i 7 c THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



would still "be the reply furnished by his own interpretations of his- 

 tory ; which make it clear that his denial must he understood as hut a 

 qualified one. Against his professed theory may he set his actual 

 practice, which, as it seems to me, tacitly asserts that explanations of 

 some social phenomena in terms of cause and effect are possible, if not 

 explanations of all social phenomena. Thus, respecting the Vagrancy 

 Act of 1547, which made a slave of a confirmed vagrant, Mr. Froude 

 says : " In the condition of things which was now commencing .... 

 neither this nor any other penal act against idleness could be practi- 

 cally enforced." l That is to say, the operation of an agency brought 

 into play was neutralized by the operation of natural causes coexist- 

 ing. Again, respecting the enclosure of commons and amalgamation 

 of farms, etc., Mr. Froude writes : " Under the late reign these tenden- 

 cies had, with great difficulty, been held partially in check, but on the 

 death of Henry they acquired new force and activity." a Or, in other 

 words, certain social forces previously antagonized by certain other 

 forces produced their natural effects when the antagonism ceased. Yet 

 again, Mr. Froude explains that " unhappily, two causes " (debased cur- 

 rency and an alteration of the farming system) " were operating to pro- 

 duce the rise of prices." 3 And throughout Mr. Froude's " History of 

 England " there are, I need scarcely say, other cases in which he as- 

 cribes social changes to causes rooted in human nature ; though, in the 

 lecture from which I have quoted, he alleges the " impossibility of 

 forming scientific calculations of what men will do before the fact, or 

 scientific explanations of what they have done after the fact." 



Another writer who denies the possibility of a Social Science, or 

 who at any rate admits it only as a science that has its relations of 

 phenomena so traversed by providential influences that it does not 

 come within the proper definition of a science, is Canon Kingsley. In 

 his address on the " Limits of Exact Science as appled to History " he 

 says: 



"You say that, as the laws of matter are inevitable, so probably are tbe laws 

 of human life? Be it so: but in what sense are the laws of matter inevitable? 

 Potentially or actually? Even in the seemingly most uniform and universal 

 law, where do we find the inevitable or the irresistible ? Is there not in Nature 

 a perpetual competition of law against law, force against force, producing the 

 most endless and unexpected variety of results ? Cannot each law be interfered 

 with at any moment by some other law, so that the first law, though it may 

 struggle for the mastery, shall be for an indefinite time utterly defeated ? The 

 law of gravity is immutable enough : but do all stones veritably fall to the 

 ground? Certainly not, if I choose to catch one, and keep it in my hand. It 

 remains there by laws ; and the law of gravity is there, too, making it feel 

 heavy in my hand : but it has not fallen to the ground, and will not, till I let it. 

 So much for the inevitable action of the laws of gravity, as of others. Poten- 

 tially, it is immutable ; but actually, it can be conquered by other laws." * 



1 " History of England," vol. v., p. "70. 2 Ibid., vol. v., p. 108. 



* Ibid., vol. v., p. 109 4 Page 20. 



