REVIEWS.

A History of Medieval Political Theory in the West. By R. W. CARLYLE and A. J. CARLYLE. Vol. I: The Second Century to the Ninth. By A. J. CARLYLE. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons; Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1903. — xvii, 314 PP.

The Development of European Polity. By HENRY SIDGWICK. London, Macmillan & Co.; New York, The Macmillan Co., 1903. - xxvi, 448 pp.

The Political Theories of the Ancient World. By W. W. WILLOUGHBY. New York, Longmans, Green and Co., 1903. — xiii,

294.

If any doubt has existed as to the utility of the study of political ideas in their historical development, the almost simultaneous appearance of these three volumes ought to do much toward removing it. In these works representative men of three great educational institutions, Oxford, Cambridge and the Johns Hopkins University, manifest their conviction that such study is worthy of the best effort that ripe scholarship can bring to bear upon it. However different the points of view and the methods of treatment, all the authors alike contribute to the one end of removing from English literature the reproach to which it was long exposed, that it embodied no adequate treatment of the history of political ideas.

Professor Sidgwick's work is posthumously published under the editorial supervision of his wife. It differs in general character from the other two volumes under review. While they agree in devoting much attention to the political ideas which are to be found explicitly or implicitly in the literature of the periods covered, Professor Sidgwick's interest is more in the generalizations which are possible from the actual institutions of successive epochs in history. His work follows to a great extent the method of Freeman's Comparative Politics. It is a study of governments rather than of anybody's theories about them, and the author's end is to formulate a history of political ideas by immediate

induction from the transformations through which political systems have passed, from the earliest known conditions in classical antiquity to the era of the modern state. We find described, in that philosophical spirit and judicial temper which Professor Sidgwick so preeminently typified, the broad outlines of Greek political development, the salient features of the Roman constitution, the feudal period, the theocratic features of the middle age, the growth of the free cities, the epoch of absolute monarchy and the national and federal systems of the most recent centuries. Of the philosophers who in these different ages contributed by reflection, systematic or otherwise, to illustrate the institutions with which he deals, the author discusses only Aristotle and Plato among the ancients, and Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau among the moderns. Comment on this fact and on certain features of arrangement and proportion in the volume would probably be unjust or misleading, owing to the circumstances attending the publication of the work, the author having had no opportunity to give it the final form.

Messrs. Willoughby and Carlyle differ from Professor Sidgwick and agree with each other in undertaking in their respective volumes a chronological, expository and critical description of the philosophy based upon political institutions rather than of the institutions themselves. Professor Willoughby's period is that of classical antiquity from the earliest times to the end of the Roman political system in the West. Mr. Carlyle has for his period the centuries of the Christian. era from the second to the ninth inclusive. In each case the present volume is but the first of an indeterminate number.

If we may judge from the proportions of these initial volumes, the Carlyles intend to cover their chosen field much more minutely than Professor Willoughby covers his. This conclusion is strengthened by a comparison of the general spirit and method of the two authors. Carlyle keeps close to the literature of his period. He has but little philosophy of his own to apply to the interpretation of the authors or the institutions with which he deals, but he brings forth from his notebooks a mass of quotations, from writers of every degree of prominence and obscurity, to illustrate the thought of the time. Willoughby, on the contrary, seems rather bored by the necessity of following closely the literature of his period. He prefers to cut loose from the record and to characterize a thinker or a system or an epoch by reflections of his Often also possibly too often he finds it more effective to incorporate a page or so of reflections quoted from some other modern critic. In both his own and the borrowed comments he manifests

own.

clearly, what his previous publications have sufficiently shown, the Hegelian tendency of his thought. It goes without saying that an historian of this type, a follower of the world's greatest master of broad generalization, can not be expected to display on his pages anything of that laborious accumulation of material that appears in Carlyle. When Willoughby reaches the Patristic and early medieval period, he will not devote, as Carlyle does, some six or eight pages to the thoughts of Sedulius Scotus and Cathulfus, or trace at length the sinuosities of reasoning in Ambrosiaster and Hrabanus Maurus; while Carlyle, if he should ever take up the Greek period, would never think of dismissing the Stoics and Epicureans, as Willoughby does, without mention of any individual adherent of these sects save Zeno, but would fairly revel in fragments gathered from the innermost recesses of Voigt and the Corpus Inscriptionum.

The two chapters in which Professor Willoughby is at his best are those on the "General Characteristics of Greek Philosophy" and "the Value of the Greek Civic Ideal." However doubtful the reader may be at some points as to whether any actual Greek ever was conscious of the views attributed to the abstract Greek, the Willoughby-Hegelian interpretation of Hellenic politics is very rich in suggestion. In the treatment of Plato and Aristotle the historian could hardly be expected to discover an untrodden path. Practically the only possibility of anything new in the estimate of the political ideas of these two philosophers lies in a careful re-reading of the original Greek by a scholar especially trained in the concepts and terminology of modern political science. Professor Willoughby, while eminently qualified in this last respect, seems to have made little or no resort to the text of the Greek writers; and the translations which he has used, especially in the case of Aristotle, have hardly been adequate to the requirements. For example, the statement on page 167, that "the theory of the separation of powers also finds a place in Aristotle's thought," would probably not have been made, if the words of the Greek philosopher rather than the English translator had been considered.

Mr. Carlyle's purpose necessarily involves an exhaustive examination of a large mass of little exploited literature. He seeks to discover the obscure beginnings of the process through which the medieval philosophy of politics became impressed with its characteristic features. The chief elements of this philosophy he perceives to be, first, the theories of Imperial Rome, particularly of the jurists, and second, the social and political teachings of the Church Fathers. While the first of these elements is fairly accessible, the latter is to be discovered and

properly appreciated only by a careful analysis of the writings of a very considerable number of men who were for the most part interested in nothing so little as in politics, and whose references to political ideas are in the last degree casual, subsidiary or perfunctory. Under such rather discouraging circumstances, Mr. Carlyle's work must be pronounced, on the whole, good and worth while. He succeeds in presenting, with some real suggestion of coherency, the thought of the Patristic age on natural law, slavery, property, government, the authority and sanctity of a monarch, and the relation of state and church. He has no illusions about his subject and readily concedes at many points that what appears to be an expression of serious conviction on the part of an author may be in fact merely the manifestation of credulity, fear, indolence or some other of the intellectual or emotional conditions which in those centuries so often took the place of ratiocination. From Gregory the Great he passes to the ninth century, and in dealing with this epoch the allowance necessarily made for poverty of intellectual resources is accentuated. Due recognition is given to the fact that the writings of the age, even in the case of personages of such large calibre as Hincmar of Rheims and Hrabanus Maurus, consisted in no small measure in the mechanical repetition of passages from the Church Fathers and a few other sources. But with all this allowance, Mr. Carlyle is able to discover, not indeed any general system of political theory, but the apprehension and development of certain important conceptions, namely, "the equality of human nature," "the sacred character of the organized structure of society in government," and "the necessity of checking the unjust and tyrannical use of authority." In connection with this latter point, the author suggests that the influence of Teutonic tradition definitely enters at this time to modify the ancient Roman conception of princely superiority to law.

It appears to the reviewer that the utility of Mr. Carlyle's work would have been substantially enhanced by the introduction of some account, however slight, of the actual political institutions of the successive periods with which he deals. But even without this, his volume is very welcome, and furnishes quite the best account we have of those occult channels through which ancient political theory was transmitted to the medieval world.

Part I of Mr. Carlyle's volume, in which he lays the foundation for the real theme of his work, deals with the political ideas of the Romans and covers the same ground which is traversed by Professor Willoughby in the latter part of his volume. There is afforded thus an opportunity for comparison of the two authors. The first fact to strike the observer

is that Willoughby does not mention Seneca, while Carlyle devotes a whole chapter to him. At first blush it seems as if Willoughby were at fault here; not only does the account of Seneca's reflections given by Carlyle indicate that the Roman moralist thought much on various important phases of politics, but anyone who reads later mediæval literature to even a slight extent becomes very quickly aware that the ideas and very often the words of Seneca's better known epistles were staple commodities. But on the other hand, Professor Willoughby has a certain justification for his omission in Carlyle's own treatment of Seneca; for after practically every description of the Roman's views on an important point, Mr. Carlyle is obliged as a candid writer to insert a caution against the possible insincerity of the philosopher: "He often mistakes rhetorical sentiment for profound ethical emotion" (p. 19); "These phrases may no doubt be said to be rhetorical, and it would be foolish to overpress their practical significance" (p. 21); "We may find much of merely rhetorical sentiment in all this" (p. 22): — such are the qualifications with which Seneca's philosophy is presented. There can be no doubt that the modern reader, even if he resolutely excludes from his mind the influence of certain rather unpleasant facts in connection with Seneca's relation to Nero, finds it impossible to take the beautiful and often most impressive writing of the Roman at its face value. There is in all his moral essays a pervading sense of unreality if not of actual hypocrisy. Perhaps this is why Professor Willoughby refuses to consider his ideas at all.

Cicero also is treated by both historians, and on the whole their estimates of him are identical. It is Carlyle and not Willoughby who designates him as "a well-mannered and honorable-minded philosophical amateur." Only an Englishman could devise that characterization. It reflects the same felicitous blend of the social with the scientific standard that appears in Sir Frederick Pollock's judicial utterance about the Spartans, that they "produced in the whole course of their wars only two officers who are known to have been gentlemen.” In connection with Cicero's philosophy an interesting comparison is suggested by the parallel reading of Willoughby and Carlyle. In the De Republica is given a definition of Respublica which has figured largely in later political theory. Cicero says: "Est respublica res populi; populus autem non omnis hominum cœtus, quoquo modo congregatus, sed cœtus multitudinis iuris consensu et communione utilitatis sociatus." The reviewer has been interested to observe the translation of this by the two historians, particularly the rendering of the last clause "iuris consensu et communione utilitatis sociatus." This seems reasonably