SOURCE: "Professor Laski and Political Science," in The Political Quarterly, Vol. XXI, No. 3, July-September, 1950, pp. 301-10.

In the following essay, Soltau examines the foundations of Laski's political thinking, and the applications of his philosophy to various realms of political life.)

This is not, and cannot be, a full critical analysis of Laski's work. That will necessitate a detachment still made impossible by affection and sense of loss. All we can hope to do is to offer an inevitably subjective impression of what were the dominant aspects of his contribution to that subject to which he devoted his life.¹

The first thing that must strike the student of Laski's work is his extraordinary versatility and precocity. Historian and political scientist as he ultimately became, he began by spending some months between school and university working in Karl Pearson's biometric laboratory in University College, London. Once at Oxford, he first...