490 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



wise conduct of the affairs of society, no more than of any 

 one's private concerns, that we should be able to foresee infal- 

 libly the results of what we do. We must seek our objects by 

 means which may perhaps be defeated, and take precautions 

 against dangers which possibly may never be realized. The 

 aim of practical politics is to surround any given society with 

 the greatest possible number of circumstances of which the 

 tendencies are beneficial, and to remove or counteract, as far 

 as practicable, those of which the tendencies are injurious. A 

 knowledge of the tendencies only, though without the power 

 of accurately predicting their conjunct result, gives us to a 

 certain extent this power. 



It would, however, be an error to suppose that even with 

 respect to tendencies, we could arrive in this manner at any 

 great number of propositions which will be true in all societies 

 without exception. Such a supposition would be inconsistent 

 with the eminently modifiable nature of the social phenomena, 

 and the multitude and variety of the circumstances by which 

 they are modified; circumstances never the same, or even 

 nearly the same, in two different societies, or in two different 

 periods of the same society. This would not be so serious an 

 obstacle if, though the causes acting upon society in general 

 are numerous, those which influence any one feature of society 

 were limited in number ; for we might then insulate any par- 

 ticular social phenomenon, and investigate its laws without 

 disturbance from the rest. But the truth is the very opposite 

 of this. Whatever affects, in an appreciable degree, any one 

 element of the social state, affects through it all the other 

 elements. The mode of production of all social phenomena is 

 one great case of Intermixture of Laws. We can never either 

 understand in theory or command in practice the condition of 

 a society in any one respect, without taking into considera- 

 tion its condition in all other respects. There is no social 

 phenomenon which is not more or less influenced by every 

 other part of the condition of the same society, and therefore 

 by every cause which is influencing any other of the contem- 

 poraneous social phenomena. There is, in short, what physi- 

 ologists term a consensus, similar to that existing among the 



