532 INDUCTION. 



notion, that the safe methods on political subjects are 

 those of Baconian induction, that the true guide is 

 not general reasoning but specific experience, will 

 one day be quoted as among the most unequivocal 

 marks of a low state of the speculative faculties in 

 any age in which it is accredited. What can be more 

 ludicrous than the sort of parodies on experimental 

 reasoning which one is accustomed to meet with, 

 not in popular discussion only, but in grave treatises 

 when the affairs of nations are the theme. " How," 

 it is asked, " can an institution be bad, when the 

 country has prospered under it?" " How can such 

 or such causes have contributed to the prosperity of 

 one country, when another has prospered without 

 them?" Whoever makes use of an argument of this 

 kind, not intending to deceive, should be sent back 

 to learn the elements of some one of the more easy 

 physical sciences. Such reasoners ignore the fact of 

 Plurality of Causes in the very case which affords the 

 most signal example of it. So little could be concluded, 

 in such a case, from any possible collation of indi- 

 vidual instances, that even the impossibility, in 

 social phenomena, of making artificial experiments, a 

 circumstance otherwise so prejudicial to directly in- 

 ductive inquiry, hardly affords, in this case, additional 

 reason of regret. For even if we could try experi- 

 ments upon a nation, or upon the human race, with 

 as little scruple as M. Majendie tries them upon dogs 

 or rabbits, we should never succeed in making two 

 instances identical in every respect except the pre- 

 sence or absence of some one definite circumstance. 

 The nearest approach to an experiment, in the phi- 

 losophical sense, which takes place in politics, is the 

 introduction of a new operative element into national 

 affairs by some special and assignable measure of 



