510 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



which is now generally adopted by the most advanced thinkers 

 on the Continent, consists in attempting, by a study and 

 analysis of the general facts of history, to discover (what 

 these philosophers term) the law of progress : which law, once 

 ascertained, must according to them enable us to predict future 

 events, just as after a few terms of an infinite series in algebra 

 we are able to detect the principle of regularity in their for 

 mation, and to predict the rest of the series to any number 

 of terms we please. The principal aim of historical specula 

 tion in France, of late years, has been to ascertain this law. 

 But while I gladly acknowledge the great services which have 

 been rendered to historical knowledge by this school, I cannot 

 but deem them to be mostly chargeable with a fundamental 

 misconception of the true method of social philosophy. The 

 misconception consists in supposing that the order of succes 

 sion which we may be able to trace among the different states 

 of society and civilization which history presents to us, even 

 if that order were more rigidly uniform than it has yet been 

 proved to be, could ever amount to a law of nature. It can 

 only be an empirical law. The succession of states of the 

 human mind and of human society cannot have an independent 

 law of its own ; it must depend on the psychological and 

 ethological laws which govern the action of circumstances on 

 men and of men on circumstances. It is conceivable that those 

 laws might be such, and the general circumstances of the 

 human race such, as to determine the successive transformations 

 of man and society to one given and unvarying order. But 

 even if the case were so, it cannot be the ultimate aim of 

 science to discover an empirical law. Until that law could be 

 connected with the psychological and ethological laws on which 

 it must depend, and, by the consilience of deduction ct priori 

 with historical evidence, could be converted from an empirical 

 law into a scientific one, it could not be relied on for the pre 

 diction of future events, beyond, at most, strictly adjacent 

 cases. M. Comte alone, among the new historical school, has 

 seen the necessity of thus connecting all our generalizations 

 from history with the laws of human nature. 



