Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/410

 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE TO COURSES IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

[1873]

things are necessary for a student who is to acquire intelligently a new branch of knowledge under a teacher. First, an idea of the importance of the subject; second, an idea of the method of the teacher; and third, some notion of the outlook, that is to say, of the thing to be acquired. I propose in this lecture to give a program of the year's work in this department, as well in the graduate as in the undergraduate schools, and my aim is to supply as well as I can the three requisites mentioned.

There is a necessity for such a lecture in this department, which does not exist in any other. Almost everyone has some idea of the range, meaning, purpose and method of the sciences which are taught in a university, but I doubt very much if there is any but the most vague notion in the popular mind of what is meant by political science, in either its narrower or its wider significance. It is not generally understood what it aims at, how it teaches, what its methods are, nor what guarantee there is for its results. Let us try first to arrive at a conception of these points.

You are aware that the civilization of mankind has proceeded by stages and that its course has been one of development and progress. This progress has been from the simple towards the complex. Institutions have been multiplied, functions in the body social have been