PHYSICAL METHOD. 



487 



phenomena of a far inferior degree of complication, we ought 

 to be aware that the same superior complexity which renders 

 the instrument of Deduction more necessary, renders it also 

 more precarious ; and we must be prepared to meet, by appro 

 priate contrivances, this increase of difficulty. 



The actions and feelings of human beings in the social 

 state, are, no doubt, entirely governed by psychological and 

 ethological laws : whatever influence any cause exercises upon 

 the social phenomena, it exercises through those laws. Sup 

 posing therefore the laws of human actions and feelings to 

 be sufficiently known, there is no extraordinary difficulty in 

 determining from those laws, the nature of the social effects 

 which any given cause tends to produce. But when the 

 question is that of compounding several tendencies together, 

 and computing the aggregate result of many coexistent 

 causes ; and especially when, by attempting to predict what 

 will actually occur in a given case, we incur the obligation of 

 estimating and compounding the influences of all the causes 

 which happen to exist in that case; we attempt a task, to 

 proceed far in which, surpasses the compass of the human 

 faculties. 



If all the resources of science are not sufficient to enable 

 us to calculate a priori, with complete precision, the mutual 

 action of three bodies gravitating towards one another; it 

 may be judged with what prospect of success we should 

 endeavour to calculate the result of the conflicting tendencies 

 which are acting in a thousand different directions and pro 

 moting a thousand different changes at a given instant in 

 a given society : although we might and ought to be able, 

 from the laws of human nature, to distinguish correctly 

 enough the tendencies themselves, so far as they depend on 

 causes accessible to our observation; and to determine the 

 direction which each of them, if acting alone, would impress 

 upon society, as well as, in a general way at least, to pro 

 nounce that some of these tendencies are more powerful than 

 others. 



But, without dissembling the necessary imperfections of 

 the ^ priori method when applied to such a subject, neither 



