PHYSICAL METHOD. 623 



liability to error as mast soon deprive our conclusions of all value. This 

 mode of inquiry, considered as a means of obtaining general propositions, 

 must, therefore, on pain of frivolity, be limited to those classes of social 

 facts which, though influenced like the rest by all sociological agents, are 

 under the immediate influence, principally at least, of a few only. 



§ 3. Notwithstanding the universal consensus of the social phenomena, 

 whereby nothing which takes place in any part of the operations of society 

 is without its share of influence on every other part; and notwithstanding 

 the paramount ascendancy which the general state of civilization and social 

 progress in any given society must hence exercise over all the partial and 

 subordinate phenomena; it is not the less true that different species of so- 

 cial facts are in the main dependent, immediately and in the first resort, 

 on different kinds of causes ; and therefore not only may with advantage, 

 but must, be studied apart: just as in the natural body we study separate- 

 ly the physiology and pathology of each -of the principal organs and tis- 

 sues, though every one is acted upon by the state of all the others ; and 

 though the peculiar constitution and general state of health of the organ- 

 ism co-operates with, and often preponderates over, the local causes, in de- 

 termining the state of any particular organ. 



On these considerations is grounded the existence of distinct and sep- 

 arate, though not independent, branches or departments of sociological 

 speculation. 



There is, for example, one large class of social phenomena in which the 

 immediately determining causes are principally those which act through 

 the desire of wealth, and in which the psychological law mainly concerned 

 is the familiar one, that a greater gain is preferred to a smaller. I mean, 

 of course, that portion of the phenomena of society which emanate from 

 the industrial, or productive, operations of mankind ; and from those of 

 their acts through which the distribution of the products of those indus- 

 trial operations takes place, in so far as not effected by force, or modified 

 by voluntary gift. By reasoning from that one law of human nature, and 

 from the principal outward circumstances (whether universal or confined 

 to particular states of society) which operate upon the human mind through 

 that law, we may be enabled to explain and predict this portion of the phe- 

 nomena of society, so far as they depend on that class of circumstances 

 only ; overlooking the influence of any other of the circumstances of socie- 

 ty ; and therefore neither tracing back the circumstances which we do take 

 into account, to their possible origin in some other facts in the social state, 

 nor making allowance for the manner in which any of those other cii'cum- 

 stances may interfere with, and counteract or modify, the effect of the 

 former. A department of science may thus be constructed, which has re- 

 ceived the name of Political Economy. 



The motive Avhich suggests the separation of this portion of the social 

 phenomena from the vest, and the creation of a distinct branch of science 

 relating to them is — that they do mainly depend, at least in the first resort, 

 on one cl'ass of circumstances only; and that even when other circum- 

 stances interfere, the ascertainment of the effect due to the one class of 

 circumstances alone, is a' sufficiently intricate and difliicult business to make 

 it expedient to perform it once for all, and then allow for the effect of the 

 modifying circumstances; especially as certain fixed combinations of the 

 former are apt to recur often, in conjunction with ever-varying circum- 

 stances of the latter class. 



