THE GEOMETRICAL METHOD. 555 



beirifT called in only as a supplementary resource, to (letermino the causes 

 wliich produced an unexplained residue. ]?ut if the principles (if Ini- 

 man nature may be had recourse to for the establishment of some po- 

 litical truths, they may for all. If it be admissible to say, Enc^land 

 must have prospered by reason of her proliihitory system, because 

 after allowing for all the other tendencies which have bcuui operating, 

 there is a portion of prosperity still to be accounted for; it must be 

 admissible to go to the same source for the eflect of the prohibitory 

 system, and examine what account the laws of human motives and ac- 

 tions will enable us to give of it.i tendencies. Nor, in tact, will the 

 experimental argument amount to anything, except in verification of a 

 conclusion drawn from those general laws. For we may sul)tract the 

 effect of one, two, three, or four causes, but we shall never succeed in 

 subtracting the effect of all causes except one ; while it would be a 

 curious instance of the dangers of too much caution, if, to avoid 

 depending on a priori reasoning concerning the effect of a single 

 cause, we should oblige ourselves to depend upon as many separate 

 a priori reasonings as there are causes operating concurrently with 

 that particular cause in some given instance. 



We have 'now sufficiently characterized the absurd misconception 

 of the mode of investigation proper to political phenomena, which I 

 have termed the Chemical Method. So lengthened a discussion would 

 not have been necessary, if the claim to decide authoritatively on polit- 

 ical doctrines were coniined to persons who had competently studied 

 any one of the higher departments of physical science. l?ut since the 

 generality of those who reason on political subjects, satisfactorily to 

 themselves and to a more or less numerous body of admirers, know 

 nothing whatever of the methods of physical investigation beyond a 

 few precepts which they contiimc to parrot after liacon, being entirely 

 unaware that Bacon's conception of scientific in(iuiry has done its 

 work, and that science has now advanced into a higher stage ; there 

 are probably many to whom such remarks {is the foregoing may still 

 be useful. In an age in which chemistry itself, when attempting to 

 deal with the more complex chemical sequences, those (jf the animal 

 or even the vegetable organism, has found it necessary to become, and 

 has succeeded in becoming, a Deductive Science — it is not to he ap- 

 prehended that any person of scientific habits, who has kept pace with 

 the general progress of the knowledge of nature, can be in danger of 

 applying the methods of elementary chemistry to explore the sequences 

 of the moat complex order of phenomena in existence. 



CILVPTKR VIII. 



OF THE GEOMETRICAI,, OR AD-STRACT METHOD. 



§ 1. TiiK misconc(!ption discussed in the preceding chapter is, as we 

 said, chiefly committed by persons not much accustomcju to scientific 

 investigation : practitioners in politics, who rather eni[)loy the common- 

 places of philosopliy to justify their practice;, than seek to guide their 

 2;)ractice by any philosophic views ; or imperfectly educated racn, who, 



