HISTORICAL METHOD. 515 



Such a notion, already too narrow in the science of life, would 

 be completely at variance with the still more complex nature 

 of sociological speculations. But the exact estimation of 

 these limits of variation, both in the healthy and in the 

 morbid state, constitutes, at least as much as in the anatomy 

 of the natural body, an indispensable complement to every 

 theory of Sociological Statics; without which the indi- 

 rect exploration above spoken of would often lead into 

 error. 



" This is not the place for methodically demonstrating the 

 existence of a necessary relation among all the possible aspects 

 of the same social organism ; a point on which, in principle at 

 least, there is now little difference of opinion among sound 

 thinkers. From whichever of the social elements we choose to 

 set out, we may easily recognise that it has always a connexion, 

 more or less immediate, with all the other elements, even with 

 those which at first sight appear the most independent of it. 

 The dynamical consideration, of the progressive development of 

 civilized humanity, affords, no doubt, a still more efficacious 

 means of effecting this interesting verification of the consensus 

 of the social phenomena, by displaying the manner in which 

 every change in any one part, operates immediately, or very 

 speedily, upon all the rest. But this indication may be pre- 

 ceded, or at all events followed, by a confirmation of a purely 

 statical kind ; for, in politics as in mechanics, the communica- 

 tion of motion from one object to another proves a connexion 

 between them. Without descending to the minute interde- 

 pendence of the different branches of any one science or art, is 

 it not evident that among the different sciences, as well as 

 among most of the arts, there exists such a connexion, that if 

 the state of any one well marked division of them is sufficiently 

 known to us, we can with real scientific assurance infer, from 

 their necessary correlation, the contemporaneous state of every 

 one of the others ? By a further extension of this considera- 

 tion, we may conceive the necessary relation which exists 

 between the condition of the sciences in general and that of 

 the arts in general, except that the mutual dependence is less 

 intense in proportion as it is more indirect. The same is the 



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