550* LOGIC OF TFIE MORAL SCIENCES. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OP THE CHEMICAL, OR EXPERIMENTAL, METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. 



§ 1. The laws of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing 

 but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings united to- 

 gether in the social state. Men, however, in a state of society, are 

 still men ; their actions and passions are obedient to the laws of indi- 

 vidual human nature. Men are not, when brought together, converted 

 into another kind of substance, with different properties ; as hydrogen 

 and oxygen are different from water, or as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, 

 and azote, are different from nerves, muscles, and tendons. Human 

 beings in society have no properties but those which are derived from, 

 and may be resolved into, the laws of the nature of individual man. In 

 social phenomena the Composition of Causes is the universal law. 



Now, the method of philosophizing which may be termed chemical, 

 overlooks this fact, and proceeds as if the nature of man as an indi- 

 vidual were not concerned at all, or concerned in a very inferior de- 

 gree, in the operations of man in society. All reasoning in politics or 

 social affairs, grounded upon principles of human nature, is objected 

 to by reasoners of this sort, under such names as " abstract theory." 

 For governing their opinions and conduct, they profess to demand, in 

 all cases without exception, specific experience. 



This mode of thinking is not only general with practitioners in 

 politics, and \vith that very numerous class who (on a subject which no 

 one, however ignorant, thinks himself incompetent to discuss) profess 

 to guide themselves by common sense rather than by science ; but is 

 , often countenanced by persons with greater pretensions to instruction ; 

 pe sons who, having sufficient acquaintance with books and with the 

 current ideas to have heard that Bacon taught men to follow expe- 

 rience, and to ground their conclusions upon facts instead of meta- 

 physical dogmas, think that by treating political facts in as directly 

 experimental a method as chemical facts, they are showing themselves 

 true Baconians, and proving their adversaries to be mere syllogizers 

 and schoolmen. As, however, the notion of the applicability of experi- 

 mental methods to political philosophy cannot coexist with any just 

 conception of these methods themselves, the kind of aiguments from 

 experience which the chemical theory brings forth as its fruits (and 

 which form the staple, in this country especially, of parliamentary and 

 hustings' oratory) are such as, at no time since Bacon, would have 

 been admitted to be valid in chemistry itself, or in any other branch of 

 experimental science. They are such as these : that the prohibition of 

 foreign commodities must conduce to national wealth, because England 

 has flourished under it, or because countries in general which have 

 adopted it have flourished ; that our laws, or our internal administra- 

 tion, or our constitution, are excellent for a similar reason ; and tho 

 eternal arguments from historical examples, from Athens or Rome, 

 from the fires in Smithfield, or the French Revolution. 



I will not waste time iii contending against modes of argumentation 

 which no person, with the smallest practice in estimating evidence, 

 could possibly be betrayed into ; which draw conclusions of general 



