ABSTRACT
Montesquieu’s theory is not simply an empirical generalization but deals with ideal types of government. The elements of a dream, by being used as the starting point for a series of free associations, can be made to yield thoughts and ideas coherent with each other and displaying in their integrated form a construct that seems to show a great expansion of meaning compared with that displayed in the dream from which it has been derived. Certain algebraic formulas, treated according to rules laid down in advance – not free associations – similarly yield an expansion that is coherent within itself and, like the latent content of the dream, is often found to be applicable to data of an empirically verifiable kind that, in the coherent form that the mathematical expansion has revealed, provide a realization for the system of formulas that make up the original algebraic calculus.
