OF THE 



'UNIFIES 



CHAP. XIV.] SCIENCE AND FREE WILL. V /T- , 439 



3/H"Y v ^ ; XT' ' 

 V 



theorems in sociology. Other students of human nature 

 proceed on a different plan. They observe individual men, 

 ascertain their history, analyse their motives, and compare 

 their expectation of what they will do with their actual con- 

 duct. This may be called the dynamical method of study 

 as applied to man. However imperfect the dynamical study 

 of man may be in practice, it evidently is the only perfect 

 method in principle, and its shortcomings arise from the 

 limitation of our powers rather than from a faulty method of 

 procedure. If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, 

 we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details 

 of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of 

 widespread causes, though very different in each individual, 

 will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a 

 study of which we may estimate the character and propensi- 

 ties of an imaginary being called the Mean Man. 



Now, if the molecular theory of the constitution of bodies 

 is true, all our knowledge of matter is of the statistical kind. 

 A constituent molecule of a body has properties very different 

 from those of the body to which it belongs. Besides its 

 immutability and other recondite properties, it has a velocity 

 which is different from that which we attribute to the body 

 as a whole. 



The smallest portion of a body which we can discern 

 consists of a vast number of such molecules, and all that we 

 can learn about this group of molecules is statistical infor- 

 mation. We can determine the motion of the centre of 

 gravity of the group, but not that of any one of its members 

 for the time being, and these members themselves are 

 continually passing from one group to another in a manner 

 confessedly beyond our power of tracing them. 



Hence those uniformities which we observe in our 

 experiments with quantities of matter containing millions 

 of millions of molecules are uniformities of the same kind 

 as those explained by Laplace and wondered at by Buckle, 

 arising from the slumping together of multitudes of cases, 

 each of which is by no means uniform with the others. 



The discussion of statistical matter is within the province 



