590 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



tained, must according to them enable us to predict 

 future events, just as after a few terms of an infinite 

 series in algebra we are able to detect the principle of 

 regularity in their recurrence, and to predict the 

 rest of the series to any number of terms we please. 

 The principal aim of historical speculation in France, 

 of late years, has been to ascertain this law. But 

 while I gladly acknowledge the great services which 

 have been rendered to historical knowledge by this 

 school, I cannot but deem them (with the single 

 exception of M. Comte) to be chargeable with a 

 fundamental misconception of the true method of 

 social philosophy. The misconception consists in 

 supposing that the order of succession which we may 

 be able to trace among the different states of society 

 and civilization which history presents to us, even if 

 that order were more rigidly uniform than it has yet 

 been proved to be, could ever amount to a law of 

 nature. It can only be an empirical law. The suc- 

 cession of states of the human mind and of human 

 society cannot have an independent law of its own; 

 it must depend upon the psychological and ethological 

 laws which govern the action of circumstances on men 

 and of men on circumstances. It is conceivable that 

 those laws may be such, and the general circumstances 

 of the human race such, as to determine the successive 

 transformations of man and society to one given and 

 unvarying order. But; even if the case be so, it 

 cannot be the ultimate aim of science to discover an 

 empirical law. Until that law can be connected with 

 the psychological and ethological laws upon which 

 it depends, and, by the consilience of deduction a priori 

 with historical evidence, can be converted from an 

 empirical law into a scientific one, it cannot be relied 

 upon for the prediction of future events, beyond, at 



