528 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



minds are fairly turning themselves towards that object. It 

 has hecome the aim of really scientific thinkers to connect by 

 theories the facts of universal history : it is acknowledged to 

 be one of the requisites of a general system of social doctrine, 

 that it should explain, so far as the data exist, the main facts 

 of history ; and a Philosophy of History is generally admitted 

 to be at once the verification, and the initial form, of the Phi 

 losophy of the Progress of Society. 



If the endeavours now making in all the more cultivated 

 nations, and beginning to be made even in England (usually 

 the last to enter into the general movement of the European 

 mind) for the construction of a Philosophy of History, shall 

 be directed and controlled by those views of the nature of 

 sociological evidence which I have (very briefly and imper 

 fectly) attempted to characterize ; they cannot fail to give 

 birth to a sociological system widely removed from the vague 

 and conjectural character of all former attempts, and worthy 

 to take its place, at last, among the sciences. When this time 

 shall come, no important branch of human affairs will be any 

 longer abandoned to empiricism and unscientific surmise : the 

 circle of human knowledge will be complete, and it can only 

 thereafter receive further enlargement by perpetual expansion 

 from within. 



