The value of the more general and abstract efforts of politi- cal theory, of what may perhaps be called the philosophy of the state, is often questioned. It is urged on the one hand that the true science of politics cannot go beyond the study of the actual organization of government and of its relations to other social and economic institutions. On the other hand, it is asserted that political philosophy, because it is necessarily a priori in method, cannot do more than ring the changes on certain fundamental types of theory which were stated once for all in the far-distant past. Thus, for example, Professor Dunning in his recent book on Political Theories Irom Rousseau to SPencer says, "Greek Thought on this problem [the justification of authority and submission] in the fourth and third centuries before Christ in- cluded substantially all the solutions ever suggested. " 1) Nevertheless, with some ups and downs, political philosophy goes on; it is one of those subjects of pennanent human inter- est which, whether "scientific" or not, men are not likely to abandon. To be sure, it does at times degenerate into an apol- ogy for special interests in their endless struggle for power. This danger can scarcely be avoided when men undertake to weigh values and to estimate the importance of tendencies that have not yet eventuated in political fact. But notwithstanding this danger, the criticism of principles is indispensable.

This translation is accompanied by an interesting introduction describing in some detail Cicero's theory of the state and the sources of that theory along with commentary. Introduction: The Commonwealth and its Author; The Political Theory of the Stoics; Cicero's Political Theory; The Institutions of the Ideal Commonwealth. Part 2: Cicero on the Commonwealth.

First published in 1958, Detachment and the Writing of History collects essays and letters by Carl L. Becker in which the noted historian outlines his views on the study of history, the craft of the historian, the art of teaching, and the historical evolution of the idea of democracy. Together, these invaluable writings demonstrate Becker's conviction of the moral seriousness of the historian's calling and of the importance of history as a factor, at once intellectual and artistically imaginative, in the life of society.