170 THE GENESIS OF SCIENCE. 



their subjects together. And knowing, as we do, that, 

 other things equal, nations prosper in proportion to the 

 justness of their arrangements, we may fairly infer that 

 the very cause of the advance of these earliest nations out 

 of aboriginal barbarism, was the greater recognition among 

 them of the claims to life and property. 



But sujDposition aside, it is clear that the habitual recog- 

 nition of these claims in their laws, implied some prevision 

 of social phenomena. Even thus early there was a certain 

 amount of social science. Nay, it may even be shown that 

 there was a vague recognition of that fundamental princi- 

 ple on which all the true social science is based — the equal 

 rights of all to the free exercise of their faculties. That 

 same idea of equality^ which, as we have seen, underlies 

 all other science, underlies also morals and sociology. The 

 conception of justice, which is the primary one in morals ; 

 and the administration of justice, which is the vital condi- 

 tion of social existence ; are impossible, without the recog- 

 nition of a certain likeness in men's claims, in virtue of their 

 common humanity. Equity literally means equalness / and 

 if it be admitted that there were even the vaguest ideas of 

 equity in these primitive eras, it must be admitted that 

 there was some appreciation of the equalness of men's lib- 

 erties to pursue the objects of life — some appreciation, 

 therefore, of the essential principle of national equilibrium. 



Thus in this initial stage of the positive sciences, before 

 geometry had yet done more than evolve a few empirical 

 rules — before mechanics had passed beyond its first theo- 

 rem — before astronomy had advanced from its merely chro- 

 nological phase into the geometrical ; the most involved of 

 the sciences had reached a certain degree of development 

 — a develo^Dment without which no progress in other sci- 

 ences was possible. 



Only noting as we j^ass, how, thus early, we may see 

 that the progress of exact science was not only towards an 



