584 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



we cannot do this, it is a proof either that the 

 facts which ought to be taken into account are not 

 yet completely known to us, or that although 

 we know the facts, we are not masters of a suffi- 

 ciently perfect theory to enable us to assign their 

 consequences. In either case we are not, in the 

 present state of our knowledge, competent to draw 

 conclusions, either speculative or practical, for that 

 country. In like manner if we would attempt to 

 judge of the effect which any political institution 

 would have, supposing that it could be introduced 

 into any given country ; we must be able to show that 

 the existing state of the practical government of that 

 country, and of whatever else depends thereon, toge- 

 ther with the particular character and tendencies of 

 the people, and their state in respect to the various 

 elements of social well-being, are such as the institu- 

 tions they have lived under, in conjunction with the 

 other circumstances of their nature or of their posi- 

 tion, were calculated to produce. 



It is therefore well said by M. Comte, that in 

 order to prove that our science, and our knowledge 

 of the particular case, render us competent to predict 

 the future, we must show that they would have ena- 

 bled us to predict the present and the past. If there 

 be anything which we could not have predicted, this 

 constitutes a residual phenomenon, requiring further 

 study for the purpose of explanation; and we must 

 either search among the circumstances of the parti- 

 cular case until we find one which, on the principles 

 of our existing theory, accounts for the unexplained 

 phenomenon, or we must turn back, and seek the 

 explanation by an extension and improvement of the 

 theory itself. 



