During the past two hundred years students of public affairs have been stimulated to an exceptional degree by the very evident radical transformation of life in human societies. Some have observed, named, and analysed the changes in material goods, building up an impressive structure of economic science and culminating in the popular controversy over capitalism and socialism. Others have investigated man's cultural development, though with less success in naming the elements being studied or in defining the units of measurement or valuation, but reaching a general climax of opposing nationalism to cosmopolitanism. The greatest number of observers, however, have been concerned with political changes, for if politics is not truly the queen of sciences, it has at least been thought to be so from antiquity on. Whether the subject is more difficult than others or whether too many have rushed in without appropriate training or adequate consideration of the subject-matter, it must be admitted that the heavy hand of tradition has lain heavier on political analysis than on other fields of knowledge. Students of politics have continued to use the historic names of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, discussing constitutionalism (polity, the old composite form) in Greek terms with modern instances such as checks and balances, separation of powers, fundamental law, etc. In popular controversy, however, the line of dispute has been drawn between democracy and dictatorship, which are also concepts derived from antiquity.