534 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



the art to which, from the nature of its subject, that 

 of politics must be the most nearly allied. No one 

 now supposes it possible that one remedy can cure all 

 diseases, or even the same disease in all constitutions 

 and habits of body. Yet physiology is admitted to 

 be a science, and medical practice, when it disre- 

 gards the indications of the science, to be criminal 

 quackery. 



It is not necessary to even the perfection of a 

 science, that the corresponding art should possess 

 universal, or even general, rules. The phenomena of 

 society might not only be completely dependent upon 

 known causes, but the mode of action of all those 

 causes might be reducible to laws of considerable 

 simplicity, and yet no two cases might admit of being 

 treated in precisely the same manner. So great might 

 be the variety of circumstances on which the results 

 in different cases depend, that art might not have a 

 single general precept to give, except that of watch- 

 ing the circumstances of the case, and adapting our 

 measures to the effects which, according to the prin- 

 ciples of the science, result from those circumstances. 

 But because, in so complicated a class of subjects, it is 

 absurd to lay down practical maxims of universal 

 application, it does not follow that the phenomena do 

 not conform to universal laws. 



2. All phenomena of society are phenomena of 

 human nature, generated by the action of outward 

 circumstances upon masses of human beings : and 

 if, therefore, the phenomena of human thought, feel- 

 ing, and action, are subject to fixed laws, the phe- 

 nomena of society cannot but conform to fixed laws, 

 the consequences of the preceding. There is, indeed, 

 no hope that these laws, though our knowledge of 



