HISTORICAL METHOD. 633 



on the Continent, consists in attempting, by a study an(3 analysis of the 

 general facts of history, to discover (what these philosophers term) the law 

 of pi'ogress : which law, once ascertained, must according to them enable 

 us to predict future events, just as after a few terms of an infinite series 

 in algebra we are able to detect the principle of regularity in their forma- 

 tion, and to predict the rest of the series to any number of terms we please. 

 The principal aim of historical speculation in France, of late years, has 

 been to ascertain this law. But while I gladly acknowledge the great serv- 

 ices which have been rendered to historical knowledge by this school, I 

 can not but deem them to be mostly chargeable with a fundamental mis- 

 conception of the true method of social philosophy. The misconception 

 consists in supposing that the order of succession which we may be able 

 to trace among the different states of society and civilization which history 

 presents to us, even if that order were more rigidly uniform than it has 

 yet been proved to be, could ever amount to a law of nature. It can only 

 be an empirical law. The succession of states of the human mind and of 

 human society can not have an independent law of its own ; it must de- 

 pend on the psychological and ethological laws which govern the action of 

 circumstances on men and of men on circumstances. It is conceivable 

 that those laws might be such, and the general circumstances of the human 

 race such, as to determine the successive transformations of man and society 

 to one given and unvarying order. But even if the case were so, it can not 

 be the ultimate aim of science to discover an empirical law. Until that 

 law could be connected with the psychological and ethological laws on 

 which it must depend, and, by the consilience of deduction a priori with 

 historical evidence, could be converted from an empirical law into a scien- 

 tific one, it could not be relied on for the prediction of future events, be- 

 yond, at most, strictly adjacent cases. M. Comte alone, among the new 

 historical school, has seen the necessity of thus connecting all our generali- 

 zations from history with the laws of human nature. 



§ 4. But, while it is an imperative rule never to introduce any generali- 

 zation from history into the social science unless sufticient grounds can 

 be pointed out for it in human nature, I do not think any one will contend 

 that it would have been possible, setting out from the principles of human 

 nature and from the general circumstances of the position of our species, to 

 determine a priori the order in which human development must take place, 

 and to predict, consequently, the general facts of history up to the pres- 

 ent time. After the first few terms of the series, the influence exercised 

 over each generation by the generations which preceded it, becomes (as is 

 well observed by the writer last referred to) more and more preponder- 

 ant over all other influences ; until at length what we now are and do, is in 

 a very small degree the result of the universal circumstances of the human 

 race, or even of our own circumstances acting through the original quali- 

 ties of our species, but mainly of the qualities produced in us by the whole 

 previous history of humanity. So long a series of actions and reactions 

 between Circumstances and Man, each successive term being composed of 

 an ever greater number and variety of parts, could not possibly be com- 

 puted by human faculties from the elementary laws which produce it. The 

 mere length of the series would be a sufficient obstacle, since a slight error 

 in any one of the terms would augment in rapid progression at every sub- 

 sequent step. 



If, therefore, the series of the effects themselves did not, when examined 



