472 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



eliminated. Now, in the case of political phenomena, the sup- 

 position of unity of cause is not only wide of the truth, hut at 

 an immeasurahle distance from it. The causes of every social 

 phenomenon which we are particularly interested ahout, secu- 

 rity, wealth, freedom, good government, puhlic virtue, general 

 intelligence, or their opposites, are infinitely numerous : espe- 

 cially the external or remote causes, which alone are, for the 

 most part, accessible to direct observation. No one cause 

 suffices of itself to produce any of these phenomena ; while 

 there are countless causes which have some influence over 

 them, and may co-operate either in their production or in their 

 prevention. From the mere fact, therefore, of our having been 

 able to eliminate some circumstance, we can by no means infer 

 that this circumstance was not instrumental to the effect in 

 some of the very instances from which we have eliminated it. 

 We can conclude that the effect is sometimes produced with- 

 out it ; but not that, when present, it does not contribute its 

 share. 



Similar objections will be found to apply to the Method of 

 Concomitant Variations. If the causes which act upon the 

 state of any society produced effects differing from one another 

 in kind ; if wealth depended on one cause, peace on another, a 

 third made people virtuous, a fourth intelligent; we might, 

 though unable to sever the causes from one another, refer to 

 each of them that property of the effect which waxed as it 

 waxed, and which waned as it waned. But every attribute of 

 the social body is influenced by innumerable causes; and such 

 is the mutual action of the coexisting elements of society, that 

 whatever affects any one of the more important of them, will 

 by that alone, if it does not affect the others directly, affect 

 them indirectly. The effects, therefore, of different agents not 

 being different in quality, while the quantity of each is the 

 mixed result of all the agents, the variations of the aggregate 

 cannot bear an uniform proportion to those of any one of its 

 component parts. 



5. There remains the Method of Eesidues; which 

 appears, on the first view, less foreign to this kind of inquiry 



