THE CHEMICAL METHOD. 543 



in politics, and if this be inconclusive, it would not be 

 easy to find another preferable to it* 



Yet, that it is inconclusive, scarcely requires to be 

 pointed out. Why must the prosperous nation have 

 prospered from one cause exclusively? National 

 prosperity is always the collective result of a multi- 

 tude of favourable circumstances: and of these, the 

 restrictive nation ihay unite a greater number than 

 either of the others, although it may have all of those 

 circumstances in common with either one or the 

 other of them. Its prosperity may be partly owing to 

 circumstances common to it with one of those nations, 

 and partly with the other, while they, having each of 

 them only half the number of favourable circum- 

 stances, have remained inferior. So that the closest 

 imitation which can be made, in the social science, of a 

 genuine induction from direct experience, gives but a 

 specious semblance of conclusiveness, without any real 

 value. 



4. The Method of Difference in either of its 

 forms being thus completely out of the question, there 

 remains the Method of Agreement. But we are 

 already aware of how little value this method is, in 

 cases admitting Plurality of Causes : and social pheno- 

 mena are those in which the plurality prevails in the 

 utmost possible extent. 



Suppose that the observer makes the luckiest hit 

 which could be given him by any conceivable combi- 

 nation of chances: that he finds two nations which 

 agree in no circumstance whatever, except in having a 

 restrictive system, and in being prosperous; or a 

 number of nations, all prosperous, which have no 

 antecedent circumstances common to them all but 

 that of having a restrictive policy. It is unnecessary 



