640 LOGIC OF THE MOKAL SCIENCES. 



generation were traced to its causes in tlie generation immediately preced- 

 ing. But the conseyisus is so complete (especially in modern history), that 

 in the filiation of one generation and another, it is the whole which pro- 

 duces the whole, rather than any part a part. Little progress, therefore, 

 can be made in establishing the filiation, directly from laws of human na- 

 ture, without having first ascertained the immediate or derivative laws ac- 

 cording to which social states generate one another as society advances ; 

 the axiomata media of General Sociology. 



The empirical laws which are most readily obtained by generalization 

 from history do not amount to this. They are not the " middle princi- 

 ples" themselves, but only evidence toward the establishment of such prin- 

 ciples. They consist of certain general tendencies which may be perceived 

 in society; a progressive increase of some social elements, and diminution 

 of others, or a gradual change in the general character of certain elements. 

 It is easily seen, for instance, that as society advances, mental tend more 

 and more to prevail over bodily qualities, and masses over individuals; 

 that the occupation of all that portion of mankind who are not under ex- 

 ternal restraint is at first chiefly military, but society becomes pi'ogressive- 

 ly more and more engrossed with productive pursuits, and the military 

 spirit gradually gives way to the industrial; to which many similar truths 

 might be added. And with generalizations of this description, ordinary 

 inquirers, even of the historical school now predominant on the Continent, 

 are satisfied. But these and all such results are still at too great a dis- 

 tance from the elementary laws of human nature on which they depend — 

 too many links intervene, and the concurrence of causes at each link is far 

 too complicated — to enable these propositions to be presented as direct 

 corollaries from those elementary principles. They have, therefore, in the 

 minds of most inquirers, remained in the state of empirical laws, applica- 

 ble only within the bounds of actual observation ; without any means of 

 determining their real limits, and of judging whether the changes which 

 have hitherto been in progress are destined to continue indefinitely, or to 

 terminate, or even to be reversed. 



§ 1. In order to obtain better empirical laws, we must not rest satisfied 

 with noting the progressive changes which manifest themselves in the sep- 

 arate elements of society, and in which nothing is indicated but the rela- 

 tion of fragments of the effect to corresponding fragments of the cause. 

 It is necessary to combine the statical view of social phenomena with 

 the dynamical, considering not only the progressive changes of the differ- 

 ent elements, but the contemporaneous condition of each ; and thus obtain 

 empirically the law of correspondence not only between the simultaneous 

 states, but between the simultaneous changes, of those elements. This 

 law of correspondence it is, which, duly verified a priori, would become 

 the real scientific derivative law of the development of humanity and hu- 

 man affairs. 



In the difiicult process of observation and comparison which is here re- 

 quired, it would evidently be a great assistance if it should happen to be 

 the fact, that some one element in the complex existence of social man is 

 pre-eminent over all others as the prime agent of the social movement. 

 For we could then take the progress of that one element as the central 

 chain, to each successive link of which, the corresponding links of all the 

 other progressions being appended, the succession of the facts would by 

 this alone be presented in a kind of spontaneous order, far more nearly ap- 



