THE GEOMETRICAL METHOD. 559 



jecture. We either ought not to pretend to scientific 

 forms, or we ought to study all the determining 

 agencies equally, and endeavour, so far as it can be 

 done, to include all of them within the pale of the 

 science ; else we shall infallibly bestow a dispropor- 

 tionate attention upon those which our theory takes into 

 account, while we misestimate the rest, and probably 

 underrate their importance. That the deductions 

 should be from the whole and not from a part only 

 of the laws of nature that are concerned, would be 

 desirable even if those omitted were so insignificant 

 in comparison with the others, that they might, for 

 most purposes and on most occasions, be left out of 

 the account. But this is far indeed from being true 

 in the social science. The phenomena of society do 

 not depend, in essentials, upon any one agency or law 

 of human nature, with only inconsiderable modifica- 

 tions from others. The whole of the laws of human 

 nature influence those phenomena, and there is not 

 one which influences them in a small degree. There is 

 not one, the removal or any great alteration of which 

 would not materially affect the whole aspect of society, 

 and change more or less most of the principal se- 

 quences of the social phenomena. 



The theory which has been the subject of these 

 remarks is, in this country at least, the principal con- 

 temporary example of what I have styled the geome- 

 trical method of philosophizing in the social science; 

 and our examination of it has, for this reason, been 

 more detailed than might otherwise have been deemed 

 necessary in a work like the present. Having now 

 sufficiently illustrated the two erroneous methods, we 

 shall pass without further preliminary to the true 

 method 5 that which proceeds (conformably to the 

 practice of the higher branches of physical science) 



