state itself. In order to oblige it to control itself, it is necessary to understand particularly the nature of the superior kinds of states, and above all that of the modern commonwealth. The purpose of the next chapter, therefore, is to point out the differences between the modern commonwealth and inferior kinds of states, and between states of every kind and other kinds of human organizations. NOTES ON BOOKS 1. The study of the science of government may begin with a statement of the problem or with the definition of terms. A noteworthy example of the former method is afforded by the opening chapters of J. S. Mill's Considerations on Representative Government (1861). The latter method is well illustrated by Jeremy Bentham's Fragment on Government (1776), or Sir G. C. Lewis's Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Some Political Terms (1st ed., 1832; 3d ed., 1898). Nothing more than a beginning is possible, however, as Sir J. R. Seeley has convincingly shown in his Introduction to Political Science (1896), without a knowledge of the world which is to be governed and of the men who inhabit it. The science of government must be based on the sciences of psychology and of history. The approach to its study might logically begin, therefore, with J. H. Robinson's The Mind in the Making (1921), and J. T. Shotwell's An Introduction to the History of History (1922). But, if one would avoid going too far afield, there is still no better introduction to the problem of government, I think, than the appropriate portions of Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. 2. Graham Wallas's Human Nature in Politics (1908) furnishes the best introduction to the modern psychological school of political scientists. See also his later books, The Great Society (1914), and Our Social Heritage (1921). The most serviceable recent treatise on the psychological conditions underlying political phenomena is J. M. Williams's Principles of Social Psychology (1922). An earlier book, still useful, is W. McDougall's Social Psychology (1908). The same writer's more recent work, The Group Mind (1920), seems to me to carry a figure of speech too far. See also G. Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1906). 3. The problem of popular government is clearly stated and discussed in A. L. Lowell's instructive volumes, Public Opinion and Popular Government (1913), and Public Opinion in War and Peace (1922), and in W. Lippmann's significant writings, particularly his Public Opinion (1922). Continuing the approach to the problem presented in A. F. Bentley's The Process of Government (1908), R. M. Maciver's Community, a Sociological Study (1917; 2d ed., 1920), is the most noteworthy recent publication. Mention should be made also of Miss M. P. Follett's suggestive and stimulating book, The New State, Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government (1918; new impression, with introduction by Lord Haldane, 1920). What is a commonwealth? Origin of term, commonwealth CHAPTER II THE NATURE OF THE MODERN COMMONWEALTH 1 BEFORE Considering further the problems of government, it is necessary first to examine the nature of the state itself and of the best kind of state that men have yet been able to organize, the modern commonwealth. Some of the differences between a commonwealth and the more imperfect kinds of states were indicated by the father of political philosophy, Plato, in his epoch-making work, the Republic, and by the greatest political scientist of all times, Aristotle, in his masterly treatise on Politics. But the actual commonwealths with which those eminent thinkers were acquainted fell far short of measuring up to the standards which they prescribed, and were entitled to the name only by patriotic courtesy. Under the Roman Empire the very name of commonwealth fell into disuse, and had to be rediscovered by scholars at the revival of learning. In modern times the term has again come into use, but no clear distinction has been made between com. monwealth and state. In common usage, the true arbiter of the meaning of words, both are employed in various senses, often interchangeably. Though many learned men, who have written on government and politics, have been at great pains to explain what they have meant by state and commonwealth, there is yet no agreement upon any settled definitions of the terms. The English word, commonwealth, seems to have come into use in the sixteenth century, when men of learning in England first began to write in the vernacular of the realm 40 as well as in the scholastic Latin. It was the accepted translation of the classical expression, res publica. Thus Sir Thomas More in his famous Utopia, written in 1516, regularly used the word, commonwealth, wherever he would have written res publica, had he employed the language of the Schoolmen. And Sir Thomas Smith, a learned and accomplished secretary of state under Edward VI and Elizabeth, writing in 1565 the first noteworthy description of the government of England in English, entitled his work, De Republica Anglorum, but in the text he used the word commonwealth, and his work was usually cited by early readers as the "Discourse on the Commonwealth of England." The literal rendering of the Latin res publica eventually came to be employed for describing not a kind of state, but a kind of government, particularly the kind which the Roman Commonwealth possessed at the height of its splendor. Smith, though he was at great pains to prove that the government of England was not a simple monarchy, never described either the government or the kingdom itself as a republic. Commonwealth, indeed, was the word generally employed by English lawyers and statesmen in the age of Elizabeth to describe a well-ordered kingdom, such as patriotic Englishmen were bound to believe theirs to be. Our best witness is the illustrious Sir Edward Coke, who consistently used the word in that sense in his famous Institutes of the Laws of England. But at the time of the Civil Wars the word came to be particularly attached to the Puritan Commonwealth, in which the regicides erected a republican form of government on the ruins of the Stuart monarchy. After the collapse of the Cromwellian Protectorate, the disrepute into which all things connected with the cause of the Puritans promptly fell in England brought the good old word, commonwealth, into disfavor. In the American colonies its original significance survived, and at the Revolution the three largest States, Massachusetts, Origin of term, state What is a state? Pennsylvania, and Virginia, incorporated it into the fundamental law of the land as the official designation for the body politic. But in England the word has remained under a cloud until very recent times. The word, state, had a different origin. It was introduced into the literature of modern politics by the artful Italian politician, Machiavelli, who began his instructive and un-Christian work, The Prince, by observing that "all the powers which have had and have authority over men. are states, and are either monarchies or republics." He derived it from the Latin status, from which we also derive our words, static, and stable, concepts of an entirely different order from that of res publica. Assuming that his readers were familiar with both monarchies and republics, Machiavelli gave no space to the elaboration of the nature of the state, but proceeded at once to expound his theory of statecraft. His assumption was doubtless correct, but the result was a definition of the state too indefinite for later generations, which wish a more precise idea of the fundamental concept of political science. Nevertheless, Machiavelli's terminology rapidly gained acceptance. In England Shakespeare, whose culture reflects the influence of the Italian Renaissance more than does that of diplomats like Sir Thomas Smith or jurists like Sir Edward Coke, used both terms, state and commonwealth, meaning the body politic, but the former much more frequently. After the Stuart Restoration in 1660 Machiavelli's expression drove the old English word, commonwealth, almost completely out of popular usage, though philosophers like Locke and Hume, and politicians like Bolingbroke and Burke might continue to use it occasionally. But the meaning of the word, state, was slow to emerge from the obscurity in which Machiavelli had originally left it. This is shown by the subsequent history of the word. Lord Bacon, one of the earliest English political scientists |