SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL 



ensure health or overcome disease. And obvi- 

 ously even this limited ability to modify the 

 phenomena implies a certain amount of previ- 

 sion, quite enough to justify us in asserting that 

 the phenomena conform to law. The case is 

 similar in sociology. Though we may not be 

 able definitely to predict a given political revo- 

 lution, we may nevertheless understand the gen- 

 eral movement of affairs and the effects which 

 certain kinds of legislation are likely to produce, 

 so as to hasten a desired result or avert social 

 mischief. Upon this possibility are based all 

 our methods of government and of education. 

 And, as in biology, this ability to modify the 

 phenomena proves that the phenomena occur 

 in some fixed order of sequence. For if there 

 were phenomena without any definite order of 

 sequence, we could neither predict nor modify 

 them ; and where there is a definite order of 

 sequence, there is, or may be, a science. 



Now in denying that there is or can be a 

 science of history, Mr. Froude, if he means any- 

 thing, means that social affairs have no fixed 

 order of sequence, but are the sport of chance. 

 Either Law or Chance — these are the only al- 

 ternatives, unless we were to have recourse, like 

 the Mussulman, to Destiny, an illegitimate third 

 idea, made up of the other two misconceived 

 and mutilated in order to fit together. But for 

 the modern thinker there is no middle course. 

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