¹ Thucydides I, 83. From Hobbes' version, republished by the University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, 1959), vol. I, p. 48.

² For a more extended discussion of the general topic see my L'Art de la Conjecture (Editions du Rocher, Monaco, 1964)Google Scholar; eight of the SEDEIS studies in conjecture have been collected, in English, in Futuribles (Droz, Geneva, 1963)Google Scholar.

³ Royal Institute of International Affairs (London, 1931), pp. 531–6.

⁴ And not well designed even for that, as commandant Souchon noted in 1929, uttering this prophecy: “our future army will be dissociated, pushed around and cut to pieces before having struck the least blow.” In Feu l'Armée Française, published without signature (Paris, 1929)Google Scholar.

⁵ One might elaborate upon the consequences of this inconsistency. First, the discovery of the impotence of the French army was a major cause of the French government's attitude at the time of Munich; but as they could not believe this impotence, the Soviet leaders quite understandably interpreted our shameful desertion of Czechoslovakia as inspired by a machiavellian desire to orient Germany toward an attack upon Russia, which was thought of by no responsible Frenchman. Second, as the Poles trusted the French army—as I found while attending them in the 1939 campaign—they thought it quite unnecessary to agree in the previous Anglo-Franco-Russian negotiations to the entry of Russian troops upon their soil, which the Soviets quite understandably made a condition of their military support. And this increased the Soviet suspicion of our good faith, which may have determined the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.

⁶ In his masterly treatment of economic forecasting, Theil, H., Economic Forecasts and Policy (Amsterdam, 1961)Google Scholar, Pt. V, notes that changes to come are generally underestimated. If our mind tends to underestimate shifts in a continuous course, breaks in this continuity are even less acceptable to it.

⁷ See the ranking of the different compartments of political science given by Somit, Albert and Tanenhaus, Joseph, “Trends in American Political Science,” this Review, Vol. 57 (12 1963), pp. 933, 941Google Scholar. The authors asked political scientists in what compartment of the science the most significant work was being done and “behavioralism” came an easy first.

⁸ It is here beside the point that “the death of the Great Pan” or depersonalization of natural objects, has implied a great loss of reverence and sensitive enjoyment of them.

⁹ This mistake gives rise to heated quarrels between those who, being revolted that man should be thought of as a “mere thing,” therefore needlessly repudiate the scientific method and those who, addicted to this method, therefore needlessly champion the “mere thing” notion. Justification or condemnation of the method does not rest thereupon but depends upon its efficiency. Here I would like to digress to say that the true danger of a scientific approach, but shared with any other form of intellectual outlook, is that excessive enthusiasm for general statements, however useful, should impair our appreciation of the particular and unique.

¹⁰ Quételet, A., Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés ou essai de physique sociale, 2 vols. (Paris, 1835)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Cournot, A., Traité de l'enchaînement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l'histoire, para. 460, p. 525 of the 1911 editionGoogle Scholar.