562 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



employment of which, with the adaptations and pre- 

 cautions required by the subject, is beginning to 

 regenerate physiology. 



Nor does it admit of doubt, that similar adapta- 

 tions and precautions are indispensable in sociology. 

 In applying, to that most complex of all studies, what 

 is demonstrably the sole method capable of throwing 

 the light of science even upon phenomena of a far 

 inferior degree of complication, we ought to be aware 

 that the same superior complexity which renders the 

 instrument of Deduction more necessary, renders it also 

 more precarious ; and we must be prepared to meet, by 

 appropriate contrivances, this increase $f difficulty. 

 . The actions and feelings of human beings in the 

 social state, are, no doubt, entirely governed by 

 psychological and ethological laws: whatever influ- 

 ence any cause exercises upon the social phenomena, 

 it exercises through those laws. Supposing therefore 

 the laws of human actions and feelings to be suffi- 

 ciently known, there is no extraordinary difficulty in 

 determining from those laws, the nature of the social 

 effects which any given cause tends to produce. But 

 when the question is that of compounding several 

 tendencies together, and computing the aggregate 

 result of many coexistent causes ; and especially when, 

 by attempting to predict what will actually occur in a 

 given case, we incur the obligation of estimating and 

 compounding together the influences of all the causes 

 which happen to exist in that case; we attempt a 

 task, to proceed far in which, certainly surpasses the 

 i compass of the human faculties. 



If all the resources of science are not sufficient to 

 enable us to calculate a priori, with complete preci- 

 sion, the mutual action of three bodies gravitating 

 towards one another; it may be judged witfi what 



