SECTION 14.VERIFICA TION AND PROOF. 117 



of demonstration is obtainable; but, strange to say, in the 

 cultural sciences verification or proof worthy the name is seldom 

 striven after, robbing the statements there made of all sterling 

 value. 



48. "The words 'truth', 'truism', 'rule', 'generalisation', 'uniformity', 

 'regularity', and 'principles' are all often loosely used as more or less 

 nearly synonymous with the word 'law'. But it is important that they 

 be discriminated from one another, for the word 'law' has become pecu- 

 liarly specialised. Without stopping to define all of the above terms, it 

 must be said at once that most, if not all, of the so-called laws in the 

 social sciences belong to one of the above categories that is, they are 

 generalisations, uniformities or principles, rather than laws in the sense 

 in which the physical sciences would use that word. Thus Comte's 

 famous Law of the Three States is only a generalisation; while the so- 

 called law of least effort (that the greatest gain is always sought for the 

 least effort) is really a psychological principle. Now exactness in the 

 use of terms is desirable in science; hence it is important that we inquire 

 into the exact meaning which the word 'law' has acquired in the older 

 sciences the physical sciences. At first in the physical sciences law 

 meant the manifestation of an outer force, controlling the action of things. 

 But as the passive view of nature came to be given up, it came to mean 

 merely the uniform way in which things occur. Later, under the influence 

 of the growth of the mechanical view of nature, law came to mean a 

 fixed, unchanging, and so necessary relation between forces. The concept 

 of a law of nature thus became deeply tinged with the idea of physical 

 necessity. Indeed, in the physical sciences, it became practically synony- 

 mous with physical necessity. Hence the expression 'eternal iron laws', 

 embodying the idea that nature is a theatre of mechanical necessities." 

 (Charles A. Ellwood, Sociology in its Psychological Aspects, 1912, 

 pp. 74-75.) 



"Wo immer uns Erscheinungen in derselben Form der Aufemander- 

 folge oder der Koexistenz entgegentreten, da sprechen wir von einem 

 dieser Gleichformigkeit zugrunde liegenden Gesetze. Es ist das offenbar 

 nur eine Analogic oder Metapher. Das Urbild desselben ist dem politi- 

 schen Leben entnommen. Wenn ein Gesetz fur bestimmte Falle die Beob- 

 achtung eines bestimmten Vorganges anbefiehlt, so geschieht dieses in 

 alien beziiglichen Fallen in derselben durch das Gesetz vorgeschriebenen 

 Form. Wo wir also in der Natur eine Erscheinung in derselben Form 

 sich wiederholen sehen, da stellen wir uns die Sache der grosseren Ver- 

 standlichkeit wegen so vor, als ob diese Gleichformigkeit die Folge irgend- 

 eines hfiheren, in einem Gesetz sich verko'rpernden Willens ware, und 

 sprechen kurzweg von einem Gesetz dieser Erscheinungen. Wir erlangen 

 durch diese Metapher fur eine Reihenfolge von Erscheinungen einen leicht 

 verstandlichen Ausdruck, eine einfache Formel." (L. Gumplowicz, Grund- 

 riss der Soziologie, 1905, pp. 103-104.) 



"It is the custom in science, wherever regularity of any kind can be 

 traced, to call the general proposition which expresses that regularity a 

 law." (Mill, Logic, bk. 3, ch. 4, 1.) 



"We may regard a law of nature either, 1st, as a general propositi 

 announcing, in abstract terms, a whole group of particular facts relating 

 to the behaviour of natural agents in proposed circumstances; or, 2ndly, 

 as a proposition announcing thg|a whole class of individuals agreeing 

 in one character agree also in anolher." (Herschel, Discourse, [91.].) 



Since the term law, in its political acceptation, incorporates the con- 

 ception, at the one end, of arbitrary and ruthless decrees and, at the 

 other end historically, of a mature decision by a democratic assembly 

 aiming in a humane manner at the welfare of the whole community, it 

 is indispensable to bear in mind the evolution of political law when 

 interpreting the signification of law in the scientific sense. 



