596 . LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



give us some notion of the habitual importance of this 

 auxiliary resource, by reminding us, for example, how 

 the vulgar errors of mere erudition concerning the 

 pretended acquirements of the ancient Egyptians in 

 the higher astronomy, were irrevocably dissipated 

 (even before sentence had been passed upon them by 

 a sounder erudition) from the single consideration of 

 the inevitable connexion between the general state of 

 astronomy and that of abstract geometry, then evi- 

 dently in its infancy. It would be easy to cite a 

 multitude of analogous cases, the character of which 

 could admit of no dispute. In order to avoid exagge- 

 ration, however, it should be remarked, that these 

 f necessary relations among the different aspects of 

 society cannot, from their very nature, be so simple 

 and precise that the results observed could only have 

 arisen from some one mode of mutual co-ordination. 

 Such a notion, already too narrow in the science of 

 life, would be completely at variance with the still 

 more complex nature of sociological speculations. 

 But the exact estimation of these limits of variation, 

 both in the healthy and in the morbid state, consti- 

 tutes, at least as much as in the anatomy of the 

 natural body, an indispensable complement to every 

 theory of Sociological Staticsj] without which the 

 indirect exploration above spoken of would often lead 

 into error. 



" This is not the place for methodically demon- 

 strating the existence of a necessary relation between 

 all the possible aspects of the same social organism ; a 

 point on which, moreover, in principle at least, there 

 is now little difference of opinion among sound 

 thinkers. From whichever of the social elements we 

 choose to set out, we may easily recognize that it has 

 always a connexion, more or less immediate, with all 



