SOURCE: W. H. Greenleaf, "Empiricism and Politics," in Order, Empiricism and Politics: Two Traditions of English Political Thought, 1500–1700, Oxford University Press, London, 1964, pp. 157-205.

In the excerpt below, Greenleaf looks at changes in political philosophy within the context of changes in philosophy in general—particularly the theories of observation and knowledge described by empiricism. Greenleaf concludes that empiricism cultivated the advocation of "mixed government" among most modern philosophers.

Doubt about the transcendental order led, as I have explained, to the distinction between the spheres of God and nature. Man as a political animal belonged to the latter realm, a view reinforced perhaps by the traditional procedure of comparing the body politic to various aspects of the macrocosm. It was consequently implied that the study of man and society could be carried on by the same empirical method that was being used so successfully to investigate the processes of...