HISTORICAL METHOD. 593 



influence (which becomes stronger as civilization 

 advances) of the other nations of the earth, and of the 

 circumstances by which they have been influenced. 

 History accordingly does, when judiciously examined, 

 afford Empirical Laws of Society. And the problem 

 of general sociology is to ascertain these, and connect 

 them with the laws of human nature by deductions 

 showing that such were the derivative laws naturally 

 to be expected as the consequences of those ultimate 

 ones. 



It is indeed, in most cases, hardly possible, even 

 after history has suggested the derivative law, to 

 demonstrate a priori that such was the only order of 

 succession or of coexistence in which the effects could, 

 consistently with the laws of human nature, have been 

 produced. We can at most make out that there were 

 strong a priori reasons for expecting it, and that 

 no other order of succession or coexistence would have 

 been by any means so likely to result from the nature 

 of man and his position upon earth. This, however, 

 which, in the Inverse Deductive Method that we 

 are now characterizing, is a real process of verifi- 

 cation, is as indispensable (to be more so is im- 

 possible) as verification by specific experience has 

 been shown to be where the conclusion is originally 

 obtained by the direct way of deduction. The em- 

 pirical laws must be the result of but a few in- 

 stances, since few nations have ever attained at all, 

 and still fewer by their own independent develop- 

 ment, a high stage of social progress. If, therefore, 

 even one or two of these few instances be insufficiently 

 known, or imperfectly analyzed into its elements, 

 and therefore not adequately compared with other in- 

 stances, nothing is more probable than that a wrong 

 empirical law will result instead of the right one. 



VOL. II. 2 Q 



