TEE UNIFORMITY OF SOCIAL PEENOMENA. 807 



■whether there is, in fact, a social physiology. Investigation in the 

 ordinary sciences was facilitated by the discovery, which was early 

 made, that its objects grouped themselves in classes, of which each 

 individual corresponded with a common type, and that what was 

 observed of one could be predicated of all of its class. Were social 

 phenomena susceptible of a similar generalization ? 



The question has only recently been answered with clear knowl- 

 edge ; but hints of the solution were given two or three hundred years 

 ago to one or two favored thinkers. Giambattista Vico made the first 

 approach to it toward the close of the seventeenth century, in his 

 " Scienza nuova." Johann Peter Siissmilch gained another glimpse of 

 it a hundred years afterward. Half a century after him, Herder 

 advanced the doctrine that a plan ruled in social development, the 

 discovery of which must be sought through the study of the philosophy 

 of history. The application of mathematical calculations to human 

 events is due to two astronomers. Laplace, investigating the law of 

 probabilities, suggested that the methods of observation and calculation 

 might be of service in social and intellectual studies. The second as- 

 tronomer, Quetelet, was the real founder of social physiology. Since 

 his investigations there has been no doubt of the practicability of 

 studying, by the methods of natural research, those social phenomena 

 which had previously been only looked at through the telescope of 

 speculation ; for he, not contented with mere suggestions, made actual 

 analyses of civil society ; instituted mathematical investigations with 

 groups of vital phenomena, to which only a few before him had vent- 

 ured to apply the measuring-rod ; showed the regularity of the 

 formation of the social body and of its vital manifestations ; and made 

 apparent the close relations of cause and effect in the apparently 

 voluntary acts of men in society. The followers on Quetelet's lines 

 during the last thirty years have been very numerous. A whole 

 school have adopted exactly his spirit and methods ; others have 

 worked analytically ; and others have endeavored to build up a meta- 

 physical sociology. The literature of many nations, particularly of 

 England, Germany, France, and Italy, has now a legion of works aiming 

 to investigate the phenomena of social life from the most diversified 

 points of view, tenable and untenable ; they differ widely in character, 

 but all agree that the laws of human social phenomena are a legitimate 

 subject of study. The mathematical method has been vastly aided 

 during the same period by the operations of the statistical bureaus 

 that have been established in most civilized countries, in collecting 

 and classifying facts, which, with the averages they afford, are to the 

 social philosopher what his chemicals, microscopes and instruments of 

 precision, and his experiments, are to the natural philosopher. 



The great progress which has been made in the comprehension of 

 the principles of social philosophy is due to the method which has 

 been adopted of laying aside for a time the consideration of single 



