HISTORICAL METHOD. 587 



regions of the earth, does, when duly analyzed, exhibit 

 such uniformities. It is found that when one of the 

 features of society is in a particular state, a state of 

 all the other features, more or less precisely determi- 

 nate, always coexists with it. 



But the uniformities of coexistence obtaining 

 among phenomena which are effects of causes, must 

 (as we have so often observed) be mere corollaries 

 from the laws of causation by which these phenomena 

 are actually determined. The mutual correlation 

 between the different elements of each state of society, 

 is therefore a derivative law, resulting from the laws 

 which regulate the succession between one state of 

 society and another: for the proximate cause of every 

 state of society is the state of society immediately 

 preceding it. The fundamental problem, therefore, of 

 sociology is to find the laws according to which any 

 state of society produces the state which succeeds it 

 and takes its place. This opens the great and vexed 

 question of the progressiveness of man and society ; 

 an idea involved in every just conception of social 

 phenomena as the subject of a science. 



3. It is one of the characters, not absolutely 

 peculiar to the sciences of human nature and society, 

 but belonging to them in a peculiar degree, to be con- 

 versant with a subject matter whose properties are 

 changeable. I do not mean changeable from day to 

 day, but from age to age ; so that not only the quali- 

 ties of individuals vary, but those of the majority are 

 not the same in one age as in another. 



The principal cause of this peculiarity is the exten- 

 sive and constant reaction of the effects upon their 

 causes. The circumstances in which mankind are 

 placed, operating according to their own laws and to 



