Publisher's Synopsis
The origin of Comparative Politics in one sense of the expression, is the same as the origin of Comparative Jurisprudence. In 1871, in the first of his lectures on Village Communities in the East and West, Maine observed: - " The enquiry upon which we are engaged can only be said to belong to Comparative Jurisprudence if the word 'Comparative' be used as it is used in such expressions as 'Comparative Philology' and 'Comparative Mythology.' We shall examine a number of parallel phenomena with the view of establishing, if possible, that some of them are related to one another in the order of historical succession. I think," he continued, "I may venture to affirm that the Comparative Method which has already been fruitful of such wonderful results, is not distinguishable in some of its applications from the Historical Method. We take a number of contemporary facts, ideas, and customs," (note, please, that Maine includes ideas) "and we infer the past form of those facts, ideas, and customs not only from historical records of that past form, but from examples of it which have not yet died out of the world, and are still to be found in it."
Two and a half years later Freeman, in his valuable book on Comparative Politics, referring, as Maine had done, to Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology, noted the birth of a third science, the offspring, he asserted, of the two earlier sciences, which applied the Comparative Method directly to the growth of culture itself, the object of research being the nature and origin of the customs, the social institutions, the religious ceremonies of the different nations of the earth. This third science, he said, still lacked a name, and he added: " Let us hope that a name may be found for it, if not-which may be hopeless-within the stores of our own mother-tongue, yet at least within the range of the foreign words which have been already coined. It would be a pity if a line of inquiry which has brought to light so much, and from which so much more may be looked for, should end by cumbering the dictionary with some fresh word of new and barbarous formation." It appears from a note appended to the text that the barbarism of which he had so acute a fear was the now well-known and generally accepted term Sociology.
-The Sociological Review, Vol. 1
