462 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



and the fructifera experimenta, therefore, being aimed at, 

 almost to the exclusion of the lucifera. Such was medical 

 investigation, before physiology and natural history began to 

 be cultivated as branches of general knowledge. The only 

 questions examined were, what diet is wholesome, or what 

 medicine will cure some given disease ; without any previous 

 systematic inquiry into the laws of nutrition, and of the 

 healthy and morbid action of the different organs, on which 

 laws the effect of any diet or medicine must evidently depend. 

 And in politics, the questions which engaged general atten- 

 tion were similar : Is such an enactment, or such a form of 

 government, beneficial or the reverse either universally, or 

 to some particular community? without any previous inquiry 

 into the general conditions by which the operation of legisla- 

 tive measures, or the effects produced by forms of government, 

 are determined. Students in politics thus attempted to study 

 the pathology and therapeutics of the social body, before they 

 had laid the necessary foundation in its physiology ; to cure 

 disease, without understanding the laws of health. And the 

 result was such as it must always be when persons, even of 

 ability, attempt to deal with the complex questions of a science 

 before its simpler and more elementary truths have been 

 established. 



No wonder that when the phenomena of society have so 

 rarely been contemplated in the point of view characteristic of 

 science, the philosophy of society should have made little pro- 

 gress ; should contain few general propositions sufficiently 

 precise and certain, for common inquirers to recognise in them 

 a scientific character. The vulgar notion accordingly is, that 

 all pretension to lay down general truths on politics and 

 society is quackery ; that no universality and no certainty are 

 attainable in such matters. What partly excuses this common 

 notion is, that it is really not without foundation in one par- 

 ticular sense. A large proportion of those who have laid 

 claim to the character of philosophic politicians, have at- 

 tempted, not to ascertain universal sequences, but to frame 

 universal precepts. They have imagined some one form of 

 government, or system of laws, to fit all cases ; a pretension 



