THE CHEMICAL METHOD. 609 



This mode of thinking is not only general with practitioners in poli- 

 tics, and with that very numerous class who (on a subject which no one, 

 however ignorant, thinks himself incompetent to discuss) profess to guide 

 themselves by common sense rather than by science; but is often counte- 

 tenanced by persons with greater pretensions to instruction — persons who, 

 having sufficient acquaintance with books and with the current ideas to 

 have heard that Bacon taught mankind to follow experience, and to ground 

 their conclusions on facts instead of metaphysical dogmas, think that, by 

 treating political facts in as directly experimental a method as chemical 

 facts, they are showing themselves true Baconians, and proving their ad- 

 versaries to be mere syllogizers and school-men. As, however, the notion 

 of the applicability of experimental methods to political philosophy can 

 not co-exist with any just conception of these methods themselves, the kind 

 of arguments from experience which the chemical theory brings forth as 

 its fruits (and which form the staple, in this country especially, of parlia- 

 mentary and hustings oratory), are such as, at no time since Bacon, would 

 have been admitted to be valid in chemistry itself, or in any other branch 

 of experimental science. They are such as these : that the prohibition of 

 foreign commodities must conduce to national wealth, because England 

 has flourished under it, or because countries in general which have adopt- 

 ed it have flourished ; that our laws, or our internal administration, or our 

 constitution, are excellent for a similar reason ; and the eternal arguments 

 from historical examples, from Athens or Rome, fi-om the fires in Smith- 

 field or the French Revolution. 



I will not waste time in contending against modes of argumentation 

 which no person with the smallest practice in estimating evidence could 

 possibly be betrayed into ; which draw conclusions of general application 

 from a single unanalyzed instance, or arbitrarily refer an effect to some 

 one among its antecedents, without any process of elimination or compari- 

 son of instances. It is a rule both of justice and of good sense to grapple 

 not with the absurdest, but with the most reasonable form of a wrong 

 opinion. We shall suppose our inquirer acquainted with the true condi- 

 tions of experimental investigation, and competent in point of acquire- 

 ments for realizing them, so far as they can be realized. He shall know 

 as much of the facts of history as mere erudition can teach — as much as 

 can be proved by testimony, without the assistance of any theory ; and if 

 those mei"e facts, properly collated, can fulfill the conditions of a real in- 

 duction, he shall be qualified for the task. 



But that no such attempt can have the smallest chance of success, has 

 been abundantly shown in the tenth chapter of the Third Book.* We 

 there examined whether effects which depend on a complication of causes 

 can be made the subject of a true induction by observation and experi- 

 ment ; and concluded, on the most convincing grounds, that they can not. 

 Since, of all effects, none depend on so great a complication of causes as 

 social phenomena, we might leave our case to rest in safety on that previ- 

 ous showing. But a logical principle as yet so little familiar to the ordi- 

 nary run of thinkers, requires to be insisted on more than once, in order to 

 make the due impression ; and the present being the case which of all oth- 

 ers exemplifies it the most strongly, there will be advantage in re-stating 

 the grounds of the general maxim, as applied to the specialties of the 

 class of inquiries now under consideration. 



* Supra f page 317 to the end of the chapter. 

 39 



