536 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



be prevented, modified, or accelerated, or a different 

 class of effects superinduced. There is nothing chi- 

 merical in the hope that general laws, sufficient to 

 enable us to answer these various questions for any 

 country or time with the individual circumstances of 

 which we are well acquainted, do really admit of 

 being ascertained ; and moreover, that the other 

 branches of human knowledge, which this undertaking 

 presupposes, are so far advanced that the time is ripe 

 for its accomplishment. Such is the object of the 

 Social Science. 



That the nature of what I consider the true 

 method of the science may be made more palpable, by 

 first showing what that method is not ; it will be expe- 

 dient to characterize briefly two radical misconcep- 

 tions of the proper mode of philosophizing on society 

 and government, one or other of which is, either 

 explicitly or more often unconsciously, entertained by 

 almost all who have meditated or argued respecting 

 the logic of politics since the notion of treating it by 

 strict rules, and on Baconian principles, has been 

 current among the more advanced thinkers. These 

 erroneous methods, if the word method can be applied 

 to erroneous tendencies arising from the absence of 

 any sufficiently distinct conception of method, may be 

 aptly termed the Experimental, or Chemical, mode of 

 investigation, and the Abstract, or Geometrical, mode. 

 We shall begin with the former. 



