ABSTRACT
Set opposite to all the various forms of so-called psychical interpretation, the people have a dead political science. When it is necessary to touch up this barren formalism with a glow of humanity, an injection of metaphysics is used. There will be a good deal to say about civic virtue or ideals or civilization. After compounding the formalism and the metaphysics, political science adds works on practical problems of the day or on the higher politics to suit the taste. These works are sufficiently detached to be capable of preparation in almost any form, and they can be manufactured as well by rank outsiders as by the experts of the science to which they are supposed to belong. There is hardly anywhere a work on political science that does not, when it examines the phenomena of public opinion, either indulge in some wise and vague observations, or else make a frank admission of ignorance.
