4 AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
We believe that the eight societies described will not only give the student a bird's-eye view of the basic principles of African political organization, but will also enable him to draw a few, perhaps elementary, conclusions of a general and theoretical kind. It must be emphasized, however, that all the contributors have aimed primarily at giving a concise descriptive account and have subordinated theoretical speculations to this end. In so far as they have allowed themselves to draw theoretical conclusions, these have been largely determined by the view they have taken of what constitutes political structure. They do not all take the same view on this matter. In stating our own views we have found it best to avoid reference to the writings of political philosophers, and in doing so we feel sure that we have the support of our contributors.
III. Political Philosophy and Comparative Politics
We have not found that the theories of political philosophers have helped us to understand the societies we have studied and we consider them of little scientific value; for their conclusions are seldom formulated in terms of observed behaviour or capable of being tested by this criterion. Political philosophy has chiefly concerned itself with how men ought to live and what form of government they ought to have, rather than with what are their political habits and institutions.
In so far as political philosophers have attempted to understand existing institutions instead of trying to justify or undermine them, they have done so in terms of popular psychology or of history. They have generally had recourse to hypotheses about earlier stages of human society presumed to be devoid of political institutions or to display them in a very rudimentary form and have attempted to reconstruct the process by which the political institutions with which they were familiar in their own societies might have arisen out of these elementary forms of organization. Political philosophers in modern times have often sought to substantiate their theories by appeal to the facts of primitive societies. They cannot be blamed if, in doing so, they have been led astray, for little anthropological research has been conducted into primitive political systems compared with research into other primitive institutions, customs, and beliefs, and still