THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 169 



must "be resulting social phenomena that have corresponding degrees 

 of regularity greater degrees, in fact ; since in them the effects of ex- 

 ceptional motives become lost in the effects of the aggregate of ordi- 

 nary motives. 



Another comment may be added. Mr. Froude exaggerates the an- 

 tithesis he draws by using a conception of science which is far too nar- 

 row a conception seemingly limited to exact science. Scientific pre- 

 visions, both qualitative and quantitative, have various degrees of 

 definiteness ; and, because among certain classes of phenomena the pre- 

 visions are but approximate, it is not, therefore, to be said that there 

 is no science of those phenomena : if there is some prevision, there is 

 some science. Take, for example, Meteorology. The Derby has been 

 run in a snow-storm, and you may occasionally want a fire in July ; 

 but such anomalies do not prevent us from being perfectly certain that 

 the coming summer will be warmer than the past winter. Our south- 

 westerly gales in the autumn may come early or may come late, may 

 be violent or moderate, at one time or at intervals ; but that winds 

 will be in excess from that quarter at that part of the year we may be 

 quite sure : and similarly with the northeasterly winds during the 

 spring and early summer. The like holds with the relations of rain 

 and dry weather to the quantity of water in the air and the weight of 

 the atmospheric column : though exactly true predictions cannot be 

 made, approximately true ones can. So that, even were there not 

 among social phenomena more definite relations than these (and the 

 all-important ones are far more definite), there would still be a Social 

 Science. 



Once more, Mr. Froude contends that the facts presented in history 

 do not furnish subject-matter for science, because they " never repeat 

 themselves," because "we can watch for no recurring fact to test 

 the worth of our conjectures." I will not meet this assertion by the 

 counter-assertion often made, that historic phenomena do repeat them- 

 selves ; but, admitting that Mr. Froude here touches on one of the 

 great difficulties of the Social Science (that social phenomena are in so 

 considerable a degree different in each case from what they were in 

 preceding cases), I still find a sufficient reply. For in no concrete sci- 

 ence is there any absolute repetition ; and in some concrete sciences 

 the repetition is no more specific than in Sociology. Even in the most 

 exact of them, Astronomy, the combinations are never the same twice 

 over : the repetitions are but approximate. And on turning to Geol- 

 ogy, we find that, though the processes of denudation, deposition, up- 

 heaval, subsidence, have been ever going on in conformity with laws 

 more or less clearly generalized, the effects have been always new in 

 their proportions and arrangements ; though not so completely new as 

 to forbid comparisons, consequent deductions, and approximate pre- 

 visions based on them. 



Were there no such replies as these to Mr. Froude's reasons, there 



