HISTORICAL, METHOD. 507 



of wealth and its distribution ; the habitual occupations of the 

 community ; their division into classes, and the relations of 

 those classes to one another ; the common beliefs which they 

 entertain on all the subjects most important to mankind, and 

 the degree of assurance with which those beliefs are held ; 

 their tastes, and the character and degree of their sesthetic de- 

 velopment ; their form of government, and the more important 

 of their laws and customs. The condition of all these things, 

 and of many more which will readily suggest themselves, con- 

 stitute the state of society or the state of civilization at any 

 given time. 



When states of society, and the causes which produce 

 them, are spoken of as a subject of science, it is implied that 

 there exists a natural correlation among these different ele- 

 ments ; that not every variety of combination of these general 

 social facts is possible, but only certain combinations ; that, 

 in short, there exist Uniformities of Coexistence between the 

 states of the various social phenomena. And such is the 

 truth ; as is indeed a necessary consequence of the influence 

 exercised by every one of those phenomena over every other. 

 It is a fact implied in the consensus of the various parts of 

 the social body. 



States of society are like different constitutions or different 

 ages in the physical frame ; they are conditions not of one 

 or a few organs or functions, but of the whole organism. 

 Accordingly, the information which we possess respecting 

 past ages, and respecting the various states of society now 

 existing in different regions of the earth, does, when duly 

 analysed, exhibit uniformities. It is found that when one of 

 the features of society is in a particular state, a state of many 

 other features, more or less precisely determinate, always or 

 usually coexists with it. 



But the uniformities of coexistence obtaining among phe- 

 nomena which are effects of causes, must (as we have so often 

 observed) be corollaries from the laws of causation by which 

 these phenomena are really determined. The mutual correla- 

 tion between the different elements of each state of society, is 

 therefore a derivative law, resulting from the laws which regu- 



