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In the first part of this essay, from page 14 through 18, we talked about the relation between norms and fact and suggested that the problem of the role of norms would not arise in a situation of simple harmony. We also suggested that the problem of norms arises as does the sense of human freedom—the awareness of the extent to which man transcends the patterns of “natural freedom” found in the world of nature. Thus the problem of the relation between fact and norm is an aspect of the problem of man’s freedom in general. To put the matter in other terms, the difficulties in delimiting with any precision the area of human freedom are seen in the difficulty in drawing with any precision or “objectivity” the line between statements of fact and statements of value.

In the two previous sections in our account of the development of the liberal tradition, we have sketched that development in broad terms. It is necessary in this section to fill in certain details and amplify certain points which limitations of time did not permit in Parts I and II.

Ludwig Dehio has argued that “It is possible to imagine a history of the Western world that relates all events to the two principles of unity and diversity.” He continues

Much has been written of the way in which Americans have “fled” politics and about the “historic unpreparedness” of the USA for world leadership. (A careful summary of the elements which are taken to compose this “unpreparedness” is given by Bradford Westerfield in his valuable study The Instruments of American Foreign Policy .)1 The nation seems to engage in a form of perennial breast-beating and lamentation at the wailing wall about its intrinsic inadequacies for the tasks it faces. I hope I may be forgiven for suggesting that there is another side to the picture and that there are respects in which the USA is entitled to a greater degree of confidence in its own abilities. As I said at the conclusion of the essay on “The Balance of Power,” Mill was correct in his contention that pagan self-assertion, as well as Christian self-denial, is a virtue.

We cannot begin to deal with the question of whether or not we can have a “science of international politics,” or with such related questions as whether or not history is a science, unless we first make clear the concept of science we have in mind when we ask the question. For the word “science” often means nothing more than systematic knowledge, and in that sense, we must give a positive answer to the question. For I should be hard-pressed to justify why it is I am here giving a series of lectures and why you are spending your time listening to them, unless I felt that something in the way of systematic knowledge could be transmitted. In this very loose sense, then, I should certainly say that a science of international politics is possible and that, indeed, we already have something of one.