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CHAPTER IX. 



OF THE PHYSICAL, OR CONCRETE DEDUCTIVE, 

 METHOD. 



1 . AFTER what has been said to illustrate the 

 nature of the inquiry into the social phenomena, the 

 general character of the method proper to that inquiry 

 is sufficiently evident, and needs only to be recapitu- 

 lated, not proved. However complex the phenomena, 

 all their sequences and coexistences result from the laws 

 of the separate elements. The effect which is produced, 

 in social phenomena, by any complex set of circum- 

 stances, amounts precisely to the sum of the effects of 

 the circumstances taken singly: and the complexity 

 does not arise from the number of the laws themselves, 

 which is not remarkably great ; but from the extraor- 

 dinary number and variety of the data or elements of 

 the agents which, in obedience to that small number 

 of laws, co-operate towards the effect. The Social^ 

 Science, therefore, (which I shall henceforth, with M. 

 Comte, designate by the more compact term Soci- 

 ology,) is a deductive science; not, indeed, after the 

 the model of geometry, but after that of the higher 

 physical sciences. It infers the law of each effect from" 1 

 the laws of causation upon which that effect depends; 

 not, however, from the law merely of one cause, as in 

 the geometrical method; but by considering all the 

 causes which, conjunctly influence the effect, and com- 

 pounding their laws with one another. Its method, 

 in short, is the Concrete Deductive Method; that of 

 which astronomy furnishes the most perfect, natural 

 philosophy a somewhat less perfect example, and the 



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