PHYSICAL METHOD. 569 



3. Notwithstanding the universal consensus of 

 the social phenomena, whereby nothing which takes 

 place in any part of the operations of society is with- 

 out its share of influence on every other part ; and 

 notwithstanding the paramount ascendency which the 

 general state of civilization and social progress in any 

 given society must hence exercise over all the partial 

 and subordinate phenomena ; it is not the less true 

 that different species of social facts are in the main 

 dependent, immediately and in the first resort, upon 

 different kinds of causes ; and therefore not only may 

 with advantage, but must, be studied apart: just as 

 in the natural body we study separately the physiology 

 and pathology of each of the principal organs and > 

 tissues, although every one is acted upon by the 

 state of all the others; and although the peculiar 

 constitution and general state of health of the orga- 

 nism co-operates with and often preponderates over 

 the local causes, in determining the state of any par- 

 ticular organ. 



On these considerations is grounded the existence 

 of distinct and separate, though not independent, 

 branches or departments of sociological speculation, u 



There is, for example, one large class of social 

 phenomena, in which the immediately determining 

 causes are principally those which act through the 

 desire of wealth ; and in which the psychological law { 

 mainly concerned is the familiar one, that a greater 

 gain is preferred to a smaller. I mean, of course, that 

 portion of the phenomena of society which emanate 

 from the industrial, or productive, operations of man- 

 kind ; and from those of their acts through which the 

 distribution of the products of those industrial opera- 

 tions takes place, in so far as not effected by force., or^ 

 modified by voluntary gift. By reasoning from that one 



