760 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. [CHAP. 



for two or three commodities among two or three trading 

 bodies, but all the functions involved are so complicated in 

 character that there is not much fear of scientific method 

 making rapid progress in this direction. If such be the 

 prospects of a comparatively formal science, like political 

 economy, what shall we say of moral science? Any 

 complete theory of morals must deal with quantities of 

 pleasure and pain, as Bentham pointed out, and must sum 

 up the general tendency of each kind of action upon the 

 good of the community. If we are to apply scientific 

 method to morals, we must have a calculus of moral effects, 

 a kind of physical astronomy investigating the mutual per- 

 turbations of individuals. But as astronomers have not 

 yet fully solved the problem of three gravitating bodies, 

 when shall we have a solution of the problem of three 

 moral bodies ? 



The sciences of political economy and morality are com- 

 paratively abstract and general, treating mankind from 

 simple points of view, and attempting to detect general 

 principles of action. They are to social phenomena what 

 the abstract sciences of chemistry, heat, and electricity 

 are to the concrete science of meteorology. Before we can 

 investigate the actions of any aggregate of men, we must 

 have fairly mastered all the more abstract sciences applying 

 to them, somewhat in the way that we have acquired a 

 fair comprehension of the simpler truths of chemistry and 

 physics. But all our physical sciences do not enable us to 

 predict the weather two days hence with any great proba- 

 bility, and the general problem of meteorology is almost 

 unattempted as yet What shall we say then of the general 

 problem of social science, which shall enable us to predict 

 the course of events in a nation ? 



Several writers have proposed to lay the foundations of 

 the science of history. Buckle undertook to write the 

 History of Civilisation in England, and to show how the 

 character of a nation could be explained by the nature of 

 the climate and the fertility of the soil. He omitted to 

 explain the contrast between the ancient Greek nation and 

 the present one ; there must have been an extraordinary 

 revolution in the climate or the soil. Auguste Comte 

 detected the simple laws of the course of development 

 through which nations pass. There are always three 



