THE CHEMICAL METHOD. 473 



than the three other methods, hecause it only requires that 

 we should accurately note the circumstances of some one 

 country, or state of society. Making allowance, thereupon, 

 for the effect of all causes whose tendencies are known, the 

 residue which those causes are inadequate to explain may 

 plausibly be imputed to the remainder of the circumstances 

 which are known to have existed in the case. Something 

 similar to this is the method which Coleridge* describes him- 

 self as having followed in his political essays in the Morning 

 Post. " On every great occurrence I endeavoured to discover 

 in past history the event that most nearly resembled it. I 

 procured, whenever it was possible, the contemporary his- 

 torians, memorialists, and pamphleteers. Then fairly sub- 

 tracting the points of difference from those of likeness, as the 

 balance favoured the former or the latter, I conjectured that 

 the result would be the same or different. As, for instance, in 

 the series of essays entitled ' A comparison of France under 

 Napoleon with Home under the first Caesars,' and in those 

 which followed, ' on the probable final restoration of the 

 Bourbons/ The same plan I pursued at the commencement 

 of the Spanish Kevolution, and with the same success, taking 

 the war of the United Provinces with Philip II. as the 

 groundwork of the comparison." In this inquiry he no doubt 

 employed the Method of Kesidues ; for, in " subtracting the 

 points of difference from those of likeness," he doubtless 

 weighed, and did not content himself with numbering, them : 

 he doubtless took those points of agreement only, which he 

 presumed from their own nature to be capable of influencing 

 the effect, and, allowing for that influence, concluded that the 

 remainder of the result would be referable to the points of 

 difference. 



Whatever may be the efficacy of this method, it is, as we 

 long ago remarked, not a method of pure observation and 

 experiment ; it concludes, not from a comparison of instances, 

 but from the comparison of an instance with the result of a 

 previous deduction. Applied to social phenomena, it pre- 



* Biographia, Literaria, i. 214. 



