PHYSICAL METHOD. 489 



shall presently endeavour to show the importance, I cannot 

 but think that this truth is enunciated in too unlimited a 

 manner, and that there is considerable scope in sociological 

 inquiry for the direct, as well as for the inverse, Deductive 

 Method. 



It will, in fact, he shown in the next chapter, that there is 

 a kind of sociological inquiries to which, from their pro 

 digious complication, the method of direct deduction is alto 

 gether inapplicable, while by a happy compensation it is 

 precisely in these cases that we are able to obtain the best 

 empirical laws : to these inquiries, therefore, the Inverse 

 Method is exclusively adapted. But there are also, as will 

 presently appear, other cases in which it is impossible to 

 obtain from direct observation anything worthy the name of 

 an empirical law ; and it fortunately happens that these are 

 the very cases in which the Direct Method is least affected by 

 the objection which undoubtedly must always affect it in a 

 certain degree. 



We shall begin, then, by looking at the Social Science as 

 a science of direct Deduction, and considering what can be 

 accomplished in it, and under what limitations, by that mode 

 of investigation. We shall, then, in a separate chapter, ex 

 amine and endeavour to characterize the inverse process. 



2. It is evident, in the first place, that Sociology, 

 considered as a system of deductions a priori, cannot be a 

 science of positive predictions, but only of tendencies. We 

 may be able to conclude, from the laws of human nature 

 applied to the circumstances of a given state of society, that 

 a particular cause will operate in a certain manner unless 

 counteracted ; but we can never be assured to what extent or 

 amount it will so operate, or affirm with certainty that it will 

 not be counteracted ; because we can seldom know, even 

 approximately, all the agencies which may coexist with it, 

 and still less calculate the collective result of so many com 

 bined elements. The remark, however, must here be once 

 more repeated, that knowledge insufficient for prediction may 

 be most valuable for guidance. It is not necessary for the 



