SOCIAL SCIENCE. 607 



contemplated in the point of View characteristic of science, the philosopliy 

 of society should have made little progress; should contain few general 

 propositions sufficiently precise and certain for common inquirers to recog- 

 nize in them a scientific character. The vulgar notion accordingly is, that 

 all pretension to lay down general truths on politics and society is quack- 

 ery; that no universality and no certainty are attainable in such matters. 

 What partly excuses this common notion is, that it is really not without 

 foundation in one particular sense. A large proportion of those who have 

 laid claim to the character of philosophic politicians have attempted not 

 to ascertain universal sequences, but to frame universal precepts. They 

 have imagined some one form of government, or system of laws, to fit all 

 cases — a pretension well meriting the ridicule with which it is treated by 

 practitioners, and wholly unsupported by the analogy of the art to which, 

 from the nature of its subject, that of politics must be the most nearly 

 allied. No one now supposes it possible that one remedy can cure all 

 diseases, or even the same disease in all constitutions and habits of body. 



It is not necessary even to the perfection of a science, that the corre- 

 sponding art should possess universal, or even general, rules. The phe- 

 nomena of society might not only be completely dependent on known 

 causes, but the mode of action of all those causes might be reducible to 

 laws of considerable simplicity, and yet no two cases might admit of being 

 treated in precisely the same manner. So great might be the variety of 

 circumstances on which the results in different cases depend, that the art 

 might not have a single general precept to give, except that of watching 

 the circumstances of the particular case, and adapting our measures to the 

 effects which, according to the principles of the science, result from those 

 circumstances. But although, in so complicated a class of subjects, it is 

 impossible to lay down practical maxims of universal application, it does 

 not follow that the phenomena do not conform to universal laws. 



§ 2. All phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature, gener- 

 ated by the action of outward circumstances upon masses of human be- 

 ings; and if, therefore, the phenomena of human thought, feeling, and ac- 

 tion are subject to fixed laws, the phenomena of society can not but con- 

 form to fixed laws, the consequence of the preceding. There is, indeed, 

 no hope that these laws, though our knowledge of them were as certain 

 and as complete as it is in astronomy, would enable us to predict the his- 

 tory of society, like that of the celestial appearances, for thousands of 

 years to come. But the difference of certainty is not in the laws thenj- 

 selves, it is in the data to which these laws are to be applied. In as- 

 tronomy the causes influencing the result are few, and change little, and 

 that little according to known laws ; we can ascertain what they are now, 

 and thence determine what they will be at any epoch of a distant future. 

 The data, therefore, in astronomy are as certain as the laws themselves. 

 The circumstances, on the contrary, which influence the condition and prog- 

 ress of society are innumerable, and perpetually changing; and though 

 they all change in obedience to causes, and therefore to laws, the multitude 

 of the causes is so great as to defy our limited powers of calculation. Not 

 to say that the impossibility of applying precise numbers to facts of such 

 a description would set an impassable limit to the possibility of calcula- 

 ting them beforehand, even if the powers of the human intellect were other- 

 wise adequate to the task. 



But, as before remarked, an amount of knowledge quite insufficient for 



