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CHAPTER VI. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL 

 SCIENCE. 



1. NEXT after the science of individual man, 

 comes the science of man in society: of the actions of 

 collective masses of mankind, and the various phe- 

 nomena which constitute social life. 



If the formation of individual character is already 

 a complex subject of study, this subject, it is evident, 

 must be greatly more complex; because the number 

 of concurrent causes, all exercising more or less influ- 

 ence on the total effect, is greater, in the proportion 

 in which a nation, or the species at large, exposes a 

 larger surface to the operation of agents, psychological 

 and physical, than any single individual. If it was 

 necessary to prove, in opposition to an existing pre- 

 judice, that the simpler of the two is capable of being 

 a subject of science; the prejudice is likely to be yet 

 stronger against the possibility of giving a scientific 

 character to the study of Politics, and of the pheno- 

 mena of Society. It is, accordingly, but of yesterday 

 that the conception of a political or social science has 

 existed, anywhere but in the mind of here and there 

 an insulated thinker, generally very ill prepared for 

 its realization : although the subject itself has of all 

 others engaged the most general attention, and been 

 a theme of interested and earnest discussions almost 

 from the beginning of recorded time. 



The condition indeed of politics, as a branch of 

 knowledge, was until very lately, and has scarcely 

 even yet ceased to be, that which Bacon animadverted 



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