CHAPTER VI. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. 



1. NEXT after the science of individual man, comes the 

 science of man in society : of the actions of collective masses 

 of mankind, and the various phenomena which constitute social 

 life. 



If the formation of individual character is already a com- 

 plex subject of study, this subject must be, in appearance at 

 least, still more complex ; because the number of concurrent 

 causes, all exercising more or less influence on the total 

 effect, is greater, in the proportion in which a nation, or the 

 species at large, exposes a larger surface to the operation of 

 agents, psychological and physical, than any single individual. 

 If it was necessary to prove, in opposition to an existing pre- 

 judice, that the simpler of the two is capable of being a sub- 

 ject of science; the prejudice is likely to be yet stronger 

 against the possibility of giving a scientific character to the 

 study of Politics, and of the phenomena of Society. It is, 

 accordingly, but of yesterday that the conception of a political 

 or social science has existed, anywhere but in the mind of 

 here and there an insulated thinker, generally very ill prepared 

 for its realization: though the subject itself has of all others 

 engaged the most general attention, and been a theme of in- 

 terested and earnest discussions, almost from the beginning of 

 recorded time. 



The condition indeed of politics, as a- branch of knowledge, 

 was until very lately, and has scarcely even yet ceased to be, 

 that which Bacon animadverted on, as the natural state of the 

 sciences while their cultivation is abandoned to practitioners ; 

 not being carried on as a branch of speculative inquiry, 

 but only with a view to the exigencies of daily practice, 



