SOCIAL SCIENCE. 533 



entertained that there were limits to the power of 

 human will over the phenomena of society, or that 

 any social arrangements which would be desirable, 

 could be impracticable from incompatibility with the 

 properties of the subject matter: the only obstacle 

 was supposed to lie in the private interests or preju- 

 dices, which hindered men from being willing to see 

 them tried. Students in politics thus attempted to 

 study the pathology and therapeutics of the social 

 body, before they had laid the necessary foundation in 

 its physiology ; to cure disease, without understanding 

 the laws of health. And the result was such as it 

 must always be when men even of great ability attempt 

 to deal with the complex questions of a science before 

 its simpler and mere elementary propositions have 

 been established. 



No wonder that when the phenomena of society 

 have so rarely been contemplated in the point of view 

 characteristic of science, the philosophy of society 

 should have made little progress; should contain few 

 general propositions sufficiently precise and certain, 

 for common inquirers to recognise in them a scientific 

 character. The vulgar notion accordingly is, that all 

 pretension to lay down general truths on politics and 

 society is quackery; that no universality and no cer- 

 tainty are attainable in such matters. What partly 

 excuses this common notion is, that it is really not </ 

 without foundation in one particular sense. A large pro- 

 portion of those who have laid claim to the character of 

 philosophic politicians, have attempted, not to ascer- ^ 

 tain universal sequences, but to frame universal pre- 

 cepts. They have had some one form of government, 

 or system of laws, to fit all cases ; a pretension well 

 meriting the ridicule with which it is treated by prac- 

 titioners, and wholly unsupported by the analogy of 



