NATURE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. 519 



by surrounding conditions. "Whether there will come the success due 

 to skill and perseverance ; whether the circumstances will be such as 

 to give these scope or not ; whether accidents will thwart or favor 

 efforts are wholly unanswerable inquiries. That is to say, the facts 

 we ordinarily class as biographical do not admit of prevision. 



If, from quite special facts, we turn to facts of a somewhat less 

 special kind which the life of this infant will present, we find, among 

 those that are ^as /-biographical, a certain degree of prevision pos- 

 sible. Though the unfolding of the faculties is variable within limits, 

 going on here precociously and there with unusual slowness, yet there 

 is such order in the unfolding as enables us to say that the child will 

 not be a mathematician or a dramatist at three years old, will not be 

 a psychologist by the time he is ten, will not reach extended political 

 conceptions while his voice is still unbroken. Moreover, of the emo- 

 tional nature we may make certain predictions of a kindred order. 

 Whether he will marry or not, no one can say ; but it is possible to 

 say, if not with certainty still with much probability, that after a cer- 

 tain age an inclination to marry will arise ; and though none can tell 

 whether he will have children, yet that, if he has, some amount of the 

 paternal feeling will be manifested, may be concluded as very likely. 



But now, if looking at the entire assemblage of facts that will be 

 presented during the life of this infant as it becomes mature, decays, 

 and dies, we pass over the biographical and quas /-biographical, as ad- 

 mitting of either no prevision or but imperfect jDrevision ; we find re- 

 maining classes of facts that may be asserted beforehand : some with 

 a high degree of probability, and some with certainty some with 

 great definiteness and some within moderate limits of variation. I 

 refer to the facts of growth, development, structure, and function. 



Along with that love of personalities which exalts every thing in- 

 constant in human life into a matter of interest, there goes the habit 

 of regarding whatever is constant in human life as a matter of no in- 

 terest ; and so, when contemplating the future of the infant, there is a 

 tacit ignoring of all the vital phenomena it will exhibit phenomena 

 that are alike knowable and important to be known. The anatomy 

 and physiology of Man, comprehending under these names not only 

 the structures and functions of the adult, but the progressive estab- 

 lishment of these structures and functions during individual evolution, 

 form the subject-matter of what every one recognizes as a science. 

 Though there is imperfect exactness in the generalized coexistences 

 and sequences making up this science ; though general truths respect- 

 ing structures are met by occasional exceptions in the way of malfor- 

 mations ; though anomalies of function also occur to negative absolute 

 prediction; though there are considerable variations of the limits 

 within which growth and structure may range, and considerable differ- 

 ences between the rates of functions and between the times at which 

 functions are established ; yet no one doubts that the biological phe- 



