Grammar of Politics

A science, like a language, is a mode of thought and expression. The man who seeks to master a science must, therefore, first of all learn its grammar, and, by so doing, get himself across the line that divides literates from illiterates, those who are ready to learn from those who cannot learn because they cannot understand that which is said to them. And that man may count himself fortunate if the science he has chosen to master possesses a book of which teachers can say, “Read this, stay with it until you have made its content your very own, and you will have got your start.”

With the publication of Sovereignty, by Bertrand de Jouvenel (Chicago, $4.50), the science of politics becomes such a science; those of us who have witnessed the development of de Jouvenel’s thought over the years have, for that reason, eagerly anticipated its appearance; and the reviewer’s problem, as he turns its pages and relives the experience of each of a thousand passages that he has marked, is that of choosing among a thousand different ways of saying, “Forget about the other books on politics in the current lists, and see to it you don’t miss this one.”

WK

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Willmoore Kendall

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A science, like a language, is a mode of thought and expression. The man who seeks to master a science must, therefore, first of all learn its grammar, and, by so doing, get himself across the line that divides literates from illiterates, those who are ready to learn from those who cannot learn because they cannot understand that which is said to them. And that man may count himself fortunate if the science he has chosen to master possesses a book of which teachers can say, “Read this, stay with it until you have made its content your very own, and you will have got your start.”

With the publication of Sovereignty, by Bertrand de Jouvenel (Chicago, $4.50), the science of politics becomes such a science; those of us who have witnessed the development of de Jouvenel’s thought over the years have, for that reason, eagerly anticipated its appearance; and the reviewer’s problem, as he turns its pages and relives the experience of each of a thousand passages that he has marked, is that of choosing among a thousand different ways of saying, “Forget about the other books on politics in the current lists, and see to it you don’t miss this one.”