In the making of the Encyclopaedia we have had three purposes in mind. In the first place it is intended to provide for the scholar a synopsis of the progress that has been made in the various fields of social science in the broadcast sense of the term. The student of any particular science should not only find here factual and methodological information to value, but will also have his attention called, perhaps in a hitherto unusual way, to the relation of his own science to the other disciplines involved. What is probably more important at this time, when such rapid advance is being made in more or less utrodden paths, the Encyclopaedia may be expected to serve as an incentive to the votaries of the younger and more in choate sciences in order to bring to fruition what is now only in germ. Secondly, the Encyclopedia will, it is hoped, appeal to a much more numerous class which for lack of a better term might be called the intelligentsia in the various countries. It ought to furnish an assemblage or repository of facts and principles which will subserve of facts and principles which will subserve the interests of all those who are keeping abrest of recent investigation and accomplishment. It is for this reason that we have made every effort to keep the articles free from all scientific jargon. Finally, amid the welter and confusion of modern thought, it has been our hope that the Encyclopaedia would constitute a centre of authoritative knowledge for the creation of a sounder and more informed public opinion on the major questions which lie at the foundation of social progress and world development.
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