PHYSICAL METHOD. 567 



respect, without taking into consideration its condition 

 in all other respects. There is no social phenomenon 

 which is not more or less influenced by every other 

 part of the condition of the same society, and there- 

 fore by every cause which is influencing any other of the 

 contemporaneous social phenomena. There is, in short, 

 a consensus (to borrow an expression from physiology) 

 similar to that existing among the various organs and 

 functions of the physical frame of man and the more 

 perfect animals; and constituting one of the many 

 analogies which have rendered universal such expres- 

 sions as the "body politic" and "body natural/' It 

 follows from this consensus, that unless two societies 

 could be alike in all the circumstances which surround 

 and influence them (which would imply their being 

 alike in their previous history), no portion whatever 

 of their phenomena will, unless by accident, precisely 

 correspond; no one cause will produce exactly the 

 same effect in both. Every cause, as its effect, 

 spreads through society, comes somewhere in con- 

 tact with different sets of agencies, and thus has 

 its effects on some of the social phenomena dif- 

 ferently modified ; and these differences, by their reac- 

 tion, produce a difference even in those of the effects 

 which would otherwise have been the same. We can" 

 never, therefore, affirm with certainty that a cause 

 which has a particular tendency in one people or in one 

 age will have exactly the same tendency in another, 

 without referring back to our premisses, and perform- 

 ing over again for the second age or nation, that 

 analysis of the whole of its influencing circumstances 

 which we had already performed for the first. The 

 deductive science of society does not lay down a the- 

 orem, asserting in an universal manner the effect of 

 any cause; but rather teaches us how to frame the 



