SOCIAL SCIENCE. 547 



CHAPTER VI. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. 



§ 1. Next after the science of individual man, comes the science of 

 man in society : of the actions of collective masses of mankind, and. the 

 various phenomena which constitute social life. 



If the formation of individual character is already a complex sub- 

 ject of study, this subject, it is evident, must be greatly more complex ; 

 because the number of concurrent causes, all exercising more or less 

 influence on the total eftect, is greater, in the proportion iji which a 

 nation, or the species at large, exposes a larger surface to tlir upera- 

 tion of agents, psychological and physical, than any single individual. 

 If it was necessary to prove, in opposition to an existing prejudice, that 

 the siTTipler of the two is capable of being a subject of science ; the 

 prejudice is likely to be yet stronger against the possibility of giving a 

 scientific character to the study of Politics, and ui' the phenomena of 

 Society. It is, accordingly, but of yesterday that the conception of a 

 political or social science has existed, anywhere but in the mind of 

 here and there an insulated thinker, generally very ill prepared for its 

 realization : although the subject itself has of all others engaged the 

 most general attention, and been a theme of interested and earnest dis- 

 cussions almost from the beginning of recorded time. 



The condition indeed of politics, as a branch of knowledge, was 

 until very lately, and has scarcely even yet ceased to be, that which 

 Bacon animadverted upon, as the natural state of the sciences while 

 their cultivation is abandoned to practitioners ; not being can-ieti on as 

 a branch of speculative inquiry, but only with a view to the exigencies 

 of daily practice, and x\\cj'ructifcra expcrbnenta, therefore, being aimed 

 at, almost to the exclusion of the lucifcra. Such was medical science, 

 before physiology and natural history began to be cultivated a-j 

 branches of general knowledge. The only questions examined were, 

 what diet is wholesome, or what medicine will cure some given dis- 

 ease ; without any previous systematic intjuiry into the laws of nutrition, 

 and of the healthy and morbid action of the different organs, on which 

 laws the effect of any diet or medicine must evidently depend. And in 

 pohtics, the questions which engaged general attention weri> similar. 

 Is such an enactment, or such a form of g<)vennnent, b(nie(icial or the 

 reverse — either universally, or to some particular community \ without 

 inquiry into the general conditions by wliich the operation of legisla- 

 tive measures, or the effects produced by forms of goverimient, are 

 determined. 



And even among the fevf who did carry their speculations to that 

 greater lengtli, it is only at a still more recent date that .social phe- 

 nomena, properly so called, have begun to be looked upon as having 

 any natural tendencies of their own. It is hardly an exaggeration to 

 say that society ha.i usually, b(»th by practitioners in politics and by 

 philosophical speculators on forms of goverimient, from Plato to 

 IJentham, been deemed to be whatever tin; men who c()ni{)ose it 

 choose to make it. The only questions which people thought of pro- 

 posing to themselves were, Would such and such a law or iualilution 



