79 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Under the patronage of the Abb6 de Tourville and others, there 

 have also been developed courses of lectures designed to give instruc- 

 tion to university students or others who may be interested in the 

 " method of observation " and the " art of traveling." Le Play ad- 

 mired greatly the English custom of supplementing university train- 

 ing by a period spent in travel, and hoped, by systematic effort, to 

 develop a similar habit in France. Six courses of lectures in this de- 

 partment have been offered in a single year, which have been attended 

 by about one hundred persons. Some of the students, on completing 

 these courses, have been provided with means to put in practice the 

 precepts taught them, and have gone to other countries to study his- 

 tory, or commerce, or politics. 



"The dominant characteristic of my work has been," says Le 

 Play, "the accumulation of innumerable facts, and the incessant 

 gathering together of inductions and conclusions." He tells how, 

 after more than ten years of patient though enthusiastic investigation, 

 he began to wonder how it chanced that in the department of social 

 science he had made none of those discoveries that, in the field of 

 mineralogy, had brought him some renown. Then the thought oc- 

 curred to him that " in social science there is nothing to invent." And 

 thus the phenomenal Frenchman, who had aspired to be an economist 

 without a theory, proceeded to saddle himself with an assumption as 

 arbitrary as any to which an investigator could well enslave himself. 

 Yet we may notice that acceptance of it need not in any way limit 

 one's activity as a collector of facts, for if there is nothing to invent 

 there must be much to find. But Le Play would not even permit 

 himself to say that he had discovered the truths which he came to be- 

 lieve in, but only that he had refound them. " For," he added, "in 

 social science there is nothing new save what has been forgotten." If 

 only one be an expert quarrier, it matters not whether he supposes 

 himself working at the base of a ruined pyramid or in ledges of living 

 rock. But it is easy to see that, while Le Play was entirely confident 

 that his opinions were the outgrowth of observation, yet in reality his 

 methods of observation were largely shaped by his tenaciously held 

 opinions. 



This is still more evident when we come to examine the details of 

 his beliefs and his methods. Wherever he looked he found but two 

 things that are really essential to human happiness : the first is the 

 means of subsistence, the other knowledge of the moral law. What- 

 ever social organization insures these two things to all the members 

 of society, thereby insures to them happiness and peace. The moral 

 law is derived from the nature of man and from the decalogue, which 

 formulates and completes it. He arranges, in parallel columns, " The 

 Decalogue of the Hebrews" and "The Decalogue of the Chinese" 



others and began to publish " La Science Sociale," which also claims to follow the method 

 of Le Play. 



