NATURE AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 723 



among other things, to the necessity of co-ordinating in one view all 

 the conclusions deducible from those other, and as it were introduc- 

 tory, researches. Of course, this process of combination abounds with 

 its own manifold opportunities of error ; but this fact need no more 

 produce despair than the composite quality of physiology leads the 

 student to be skeptical of the scientific character of inquiries into the 

 constitution of the animal world. 



There is a vast difference between calling a branch of knowledge a 

 science, because it can only be profitably studied by the use of the 

 same logical methods as are indispensable in the mastery of the best- 

 established physical sciences, and being, as yet, scientifically cultivated, 

 or advanced in outward form to the full proportions of a maturely de- 

 veloped science. It may be, indeed, that, from a number of causes to 

 be shortly adverted to, Politics will always present an appearance 

 neither homogeneous nor, in one sense, exact. But these defects 

 neither impair the genuine truth of the universal laws to which the 

 topic is submitted, nor ought to convey any imputation on the only 

 methods serviceable in treating it. 



Admitting, as a provisional and practical postulate, the freedom of 

 the human will, it might indeed seem to be impossible, on the face of 

 it, to bring within the domain of stringent scientific methods any class 

 of materials largely conversant with the direct actions and emotions of 

 mankind. But there are certain corrections which reduce the signifi- 

 cance of any skeptical conclusions which might be drawn. 



In the first place, the more extensively and minutely historical 

 studies are carried on and the investigations of travelers pursued and 

 recorded, the more uniform does human nature appear, and the more 

 calculable are the actions, sentiments, and emotions of large classes 

 of mankind, when the antecedents and surrounding conditions are 

 ascertained. So far as political inquiries are concerned, it is more 

 with classes, groups, and assemblages of men, and with considerable 

 stretches of time, than with any individual men at a given moment 

 that the investigator is occupied. Thus the historical method, in pro- 

 portion as it is extensively pursued, contains in itself its own cor- 

 rectives. 



But, in the second place, if the researches of historians and the re- 

 ports of travelers contain an endless and boundless mass of facts which 

 seem rather to increase the list of human eccentricities than to reduce 

 it by discovering a dominant order and an integral unit of progress 

 and purpose, yet here again the problem of finding a scientific form 

 for the theory of government is on the whole simplified rather than 

 otherwise. As explorations of all sorts are multiplied and extend, 

 they take the place of the logical instrument of experiment ; and the 

 result of them is, that a limited number of propositions are evolved 

 which admit of being announced with a fair assurance of their univer- 

 sality. If the area of observation be limited, the truths reached will, 



