580 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



tion on which we must often rely for the data of the 

 Deductive Science. The process of the science con- 

 sists in inferring effects from their causes ; but we have 

 often no means of observing the causes, except through 

 the medium of their effects. In such cases the deduc- 

 tive science is unable to predict the effects for want 

 of the necessary data; it can tell us what causes are 

 capable of producing any given effect, but not with 

 what frequency and in what quantities those causes 

 exist. An instance in point is afforded by a news- 

 paper now lying before me. A statement was fur- 

 nished by one of the official assignees in bankruptcy, 

 showing, among the various bankruptcies which it had 

 been his duty to investigate, in how many cases the 

 losses had been caused by misconduct of different 

 kinds, and in how many by unavoidable misfortunes. 

 The result was, that the number of failures caused by 

 misconduct greatly preponderated over those arising 

 from all other causes whatever. Nothing but specific 

 experience could have given sufficient ground for a 

 conclusion to this purport. To collect, therefore, such 

 empirical laws (which are never more than approxi- 

 mate generalizations) from direct observation, is an 

 important part of the process of sociological inquiry. 



The experimental process is not here to be 

 regarded as a distinct road to the truth, but as a 

 means (happening accidentally to be the only, or the 

 best available) for obtaining the data which the 

 deductive science cannot do without. When the im- 

 mediate causes of social facts are not open to direct 

 observation, the empirical law of the effects gives us 

 the empirical law (which in that case is all that we 

 can obtain) of the causes likewise. But those imme- 

 diate causes depend upon remote causes ; and the 

 empirical law, obtained by this indirect mode of 



