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A nomenclature is a system of names or signs, or both, used in any field of knowledge. Such systems are of value to scientists in a field if they enable positions to be seen more clearly or distinctions to be drawn more readily.In a recent article, Huntington Cairns says: "There prevails, secondly, confusion with respect to the instrument—linguistics—with which the anthropologist, the jurist, or the social scientist must pursue his investigations and through whose medium he must state his conclusions. … But once the social scientist passes from these simple aspects to the realm of theory, linguistics becomes a problem and it is in his struggle with this problem that he is most envious of the symbolism of the mathematician."1Confusion and uncertainty appear to be present in several sections of political science. Linguistics is a problem for us in theory; in addition, it is a serious one in teaching and in the field of research.When a problem appears in a field of knowledge which handicaps effective work, experiments are in order, not only to analyze the phenomenon itself, but, in addition, to find ways or means by which the causes producing the unfortunate circumstance may be removed, or at least reduced. Can the apparent confusion and uncertainty among political scientists concerning the meaning of terms, labels, or intellectual positions be reduced? This is an important problem which directs our attention to the possibility of developing a nomenclature for political science.

William Ockham, the Venerabilis Inceptor and the Doctor plus quam subtilis, started his academic career simply as a theologian and philosopher who did not have, or at least did not evince, the slightest interest in political questions. By 1324 or at least by 1327, he had composed all his purely theological or philosophical works of which we have any knowledge. In all these writings there is no trace of any political idea worth mentioning. Even the struggle about the Franciscan ideal of poverty had left no impression on the lines written by Ockham prior to 1327. While he was in England he was either too remote from the theatre of war or (and this seems to be more likely) he was too much engrossed in the construction of his conceptualistic system of philosophy and theology. In any case, we know from his own words that he did not take part in the struggle about poverty—not even to the extent of reading the pertinent documents—before or during his enforced stay at Avignon until the beginning of 1328.

Among the men who have profoundly affected the development of mankind and have given their best energies to the promotion of toleration, reason, and justice, Voltaire stands without a peer. Gifted as he so evidently was by nature for intellectual leadership and literary supremacy in France and in Europe, he was never content with these honors alone. His prolonged activity was to mean more to the world than an author's gift of over half a hundred volumes, filled with flashing wit and sparkling with the brightness and charm of a brilliant writer. Upon everything in France Voltaire fastened his keen gaze, and with rare insight and remarkable discrimination he analyzed the situation, devoting his life to an attempt to win recognition of the essential and pressing need of his program of reform.He had read the history of all nations and of all times, and had studied politics and literature, philosophy and science. He did not always go to the heights and depths of things unknown; he may even at times have been superficial. But with versatility far surpassing that of most mortals, with an adroitness in expression and thought, with flexibility in manner, he used his knowledge and pressed his cause, so that willing homage was paid to his gifts and genius by the man of moderate intelligence, by the philosopher, by the humble citizen, and by the sovereign. Yet, appreciated as Voltaire was by those who realized the importance of his endeavors, he had to submit to indignities from those who could have given him the most assistance.

The use of superlatives is always dangerous, but it may be said, with little exaggeration, that Henry Adams was the Aristotle of America. His similarity to the great pupil of Plato, however, lies not so much in his influence upon subsequent thinkers as in the astonishing range of his interests and studies. Probably no other man of recent times has made such an ambitious effort as he to explore the entire realm of human knowledge and to deduce from it some logical answer to the riddle of the universe, with particular reference to the destiny of society. At a time when specialization had become the order of the day, and when it was considered presumptuous for a man to attempt to master more than one tiny segment of knowledge, he ranged the whole field like a titan, concerning himself with history, politics, economics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, anthropology, and psychology.

No present political tendency is more marked than the extension of law to cover ever wider fields of conduct. Political scientists and constitutional lawyers have come to recognize that this tendency can be properly assessed only by examining how law operates in contrast and connection with other agencies of order such as custom, ethics, religion, and economic forces. When one wishes to understand the failure of such laws as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or the Volstead Act to accomplish the results expected of them, or when one wishes to form a judgment of the effects to be anticipated from the operation of a minimumwage law or from the codification of international law, it is important to understand the relation to the other forces which are giving direction to human conduct. There are regularities and patterns of adjustment in human behavior due to other causes than law administered by government; and these regularities not only work at times toward the same, or some of the same, ends which it is sought to attain by law, but at times they form a highly resistant part of the material against which law must work. An effort will be made in this paper to present the problem of law and government as part and parcel of the whole wider problem of social order, beginning with an attempt to understand the nature and operation of what may be called the "non-political" agencies of order. The task is facilitated by the contributions which anthropology has made to our knowledge of primitive peoples, and by the light which psychology has shed on the springs of conduct. We no longer have to rely like Hobbes and Rousseau on a naive theory of human nature or upon a fancy-picture of savage life. The outstanding result of the newer contributions has been to emphasize the central significance of the principle of relativity in the social no less than the physical sciences.

There are probably few members of the learned professions who do not feel the urge to contribute, if they can, to the existing store of knowledge regarding their chosen field, or, more ambitious still, to advance yet further that body of thought constituting the fundamental principles by which it is sought to interpret the data dealt with, to trace relationships between cause and effect, to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, to evaluate action by results—in a word, to give philosophic coherence to what would otherwise be disconnected and unrelated thinking.In the case of many, this urge is supplemented by a positive obligation. Those holding academic positions calling for the direction of students engaged in advanced or postgraduate work, and those at the head of institutions of research, not only have the desire themselves to engage in work of original research, but are under the responsibility of encouraging, if not compelling, work of a like character by others.

The political groups in the Kizoku-in, or House of Peers, are of more importance than the scant attention paid them by both native and foreign students of Japanese government implies. In fact, one of the six groups habitually controls the House, which, in turn, is one of the strongest national second chambers existing today. As a result, the Kenkyū-kai, or Study Association, commands steady, the other groups intermittent, patronage in the form of appointments to cabinet or sub-cabinet positions and concessions to their legislative wishes. The political groups in the House of Peers became a concern of Japanese statesmen shortly after the organization of the Diet in 1890; they are today debated in relation to the proposals for legislative reform which have been repeatedly urged since 1932. Although but minor wheels in the mechanism, some knowledge of their place and function is essential to an adequate understanding of the operation of the complicated Japanese political machine.The history, organization, and influence of these groups is not easy to determine; the scarcity of reliable sources, even in Japanese, makes doubly confusing the large number of diverse yet meaningless group titles which have been employed since 1890.

In St. Thomas and the Gentiles I tried to define the obligations of perennial philosophy in the twentieth century. Philosophy may be perennial, but its work changes according to the cultural conditions in which the philosopher lives and thinks. In its Greek beginnings, philosophy arose out of the dialectical efforts of Plato and Aristotle to clarify and order the welter of opinion. They struggled not only with the sophists to divide the line between knowledge and opinion; but they also moved in the realm of opinion to distinguish the true from the false; and, in their patient consideration of pre-Socratic thought, they both tried, though differently, to convert right opinion into knowledge by making it evident to reason. Although the result of their work was the establishment of philosophy as a body of knowledge, founded on principles and developed by demonstrations, we must not forget that, in their day, the mode of their work was primarily dialectical. In saying this I do not overlook the demonstrative or scientific achievements of Plato and Aristotle; but those must be regarded a secondary, for the first work of pioneers is to stake out the land, to clear away the brush, to prepare the soil, and to dig for firm foundations Only thereafter can a city be planned, buildings raised, and interiors decorated The Platonic dialogues certainly reveal an intellectual pioneer at work; but no less do the so-called "scientific" works of Aristotle, for they are primarily records of exploration and discovery. Rather than orderly expositions of accomplished knowledge, they are, not only in their opening chapters but throughout, dialectical engagement with adversaries, wrestlings with the half-truths of error and opinion in order to set the whole truth forth.

In the preceding sections of this essay, I have outlined a dialectical procedure whereby a doubting mind might be led to the recognition of moral truth. What has been given is the bare plot of a conversation between teacher and student. The student was, at the beginning, a skeptic about moral matters, denying the objectivity of moral knowledge, supposing that all moral judgments were a matter of opinion, entirely relative to the individual or to his cultural location at a given time and place. The teacher, by asking him to explain the undeniable fact that men exercise preference, gradually made him realize that his own criteria for preference — pleasure and quantity of pleasure — had a certain universal validity; and then, as a result of seeing the inadequacy of these criteria, the student began to understand that happiness, rather than pleasure, was the ultimate principle of moral judgments. The crucial steps in the argument were: (1) the distinction between pleasure as one among many objects of desire and pleasure as the satisfaction of any desire; (2) the enumeration of the variety of goods which are objects of human desire; (3) the point that only the totality of goods could completely satisfy desire; (4) the realization that this totality of goods, leaving nothing to be desired, is the end of all our seeking, and that everything else is sought for the sake of its attainment; (5) the conception of happiness as "all good things," a whole constituted by every type of good, the complete good being the end, the incomplete good its parts or constitutive means; (6) the conclusion that the end, as the first principle in the practical order, is the ultimate criterion of preference, for preferor choice is exercised only with respect to means, and hence we should, in every case, prefer whatever is more conducive to the attainment of happiness.

In a recent article in this Review, a social anthropologist, Professor W. F. Whyte, challenges American political scientists to "leave ethics to the philosophers and concern themselves primarily with a description and analysis of political behavior." Only in this way, the author contends, can the study of politics become truly scientific and not only justify its name but fulfill its function as an important body of knowledge. The challenge presented is not a new, but a vital, one with which all political scientists must inevitably be concerned. For in the answer to it is involved not only the fate of political science as a significant body of knowledge, but, conceivably as well, the very nature of the political behavior that Whyte challenges us to describe with an objectivity divorced from all judgments of value.In recent times, the point of view urged by Whyte has been perhaps most notably embodied in the writings of Pareto. But many eminent American political scientists have seriously probed the problem of methodology in politics and have arrived at conclusions similar to those urged upon us again by the author of this more recent challenge.