HISTORICAL METHOD. 635 



the case with most, can not be ascertained by direct observation or learned 

 from testimony, but must be inferred from marks. 



§ 5. The Empirical Laws of Society are of two kinds ; some are uni- 

 formities of co-existence, some of succession. According as the science is 

 occupied in ascertaining and verifying the former sort of uniformities or 

 the latter, M. Comte gives it the title of Social Statics, or of Social Dy- 

 namics; conformably to the distinction in mechanics between the condi- 

 tions of equilibrium and those of movement; or in biology, between the 

 lavt's of organization and those of life. The first branch of the science as- 

 certains the conditions of stability in the social union; the second, the laws 

 of progress. Social Dynamics is the theory of Society considered in a 

 state of progressive movement; while Social Statics is the theory of the 

 consensus already spoken of as existing among the different parts of the 

 social organism ; in other words, the theory of the mutual actions and re- 

 actions of contemporaneous social phenomena; "making* provisionally, as 

 far as possible, abstraction, for scientific purposes, of the fundamental move- 

 ment which is at all times gradually modifying the whole of them. 



" In this first point of view, the provisions of sociology will enable us to 

 infer one from another (subject to ulterior verification by direct observa- 

 tion) the various characteristic marks of each distinct mode of social ex- 

 istence, in a manner essentially analogous to what is now habitually prac- 

 ticed in the anatomy of the physical body. This preliminary aspect, there- 

 fore, of political science, of necessity supposes that (contrary to the exist- 

 ing habits of philosopliors) each of the numerous elements of the social 

 state, ceasing to be looked at independently and absolutely, shall be al- 

 ways and exclusively considered relatively to all the other elements, with 

 the whole of which it is united by mutual interdependence. It would be 

 superfluous to insist here upon the great and constant utility of this branch 

 of sociological speculation. It is, in the first place, the indispensable basis 

 of the theory of social progress. It may, moreover, be employed, immedi- 

 ately, and of itself, to supply the place, provisionally at least, of direct ob- 

 servation, which in many cases is not always practicable for some of the 

 elements of society, the real condition of which may, however, be sufficient- 

 ly judged of by means of the relations which connect them with others 

 previously known. The history of the sciences may give us some notion 

 of the habitual importance of this auxiliary resource, by reminding us, for 

 example, how the vulgar errors of mere erudition concerning the pretend- 

 ed acquirements of the ancient Egyptians in the higher astronomy were 

 irrevocably dissipated (even before sentence had been passed on them by 

 a sounder erudition) from the single consideration of the inevitable con- 

 nection between the general state of astronomy and that of abstract ge- 

 ometry, then evidently in its infancy. It would be easy to cite a multi- 

 tude of analogous cases, the character of which could admit of no dispute. 

 In order to avoid exaggeration, however, it should be remarked, that these 

 necessary relations among the different aspects of society can not, from 

 their very nature, be so simple and precise that the results observed could 

 only have arisen from some one mode of .mutual co-ordination. Such a 

 notion, already too narrow in the science of life, would be completely at 

 variance with the still more complex nature of sociological speculations. 

 But the exact estimation of these limits of variation, both in the healthy 



* Cours de Philosophic Positive, iv., 325-29. 





