674 SOCIAL SCIENCE 



seem to regard freedom as the summum bonum, and set up universal 

 contractualism as the desirable end. It is especially worthy of 

 remark that among those whose descriptions of the social good betray 

 the most aggressive individualism are prominent the very thinkers 

 who, like Spencer, have done most to bring the biological or organic 

 conception to the fore in their account of the natural development 

 of human society. Their premises are organic, their conclusions are 

 strictly individualistic. Can there be a more striking illustration of 

 the absence of relation between premises and conclusion, between 

 the study of the social facts and the conception of the social end? 

 Indeed when we review the various conceptions of the social end that 

 are proposed by the leading sociologists of the present day, w r e find 

 the same divergence of standpoint which characterizes the meta- 

 physical and ethical pronouncements, the symptoms of the same 

 disease for which sociology was supposed to possess the cure. And, 

 what is more, we find that these various conceptions of the social 

 end are mere masks behind which are hidden the differences of meta- 

 physical and ethical bias that have prevailed from time immemorial. 

 The nomenclature has been somewhat changed, the background is 

 somewhat different, but in the main we recognize old friends or old 

 enemies with new faces. 



There remains my third task, briefly to show that in the nature of 

 the case the result cannot be otherwise; that in the strict sense there 

 are no social laws, and, therefore, in the absence of laws there can- 

 not be prediction of the future, or ethical imperatives based on the 

 conscious adoption into the will of a natural order of social develop- 

 ment. I would not, indeed, be understood as denying that social 

 science is a science. Science is methodized knowledge. In this sense 

 philology is a science, history is a science, and the study of society 

 is capable of becoming, and has already, in part, become a science. 

 Because, moreover, every science is methodized knowledge, it does 

 not follow that all sciences are restricted to the use of the same 

 method. Methods may vary. The methods of social science may 

 differ from those of physical science, and yet its claim to be scientific 

 need not in the least on that account be impaired. Nor do I deny 

 that there are social uniformities. I merely dissent from the assertion 

 that these uniformities should or can, without serious mischief re- 

 sulting, be called laws. I say, without serious mischief resulting, 

 and this for a twofold reason. First, because already there are at 

 least two, possibly three distinct significations which the word " law ' 

 connotes, the legal signification, the moral signification, and the 

 physical signification. If the uniformities which we discern in social 

 conduct are admitted to differ from the uniformities contemplated 

 by physical science, by jurisprudence, or by ethics, then we shall 

 connect with the same term a fourth connotation, and the multiplic- 



