586 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



state of society, is the simultaneous state of all the 

 greater social facts, or phenomena. Such are, the 

 degree of knowledge, and of intellectual and moral 

 culture, existing in the community, and in every class 

 of it; the state of industry, of wealth and its distri- 

 bution; the habitual occupations of the community; 

 their division into classes, and the relations of those 

 classes to one another; the common beliefs which 

 they entertain on all the subjects most important to 

 mankind, and the degree of assurance with which those 

 beliefs are held; their tastes, and the character and 

 degree of their aesthetic development; their form of 

 government, and the more important of their laws 

 and customs. The condition of all these things, and 

 of many more which will spontaneously suggest them- 

 selves,, constitute the state of society or the state of 

 civilization at any given time. 



When states of society, and the causes which 

 produce them, are spoken of as a subject of science, 

 it is implied that there exists a natural correlation 

 among these different elements; that not every variety 

 of combination of these general social facts is possible, 

 but only certain combinations; that, in short, there 

 exist Uniformities of Coexistence between the states 

 of the various social phenomena. And such is the 

 truth : as is indeed a necessary consequence of the 

 influence exercised by every one of those phenomena 

 over every other. It is a fact implied in the consensus 

 of the various parts of the social body. 



States of society are like different constitutions 

 or different ages in the physical frame; they are con- 

 ditions not of one or a few organs or functions, but of 

 the whole organism. Accordingly, the information 

 which we possess respecting past ages, and respecting 

 the various states of society now existing in different 



