HISTORICAL METHOD. * 611 



pronounce on the results arrived at by any individual 

 inquirer, the method has been found by which an 

 indefinite number of the derivative laws both of social 

 order and of social progress may in time be ascer- 

 tained. By the aid of these, we may hereafter succeed 

 not only in looking far forward into the future history 

 of the human race, but in determining what artificial 

 means may be used, and to what extent, to accelerate 

 the natural progress in so far as it is beneficial ; to 

 compensate for whatever may be its inherent incon- 

 veniences or disadvantages ; and to guard against the 

 dangers or accidents to which our species is exposed 

 from the necessary incidents of its progression. Such 

 practical instructions, founded on the highest branch 

 of speculative sociology, will form the noblest and 

 most beneficial portion of the Political Art. 



That of this science and art even the foundations 

 are but beginning to be laid, is sufficiently evident. 

 But the most powerful and accomplished minds of the 

 present age are fairly turning themselves towards that 

 object, and it is the point towards which the specula- 

 tive tendencies of mankind have now for some time 

 been converging. For the first time, it has become 

 the aim of the greatest scientific thinkers to connect 

 by theories the facts of universal history : for the first 

 time it is acknowledged, that no social doctrine is of 

 any value unless it can explain the whole and every 

 part of history, so far as the data exist; and that a 

 Philosophy of History is at once the verification, and 

 the initial form, of the Philosophy of the Progress of 

 Society. 



If the endeavours now making in all the more 

 cultivated nations, and beginning to be made even in 

 England (generally the last to adopt whatever does 

 not originate with herself) for the construction of a 



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