand, it does not pretend to be a logical treatise, but it avails itself of logical rules, established by professed writers on logic, and is merely concerned with their application to politics. It makes no claim to novelty or invention; but'it seeks only to extend to politics those methods of observation and reasoning which experience has proved to be ' most effectual, and which are employed with success in other departments of knowledge."' Without proposing to determine truth, it proposes to be instrumental in promoting the determination of truth by others. 2 But, limited and subordinate as the proposed inquiry may be, compared with a comprehensive and definitive scheme of political science, it is nevertheless both wide in its extent, and important in its applications.' In order to ascertain the methods proper to each subject of investigation, it will be necessary to pass in succession through the different departments of politics; and if those methods should be l...

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