THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



OCTOBER, 1872. 

 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 



By HERBERT SPENCER. 

 IV. Difficulties of the Social Science. 



FROM the intrinsic natures of its facts, from onr own natures as 

 observers of its facts, and from the peculiar relation in which 

 we stand toward the facts to he observed, there arise impediments in 

 the way of Sociology greater than those standing in the way of any 

 other science. 



The phenomena to be generalized are not of a directly-perceptible 

 kind cannot be noted by telescope and clock, like those of Astrono- 

 my; cannot be measured by dynamometer and thermometer, like 

 those of Physics ; cannot be elucidated by scales and test-papers, like 

 those of Chemistry ; are not to be got at by scalpel and microscope, 

 like the less-obvious biological phenomena ; nor are to be recognized 

 by introspection, like the phenomena Psychology deals with. They 

 have severally to be established by the putting together of many de- 

 tails, no one of which is simple, and which are dispersed both in Space 

 and Time, in ways that make them difficult of access. Hence the 

 reason that some of its cardinal truths, such as the division of labor, 

 remain long unrecognized. That in advanced societies men follow 

 different occupations, was indeed a generalization easy to make ; but 

 that this form of social arrangement had neither been specially 

 created, nor enacted by a king, but had grown up without forethought 

 of any one, was a conclusion that could be reached only after many 

 transactions of many kinds between men had been noted, remembered, 

 and accounted for, and only after comparisons had been made between 

 those transactions and these taking place between men in simpler so- 

 cieties, and in earlier times. And when it is remembered that the 

 data from which only there can be drawn the inference that labor be- 

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