FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION. 413 



tical law, is perceptible : from which, therefore, some- 

 thing may be rationally presumed as to those terms of 

 the series which are beyond the limits of observation. 

 But in negation there are no gradations, and no series : 

 the generalizations, therefore, which deny the possibi- 

 lity of any given condition of Man and Society merely 

 because it has never yet been witnessed, cannot pos- 

 sess this higher degree of validity even as empirical 

 laws. What is more, the minuter examination which 

 that higher order of empirical laws presupposes, being 

 applied to the subject matter of these, not only does 

 not confirm but actually refutes them. For in reality 

 the past history of Man and Society, instead of exhi- 

 biting them as immovable, unchangeable, incapable of 

 ever presenting new phenomena, shows them on the 

 contrary to be, in many most important particulars, 

 not only changeable, but actually undergoing a pro- 

 gressive change. The empirical law, therefore, best 

 expressive, in most cases, of the genuine result of 

 observation, would be, not that such and such a phe- 

 nomenon will continue unchanged, but that it will 

 continue to change in some particular manner. 



Accordingly, while almost all generalizations re- 

 lating to Man and Society, antecedent to the last fifty 

 years, have erred in the gross way which we have 

 attempted to characterize, namely by implicitly as- 

 suming that human nature and society will for ever 

 revolve in the same orbit, and exhibit essentially the 

 same phenomena; which is also the vulgar error of 

 practicalism and common sense in our own day, espe- 

 cially in Great Britain; the more thinking minds of 

 the present age, having applied a more minute analysis 

 to the past records of our race, have for the most part 

 adopted the contrary opinion, that the human species 

 is in a state of necessary progression, and that from 



