THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 423 



the horses ; and note how this belief, accepted on the authority of 

 grooms and coachmen, is repeated by their educated employers as I 

 lately heard it repeated by an American general, and agreed in by two 

 retired English officials. Clearly, the readiness to admit, on such evi- 

 dence, that such a cause can produce such an effect, implies a con- 

 sciousness of causation which, even qualitatively considered, is of the 

 crudest kind. And such a consciousness is, indeed, everywhere be- 

 trayed by the superstitions prevalent more or less among all classes. 



Hence we must infer that the uncompared and unanalyzed obser- 

 vations men make, in the course of their dealings with things around, 

 do not suffice to give them wholly-rational ideas of the process of 

 things. It requires that physical actions shall be critically examined, 

 the factors and results measured, and different cases contrasted, before 

 there can be reached clear ideas of necessary causal dependence. And 

 thus to investigate physical actions is the business of the Abstract- 

 Concrete Sciences. Every experiment which the physicist or the 

 chemist makes brings afresh before his consciousness the truth, given 

 countless times in his previous experiences, that from certain antece- 

 dents of particular kinds there will inevitably follow a particular kind 

 of consequent ; and that, from certain amounts of the antecedents, the 

 amount of the consequent will be inevitably so much. The habit of 

 thought generated by these hourly-repeated experiences, always the 

 same, always exact, is one which makes it impossible to think of any 

 effect as arising without a cause, or any cause as expended without an 

 effect ; and one which makes it impossible to think of an effect out of 

 proportion to its cause, or a cause out of proportion to its effect. 



While, however, study of the Abstract-Concrete Sciences, carried 

 on experimentally, gives clearness and strength to the consciousness of 

 causation, taken alone it is inadequate as a discipline ; and, when pur- 

 sued exclusively, generates a habit of thought which betrays into er- 

 roneous conclusions when higher orders of phenomena are dealt with. 

 The process of physical inquiry is essentially analytical ; and the daily 

 pursuit of this process generates two tendencies the tendency to con- 

 template separately the factors of phenomena, which it is the aim of 

 inquiry to disentangle, and identify, and measure, and the tendency to 

 rest in the results of such inquiry as though they were the final results 

 to be sought. The chemist, by saturating, neutralizing, decomposing, 

 precipitating, and at last separating, is enabled to measure what quan- 

 tity of this element had been held in combination by a given quantity 

 of that ; and, when, by some alternative course of analysis, he has 

 verified the result, his inquiry in so far is concluded : as are kindred 

 inquiries respecting the other affinities of the element, when they are 

 qualitatively and quantitatively determined in like ways. His habit is 

 to get rid of, or neglect as much as possible, the concomitant disturb- 

 ing factors, and to ascertain the nature and amount of some one and 

 then of some other ; and his end is reached when accouuts have been 



