ABSTRACT
The chair to which I have had the honour to be called is but the second of its kind in this country; for it is only within recent years that the right of political science to be studied as an independent intellectual discipline has been conceded. Oxford, seventeen years ago, was the first university to establish a chair in the subject.1 London has now followed her example; and signs are not wanting that Cambridge, and some of the modern universities, will shortly follow in the path. I add that it is not unfitting that Oxford should have led the way. Her School of Modern History, to which my own debt is immense, has always been, in some sort, a philosophy teaching by example. In Green and Bosanquet she gave to English political science the makers of a tradition which, even if we dissent from it, must yet be recognized as of primary importance. For not only has that tradition influenced the character of modern legislation; its own inheritance has constantly refreshed our thought with memory of, and inspiration from, our founders in ancient Greece. We need to be reminded of what we may still learn from Aristotle and Plato.
