FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION. 415 



error of many of the more advanced thinkers, in the 

 present age, to overlook; and to imagine that the 

 empirical law coJlected from a mere comparison of the 

 condition of our species at different past times, is a 

 real law, is the law of its changes, not only past but 

 also to come. The truth is, that the causes upon 

 which the phenomena of the moral world depend, are 

 in every age, and almost in every country,, combined 

 in some different proportion; so that it is scarcely to 

 be expected that the general result of them all should 

 conform very closely, in its details at least, to any 

 uniformly progressive series. And all generalizations 

 which affirm that mankind have a tendency to grow 

 better or worse, richer or poorer, more cultivated or 

 more barbarous, that population increases faster than 

 subsistence, or subsistence than population, that ine- 

 quality of fortunes has a tendency to increase or to 

 break down, and the like, propositions of considerable 

 value as empirical laws within certain (but generally 

 rather narrow) limits, are in reality true or false 

 according to times and circumstances. 



What we have said of empirical generalizations 

 from times past to times still to come, holds equally 

 true of similar generalizations from present times 

 to times past; when men whose acquaintance with 

 moral and social facts is confined to their own age, 

 take the men and the things of that age for the 

 type of men and things in general, and apply without 

 scruple to the interpretation of the events of history, 

 the empirical laws which represent sufficiently for 

 daily guidance the common phenomena of human 

 nature at that time and in that particular state of 

 society. If examples are wanted, almost every histo- 

 rical work, until a very recent period, abounded in 

 them. The same may be said of those who generalize 



