METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 237
knowledge of the literature and philosophy of earlier times. From these sources, too, came his Politics, the ripest of his works.
New light has been thrown upon the method of Aristotle's researches by the latest discovered of his writings, the fragment upon the State of the Athenians. This is evidently only a section of a collection of studies, and possibly a study for the Politics. It shows how influential Aristotle's work has been to observe that, with modifications needed after the Greek city states had passed into national states, and after representative systems were devel- oped, Aristotle's classification of the forms of states is still more generally accepted than any other.
At the same time, the Greek philosophers had failed to give profound study to la-w — that system of standards which is a most important factor in associated life. We owe the development of this branch of psychical science to Roman genius. The Romans entered upon this work virtually without reference Ko philosophy, but solely from utilitarian motives of the most prac- tical order. Yet Greek philosophy, and particularly that of the Stoics and of Aristotle, has left evident traces of mighty influence even on this matter-of- fact work that began deliberately in the first century before Christ, and ended in the codification of Justinian, in the sixth century after Christ.
The development of another branch of psychical science falls in the same period of Graeco-Roman culture, viz., philology. This division of knowledge has had most important influence upon the progress of all the other psy- chical sciences. The Sophists had developed interest not only in eloquence, and so necessarily in language, but also in grammatical and even etymolog- ical questions. AH this was without signs of scientific method, however.
Aristotle and his school planned, and to some extent executed, systematic studies in literary history. Then the method developed in the Graeco-Roman era. The chief motive of this study was the desire to carry over into the life of the time the spiritual products of a past that had become strange. Such a motive is especially potent in a time of conscious transition, and accounts for the further pursuit of these researches during the Renaissance. At this time philology stood at the summit of its influence. It roused even philosophy and natural science to new life.
All other psychical sciences have had their origin in comparatively recent times, as particular branches of history, politics, jurisprudence, or philology. Then gradually, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a separate field of investigations was set off from political philosophy, viz., the philosophy of industry, or, as we now say, economics ( Wirtschaftslehre). This pursuit stood toward politics in much the same relation of philology to history. It dealt with relations that political philosophy had ignored, viz., the production of goods, and traffic in commodities and in money. But as this field was restricted, and yet evidently related to another territorj' that had not been explored, its cultivation necessarily soon led to examination of contigu- ous ground, viz., wherever the relations of life are susceptible of numerical
