606 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



these two kinds of evidence separately taken — the consilience of a priori 

 reasoning and specific experience — which forms the only sufficient ground 

 for the principles of any science so " immersed in matter," dealing with 

 such complex and concrete phenomena, as Ethology. 



CHAPTER VI. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. 



§ 1. Next after the science of individual man comes the science of man 

 in society — of the actions of collective masses of mankind, and the various 

 phenomena which constitute social life. 



If the formation of individual character is already a complex subject of 

 study, this subject must be, in appearance at least, still more complex ; be- 

 cause the number of concurrent causes, all exercising more or less influence 

 on the total effect, is greater, in the proportion in which a nation, or the 

 species at large, exposes a lai-ger surface to the operation of agents, psy- 

 chological and physical, than any single individual. If it was necessary to 

 prove, in opposition to an existing prejudice, that the simpler of the two 

 is capable of being a subject of science, the prejudice is likely to be yet 

 stronger against the possibility of giving a scientific character to the study 

 of Politics, and of the phenomena of Society. It is, accordingly, but of 

 yesterday that the conception of a political or social science has existed 

 anywhere but in the mind of here and there an insulated thinker, generally 

 very ill prepared for its realization: though the subject itself has of all 

 others engaged the most general attention, and been a theme of interested 

 and earnest discussions, almost from the beginning of recorded time. 



The condition, indeed, of politics as a branch of knowledge was, until 

 very lately^ and has scarcely even yet ceased to be, that which Bacon ani- 

 madverted on, as the natural state of the sciences while their cultivation is 

 abandoned to practitioners ; not being carried on as a branch of speculative 

 inquiry, but only with a view to the exigencies of daily practice, and the 

 fruetifera experimenta, therefoi'e, being aimed at, almost to the exclusion 

 of the lucifera. Such was medical investigation, before physiology and 

 natural history began to be cultivated as branches of general knowledge. 

 The only questions examined were, what diet is wholesome, or what medi- 

 cine will cure some given disease ; without any previous systematic inquiry 

 into the laws of nutrition, and of the healthy and morbid action of the 

 different organs, on which laws the effect of any diet or medicine must 

 evidently depend. And in politics the questions Avhich engaged general 

 attention were similar : Is such an enactment, or such a form of govern- 

 ment, beneficial or the reverse — either universally, or to some particular 

 community? without any previous inquiry into the general conditions by 

 which the operation of legislative measures,, or the effects produced by 

 forms of government, are determined. Students in politics thus attempted 

 to study the pathology and therapeutics of the social body, before they had 

 laid the necessary foundation in its physiology; to cure disease without 

 understanding the laws of health. And the result was such as it must al- 

 ways be when persons, even of ability, attempt to deal with the complex 

 questions of a science before its simpler and more elementary truths have 

 been established. 



No wonder that, when the phenomena of society have so rarely been 



