730 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scientific exactness, at least as much may be claimed for Politics, and 

 the composite study may advance in logical perfection at an equal rate 

 with the elementary studies. 



The general result of these considerations is that there are a variety 

 of solid reasons which account not only for the reputation acquired by 

 Politics of being an inherently unscientific study, but also for the 

 study itself having advanced only a very short way toward scientific 

 completeness. But most or all of these reasons have been seen to be 

 of a kind which hold out a good promise for the future, and thereby 

 afford an ample encouragement to the use of a strictly logical method 

 in political investigations, and to the attempt to create a scientific 

 structure of ever-increasing completeness in this region, as well as in 

 others more familiai-ly associated with the name of Science. 



A science need not be built on universal, nor even upon general, 

 propositions ; and partial, particular, or even probable premises may 

 justify conclusions, drawn with logical correctness, which may be a 

 firm basis for action. Where truths are by their nature restricted in 

 time and place, or where evidence is yet lacking to demonstrate their 

 actual generality, the assemblage of such truths will carry with it a 

 fragmentary and hypothetical character which may to some seem in- 

 compatible with the rigid demands of Science. But where the inves- 

 tigator himself proceeds in strict accordance with the severest logical 

 requirements, conducting his ratiocination with the utmost precision, 

 and distinguishing at all points the possible or probable from the cer- 

 tain, the universal or general from the particular, and proof from 

 plausibility or mere conjecture, it matters little what name is given to 

 the branch of inquiry concerned. It lacks no one of the essential ele- 

 ments and recommendations of the best and earliest-established of the 

 physical sciences. Its terms are submitted to the same process of 

 definition, its subject-matter to a like arrangement into groups and 

 classes, genera and species, and the resulting propositions are reached 

 by a course of reasoning as logically irrefutable. 



There ai'e, indeed, certain plain indications that the study of Poli- 

 tics is already, even by practical statesmen, being placed on a platform 

 of far higher scientific exactness than ever before. 



One of these indications is the large and discriminating use made 

 of statistics. The collection and due use of statistics belong to very 

 modern times ; and owing to popular prejudices and social obstacles 

 such, for instance, as still exist in England with regard to the collec- 

 tion of agricultural and religious statistics they have not yet received 

 anything like the extension of which they are capable. Nevertheless, 

 it has become the fashion for all the more advanced Governments to 

 rival each other in the breadth, fullness, arrangement, and clearness of 

 the numerical information they obtain on all the groups of national 

 facts which are susceptible of being tabulated in a systematic shape. 



