TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— -SUPPLEMENT. 



member of the Political Economy Club, on the 

 occasion of the centenary of Adam Smith, to hold 

 that the role of the political economist is now 

 ended ? At the very least we must agree with 

 Mr. Stanley Jevons, that never before were we so 

 far from having clear ideas of political economy, 

 and that tbe science has become utterly chaotic. 

 In this new Babel one voice alone could make it- 

 self heard amid the uproar raised by conflicting 

 passions and systems — the voice of Experience. 

 At the same time we must guard against attrib- 

 uting to experience any conventional language, 

 or making it subservient to our own precon- 

 ceived ideas. When, under the influence of the 

 extension of exchanges, increase of production, 

 and development of the state, political economy 

 was founded in France during the past century, 

 it took color from the " classical " spirit then in 

 the ascendant. Like all other crude sciences, it 

 has more than once yielded to the temptation of 

 hastily generalizing an isolated fact, or of putting 

 forward abstract principles, and then seeking at 

 most merely an a posteriori verification of them 

 in experience. Thus, for example, one distin- 

 guished author, instead of inquiring how things 

 stand in countries where plenty and peace are 

 the rule, sententiously declares that " wealth 

 must be consumed according to the principles of 

 sound reason ; " never dreaming that he reminds 

 us of the doctors in Moliere who wished their 

 patients to digest " according to the principles 

 of sound reason." The truly scientific method 

 is very different from this. Science first clears 

 the field of all prejudgment, and admits no a 

 priori principle ; it interrogates the facts and al- 

 lows them to answer with their own rude elo- 

 quence. Thanks to this method, which of itself 

 corrects errors of ratiocination and saves us from 

 being led astray by the imagination, the sciences 

 have in less than two centuries made enormous 

 progress, and this instead of growing slower is 

 being accelerated. From early times philosophers 

 had no end of disputes about chemical and phys- 

 ical theories, without ever being able to agree. 

 Thus it was that during the whole of the eigh- 

 teenth century chemists were divided into two 

 camps and warred for or against pAlogiston, the 

 "inflammable earth" contained in bodies, which 

 combustion alone could drive out. When minds 

 of a more positive turn, instead of restricting 

 themselves simply to the external appearances 

 of facts, and considering only the qualitative 

 aspect of phenomena, began to make note of all 

 the observations, and to study the quantitative 

 relations, they were not long in finding out the 



baselessness of the notion of phlogiston. Soon, 

 by means of precise measurements and exact 

 analysis, a theory was established which is itself 

 simply the expression of the facts. Then it was 

 that chemistry, which before Lavoisier scarcely 

 existed, became the wonderful science which it 

 now is. 



We might almost say the same of geology and 

 biology — to name only the last-comers — sciences 

 which were founded only the other day, but which 

 are already rich in positive results. All of these 

 sciences have followed one and the same method — 

 collecting a multitude of isolated facts, determin- 

 ing the degree of generalization they are capable 

 of, establishing the natural law, i. e., the formula 

 which covers each group of facts, and, finally, 

 subjecting these results to manifold tests. Social 

 science, called by M. de Bonald the science of 

 sciences, could attain this phase of evolution only 

 after the others : it was of necessity the last to 

 submit to the stern rule of exactitude. But now 

 the time has come when it, too, must quit the 

 region of vague hypotheses and hollow theories, 

 elect for itself a certain method of observation, 

 and lay its foundations in the solid ground of 

 facts. 



II. The Method to be chosen — Family Mon- 

 ographs. — The methodical verification of social 

 facts presents peculiar difficulties. In most of 

 the physical sciences, if we gather the teachings 

 of Nature by observation, we also elicit the same 

 by experiment; and these two processes mutual- 

 ly assist each other. In the study of social phe- 

 nomena, on the other hand, there is clearly no 

 room for scientific experimentation. No man 

 can reproduce, under circumstances judiciously 

 chosen and varied at will, the phenomena of hu- 

 man society. It is not that venturesome spirits 

 have hesitated to push society off the beaten 

 paths, at the risk of leading it into a cul-de-sac, 

 or ever the face of a precipice. They would fain 

 compare society to an ingenious piece of mechan- 

 ism, and their purpose has been, not so much by 

 their experiments to discover its springs as by 

 their improvements to perfect the working of the 

 mechanism. How many are the plans proposed 

 by Utopians, and condemned by common-sense ; 

 above all, what mischief and ruin have been 

 caused by the awakening of illusory fancies and 

 by repeated failures, without the credit of the 

 system-makers being impaired ! The best of men 

 have paid tribute to this passion for innovation. 

 In the last century, even Turgot, who executed 

 so many beneficial reforms, gave himself up to 

 this sort of enthusiasm, and set about insuring 



