594 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



Accordingly, the most erroneous generalizations are 

 continually made from the course of history: not only 

 in this country, where history cannot yet be said to be 

 at all cultivated as a science, but in other countries, 

 where it is so cultivated, and by persons well versed in 

 it. The only check or corrective is, constant verifica- 

 tion by psychological and ethological laws. We may 

 add to this, that no one but a person competently 

 skilled in those laws is capable of preparing the 

 materials for historical generalization by analyzing 

 the facts of history, or even by observing the social 

 phenomena of his own time. No other will be aware 

 of the comparative importance of different facts, 

 nor consequently know what facts he is to look 

 out for, or what to observe ; still less will he be 

 capable of estimating the evidence of those facts which, 

 as is the case with most, cannot be observed directly, 

 but must be inferred from marks. 



5. The Empirical Laws of Society are of two 

 kinds; some are uniformities of coexistence, some 

 of succession. According as the science is occupied 

 in ascertaining and verifying the former sort of uni- 

 formities, or the latter, M. Comte gives it the title 

 of Social Statics, or of Social Dynamics ; conformably 

 to the distinction in mechanics between the conditions 

 of equilibrium and those of movement ; or in biology, 

 between the laws of organization and those of life. 

 The first branch of the science ascertains the con- 

 ditions of stability in the social union; the second, 

 the laws of progress. Social Dynamics is the theory 

 of Society considered in a state of progressive move- 

 ment; while Social Statics is the theory of the con- 

 sensus already spoken of as existing among the 

 different parts of the social organism ; in other words, 



