PHYSICAL METHOD. 563 



prospects of success we should endeavour, from the 

 laws of human nature only, to calculate the result of 

 the conflicting tendencies which are acting in a thou- 

 sand different directions and promoting a thousand 

 different changes at a given instant in a given society : 

 although we might and ought to be able, from the 

 laws of human nature, to distinguish correctly enough 

 the tendencies themselves, so far as they depend on 

 causes accessible to our observation; and to determine 

 the direction which each of them, if acting alone, 

 would impress upon society, as well as, in a general 

 way at least, to pronounce that some of these tenden- 

 cies are more powerful than others. 



But, without dissembling the necessary imperfec- 

 tions of the a priori method when applied to such a 

 subject, neither ought we, on the other hand, to exag- 

 gerate them. The same objections which apply to 

 the Method of Deduction in this its most difficult 

 employment, apply to it, as we formerly showed*, in 

 its easiest ; and would even there have been insuper- 

 able if there had not existed, as was then fully ex- 

 plained, an appropriate remedy. This remedy consists 

 in the process which, under the name of Verification, 

 we have characterised as the third essential consti- 

 tuent part of the Deductive Method ; that of collating 

 the conclusions of the ratiocination either with the 

 concrete phenomena themselves, or, when such are 

 obtainable, with their empirical laws. The ground of, 

 confidence in any concrete deductive science is not 

 the a priori reasoning, but the consilience between 

 its results ahd those of observation a posteriori. 

 Either of these processes when divorced from the other 

 diminishes in value as the subject increases in com- 



* Supra, vol. i., p. 543. 



202 



