606 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



destined to continue indefinitely, or to terminate, or 

 even to be reversed. 



7. In order to obtain better empirical laws, we 

 must not rest satisfied with noting the progressive 

 changes which manifest themselves in the separate 

 elements of society, and in which nothing is indicated 

 but the relation of the fragments of the effect to corre- 

 sponding fragments of the cause. It is necessary to 

 combine the statical view of social phenomena with 

 the dynamical, considering not only the progressive 

 changes of the different elements, but the contempo- 

 raneous condition of each ; and thus obtain empirically 

 the law of correspondence not only between the simul- 

 taneous states, but between the simultaneous changes, 

 of those elements. This law of correspondence it is, 

 which, after being duly verified a priori, will become 

 the real scientific derivative law of the development 

 of humanity and human affairs. 



In the difficult process of observation and com- 

 parison which is here required, it would evidently be 

 a very great assistance if it should happen to be the 

 fact, that some one element in the complex existence 

 of social .man is pre-eminent over all others as the 

 prime agent of the social movement. For we could 

 then take the progress of that one element as the 

 central chain, to each successive link of which, the 

 corresponding links of all the other progressions being 

 appended, the succession of the facts would by this 

 alone be presented in a kind of spontaneous order, far 

 more nearly approaching to the real order of their 

 filiation than could be obtained by any other merely 

 empirical process. 



Now, the evidence of history and the evidence of 

 human nature combine, by a most striking instance 



