548 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



be beneficial 1 and, if so, can legislators or the public be persuaded, or 

 Otherwise induced, to adopt it 1 For hardly any notion was enter- 

 tained that there were limits to the power of human will over the phe- 

 nomena of society, or that any social arrangements which would be 

 desirable, could be impracticable from incompatibility with the proper- 

 ties of the subject matter : the only obstacle was supposed to lie in the 

 private interests or prejudices, which hindered men from being willing 

 lo see them tried. Students in politics thus attempted to study the 

 p-at^iology and therapeutics of the social body, before they had laid the 

 necessary foundation in its physiology ; to cure disease, without under- 

 standing the laws of health. And the result was such as it must always 

 be when men even of gi-eat ability attempt to deal with the complex 

 questions of a science before its simpler and mere elementary pi-oposi- 

 tions have been established. 



No wonder that when the phenomena of society have so rarely been 

 contemplated in the point of view characteristic of science, the philo- 

 sophy of society should have made little progi-ess ; should contain few 

 general propositions sufficiently precise and certain, for common in- 

 quirers to recognize in them a scientific character. The vulgar notion 

 accordingly is, that all pretension to lay down general truths on politics 

 and society is quackery ; that no universality and no certainty are 

 attainable in such matters. What partly excuses this common notion 

 is, that it is really not without foundation in one particular sense. A 

 large proportion of those who have laid claim to the character of philo- 

 sophic politicians, have attempted, not to ascertain universal sequences, 

 but to frame universal precepts. They have had some one form of 

 government, or system of laws, to fit all cases; a pretension well 

 meriting the ridicule with which it is treated by practitioners, and 

 wholly unsupported by the analogy of the art to which, from the nature 

 of its subject, that of politics must be the most nearly allied. No one 

 now supposes it possible that one remedy can cure all diseases, or even 

 the same disease in all constitutions and habits of body. Yet physi- 

 ology is admitted to be a science, and medical practice, when it disre- 

 gards the indications of the science, to be criminal quackery. 



It is not necessary to even the perfection of a science, that the 

 corresponding art should possess universal, or even general rules. 

 The phenomena of society might not only be completely dependent 

 upon known causes, but the mode of action of all those causes might 

 be reducible to laws of considerable simplicity, and yet no two cases 

 might admit of being treated in precisely the same manner. So great 

 might be the variety of circumstances on which the results in different 

 cases depend, that art might not have a single general precept to give, 

 except that of watching the circumstances of the case, and adapting 

 our measures to the effects which, according to the pi'inciples of the 

 science, result from those cii'cumstances. But because, in so compli- 

 cated a class of subjects, it is absurd to lay down practical maxims of 

 universal application, it does not follow that the phenomena do not 

 conform to universal laws. 



§ 2. All phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature, 

 generated by the action of outward circumstances upon masses of 

 human beings : and if, therefore, the phenomena of human thought, 

 feeling, and action, are subject to fixed laws, the phenomena of society 



I 



