546 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



describes himself as having followed in his political 

 essays in the Morning Post. " On every great occur- 

 rence I endeavoured to discover in past history the 

 event that most nearly resembled it. I procured, 

 wherever it was possible, the contemporary historians, 

 memorialists, and pamphleteers. Then fairly sub- 

 tracting the points of difference from those of likeness, 

 as the balance favoured the former or the latter, I 

 conjectured that the result would be the same or 

 different. As for instance in the series of essays 

 entitled 'A comparison of France under Napoleon 

 with Rome under the first Caesars,' and in those which 

 followed, ' on the probable final restoration of the 

 Bourbons.' The same plan I pursued at the com- 

 mencement of the Spanish Revolution, and with the 

 same success, taking the war of the United Provinces 

 with Philip II. as the groundwork of the compa- 

 rison. 5 ' In this inquiry Coleridge no doubt employed 

 the Method of Residues; for, in " subtracting the points 

 of difference from those of likeness," he doubtless 

 weighed, and did not content himself with numbering, 

 them: he doubtless took those points of agreement 

 only, which might be known from their own nature to 

 be capable of influencing the effect, and, allowing for 

 that influence, concluded that the remainder of the 

 result would be referable to the points of difference. 



Whatever may be the efficacy of this method, it 

 is, as we long ago remarked, not a method of pure 

 observation and experiment; it concludes, not from 

 a comparison of instances, but from the comparison 

 of an instance with the result of a previous deduction. 

 Applied to social phenomena, it presupposes that the 

 causes from which part of the effect proceeded are 

 already known; and as we have shown that these 

 cannot have been known by specific experience, they 



