SOCIAL SCIENCE. 535 



them were as certain and as complete as it is in 

 astronomy, would enable us to predict the history of 

 society, like that of the celestial appearances, for 

 thousands of years to come. But the difference of 

 certainty is not in the laws themselves, it is in the 

 data to which these laws are to be applied. In 

 astronomy the causes influencing the result are few, 

 and change little, and that little according to known 

 laws : we can ascertain what they are now, and thence 

 determine what they will be at any epoch of a distant 

 future. The data, therefore, in astronomy, are as 

 certain as the laws themselves. The circumstances, . 

 on the contrary, which influence the condition and 

 progress of society, are innumerable, and perpetually 

 changing; and though they all change in obedience 

 to causes, and therefore to laws, the multitude of the / 

 causes is so great as to defy our limited powers of 

 calculation. Not to say that the impossibility of 

 applying precise numbers to facts of such a descrip- 

 tion, would set an impassable limit to the possibility 

 of calculating them beforehand, even if the powers of 

 the human intellect were otherwise adequate to the 

 task. 



But, as we before remarked, an amount of know- w 

 ledge quite insufficient for prediction, may be most 

 valuable for guidance. The science of society would 

 have attained a very high point of perfection, if it 

 enabled us, in any given condition of social affairs, in 

 the condition for instance of Europe or any Euro- 

 pean country at the present time, to understand by 

 what causes it had, in any and every particular, been 

 made what it was; whether it was tending to any, 

 and to what, changes ; what effects each feature 

 of its existing state was likely to produce in the 

 future ; and by what means any of those effects might 



