SOCIAL SCIENCE. 463 



well meriting the _ridicrybjQliL2^io^JI_iJfeSS|ed. by practi.- 



by the analogy ol the art to 



which, from the nature of its subject, thatj)f_po]itic.s must be 

 te~loo^t&quot;^earlyj : llied :: _ jfe one now supposes it possible that 



one remedy can cure j^jlisjsaseSi j)rj3jvgn the 8amejliseajie.ja_ 

 jajl constitutions andjmbitjt of body. 



It is not necessary even to the perfection of a science, 

 that the corresponding art should possess universal, or even 

 general, rules. The phenomena of society might not only be 

 completely dependent on known causes, but the mode of 

 action of all those causes might be reducible to laws of con 

 siderable simplicity, and yet no two cases might admit of 

 being treated in precisely the same manner. So great might 

 be the variety of circumstances on which the results in 

 different cases depend, that the art might not have a single 

 general precept to give, except that of watching the circum 

 stances of the particular case, and adapting our measures to 

 the effects which, according to the principles of the science, 

 result from those circumstances. But although, in so compli-~| 

 cated a class of subjects, it is impossible to lay down practical! 

 maxims of universal application, it does not follow that the/ 

 phenomena do not conform to universal laws. 



/, , ! - H, &amp;lt; :( $*&quot; ^ 



2. All phenomena of society are phenomena of human 

 nature, generated by the action of outward circumstances 

 upon masses of human beings: and if, therefore, the pheno 

 mena of human thought, feeling, and action, are subject to 

 fixed laws, the phenomena of society cannot but conform to 

 fixed laws, the consequence of the preceding. There is, 

 indeed, no hope that these laws, though our knowledge of 

 them were as certain and as complete as it is in astronomy, 

 would enable us to predict the history of society, like that of 

 the celestial appearances, for thousands of years to come. But 

 the difference of certainty is not in the laws themselves, it is -^ 

 in the data to which these laws are to be applied. In astro 

 nomy the causes influencing the result are few, and change 

 little, and that little according to known laws ; we can ascer 

 tain what they are now, and thence determine what they will 



