132 KEASONS FOE DISSENTING FROM COMTE. 



the work itself be considered, its irrelation to the philosopny 

 of M. Comte, becomes abundantly manifest. There is decisive 

 testimony on this point. In the North British Revieiv for 

 August, 1851, a reviewer of Social Statics says 



&quot; The title of this work, however, is a complete misnomer. 

 According to all analogy, the phrase &quot;Social Statics&quot; should be 

 used only in some such sense as that in which, as we have already 

 explained, it is used by Comte, namely as designating a branch of 

 inquiry whose end it is to ascertain the laws of social equilibrium 

 or order, as distinct ideally from those of social movement or progress. 

 Of this Mr. Spencer does not seem to have had the slightest notion, 

 but to have chosen the name for his &quot;work only as a means of indi 

 cating vaguely that it proposed to treat of social concerns in a 

 scientific manner.&quot; p. 321. 



Respecting M. Comte s application of the words statics 

 and dynamics to social phenomena, now that I know what 

 it is, I will only say that while I perfectly understand how, 

 by a defensible extension of their mathematical meanings, 

 the one may be used to indicate social functions in balance, 

 and the other social functions out of balance, I am quite at a 

 loss to understand how the phenomena of structure can be 

 included in the one any more than in the other. But the 

 two things which here concern me, are, first, to point out that 

 I had not &quot;the slightest notion&quot; of giving Social Statics the 

 meaning which M. Comte gave it ; and, second, to explain 

 the meaning which I did give it. The units of any ag 

 gregate of matter, are in equilibrium when they severally 

 act and re-act upon each other on all sides with equal forces. 

 A state of change among them implies that there are forces 

 exercised by some that are not counterbalanced by like 

 forces exercised by others ; and a state of rest implies the 

 absence of such uncounterbalanced forces implies, if the 

 units are homogeneous, equal distances among them 

 implies a maintenance of their respective spheres of molecular 



which Mr. Mill had limited to his special topic. Another thing is, I think, 

 tolerably manifest. As I evidently wished to point out my obligation to some 

 unknown political economist, whose division I thought I was extending, I should 

 have named him had I known who he was. And in that case should not have 

 put this extension of the division as though it were new 



