.• THE CHEMICAL METHOD. $13 



Philip II. as the groundwork of the comparison." In this inquiry he uo 

 doubt employed the Method of Residues ; for, in " subtracting the points 

 of difference from those of likeness," he doubtless weighed, and did not 

 content himself with numbering, them : he doubtless took those points of 

 agreement only which he presumed from their own nature to be capable 

 of influencing the effect, and, allowing for that influence, concluded that the 

 remainder of the result would be referable to the points of difference. 



Whatever may be the efiicacy of this method, it is, as we long ago re- 

 marked, not a method of pure observation and experiment ; it concludes, 

 not from a comparison of instances, but from the comparison of an in- 

 I stance with the result of a previous deduction. Applied to social phenom- 

 ena, it presupposes that the causes from which part of the effect proceeded 

 are already known ; and as we have shown that these can not have been 

 known by specific experience, they must have been learned by deduction 

 from principles of human nature; experience being called in only as a sup- 

 plementary resource, to determine the causes which produced an unex- 

 plained residue. But if the principles of human nature may be had re- 

 course to for the establishment of some political truths, they may for all. 

 If it be admissible to say, England must have prospered by reason of 

 the prohibitory system, because after allowing for all the other tendencies 

 which have been operating, there is a portion of prosperity still to be ac- 

 counted for ; it must be admissible to go to the same source for the effect 

 of the prohibitory system, and examine what account the laws of human 

 motives and actions will enable us to give of its tendencies. Nor, in fact, 

 will the experimental argument amount to any thing, except in verification 

 of a conclusion drawn from those general laws. For we may subtract 

 the effect of one, two, three, or four causes, but we shall never succeed in 

 subtracting the effect of all causes except one; Avhile it would be a cu- 

 rious instance of the dangers of too much caution if, to avoid depending 

 on a priori reasoning concerning the effect of a single cause, we should 

 oblige ourselves to depend on as many separate a i^riori reasonings as 

 there are causes operating concurrently with that particular cause in some 

 given instance. 



We have now sufficiently characterized the gross misconception of the 

 mode of investigation proper to political phenomena, which I have termed 

 the Chemical Method. So lengthened a discussion would not have been 

 necessary, if the claim to decide authoritatively on political doctrines were 

 confined to persons who had competently studied any one of the higher 

 departments of physical science. But since the generality of those who 

 reason on political subjects, satisfactorily to themselves and to a more or 

 less numerous body of admirers, know nothing whatever of the methods of 

 physical investigation beyond a few precepts which they continue to par- 

 rot after Bacon, being entirely unaware that Bacon's conception of scien- 

 tific inquiry has done its work, and that science has now advanced into a 

 higher stage, there ai"e probably many to whom such remarks as the fore- 

 going may still be useful. In an age in which chemistry itself, when at- 

 tempting to deal with the more complex chemical sequences — those of the 

 animal or even the vegetable organism — has found it necessary to become, 

 and has succeeded in becoming, a Deductive Science, it is not to be ap- 

 prehended that any person of scientific habits, who has kept pace with the 

 general progress of the knowledge of nature, can be in danger of applying 

 the methods of elementary chemistry to explore the sequences of the most 

 complex order of phenomena in existence. 



