HISTORICAL METHOD. 631 



causes which produce, and the phenomena which characterize, states of 

 society generally. In the solution of this question consists the general 

 Science of Society ; by which the conclusions of the other and more spe- 

 cial kind of inquiry must be limited and controlled. 



§ 2. In order to conceive correctly the scope of this general science, and 

 distinguish it from the subordinate departments of sociological specula- 

 tion, it is necessary to fix the ideas attached to the phrase, "A State of So- 

 ciety." What is called a state of society, is the simultaneous state of all 

 the greater social facts or phenomena. Such are: the degree of knowl- 

 edge, and of intellectual and moral culture, existing in the community, and 

 in every class of it ; the state of industry, of wealth and its distribution ; 

 the habitual occupations of the community; their division into classes, and 

 the relations of those classes to one another; the common beliefs which 

 they entertain on all the subjects most important to mankind, and the de- 

 gree of assurance with which those beliefs are held ; their tastes, and the 

 character and degree of their aesthetic development; their form of govern- 

 ment, and the more important of their laws and customs. The condition of 

 all these things, and of many more which will readily suggest themselves, 

 constitute the state of society, or the state of civilization, at any given time. 



When states of society, and the causes which produce them, are spoken 

 of as a subject of science, it is implied that there exists a natural correla- 

 tion among these different elements; that not every variety of combina- 

 tion of these general social facts is possible, but only certain combinations; 

 that, in short, there exist Uniformities of Co-existence between the states 

 of the various social phenomena. And such is the truth; as is indeed a 

 necessary consequence of the influence exercised by every one of those 

 phenomena over every other. It is a fact implied in the consensus of the 

 various parts of the social body. 



States of society are like different constitutions or different ages in the 

 physical frame ; they are conditions not of one or a few organs or func- 

 tions, but of the whole organism. Accordingly, the information which we 

 possess respecting past ages, and respecting the various states of society 

 now existing in different regions of the earth, does, when duly analyzed, 

 exhibit uniformities. It is found that when one of the features of society 

 is in a particular state, a state of many other features, more or less precise- 

 ly determinate, always or usually co-exists with it. 



But the uniformities of co-existence obtaining among phenomena which 

 are effects of causes, must (as we have so often observed) be corollaries 

 from the laws of causation by which these phenomena are really deter- 

 mined. The mutual correlation between the different elements of each 

 state of society, is, therefore, a derivative law,* resulting from the laws 

 which regulate the succession between one state of society and another; 

 for the proximate cause of every state of society is the state of society 

 immediately preceding it. The fundamental problem, therefore, of the 

 social science, is to find the laws according to which any state of society 

 produces the state which succeeds it and takes its place. This opens the 

 great and vexed question of the progressiveness of man and society ; an 

 idea involved in every just conception of social phenomena as the subject 

 of a science. 



§ 3. It is one of the characters, not absolutely peculiar to the sciences 

 of human nature and society, but belonging to them in a peculiar degree, 



