rUYSICAL METHOD. 501 



are concerned, would bo drsirablo v\cn if lliosc omitted were so iiisiir- 

 nificant in cimiparLson with tlio otliers, that lliey might, for most luii- 

 poses and on most occasions, hv left duI of iho account. But this is 

 far indeed from boins^ true in the social science. The phenomenii ut 

 societj' do not depend, in essentials, upon any <»ne aifoncy or law of 

 human nature, with only inconsiderable modihcations from others. 

 The whole of the laws of human nature intluence those phenomena, 

 and there is not one which influences them in a small (lei,Mre. There 

 is not one, the removal or any threat alteration of wliicii woidd not 

 materially atl'ect the whole aspect of society, and chani^e more or less 

 most of the principal seiiuences of the social phenomena. 



The theory which has been the subject of these remarks is, in this 

 country at least, the prhicipal contemporary example of what I have 

 styled the geometrical method of philosophizing in the social science; 

 and our examination of it has, for this reason, been more detailed than 

 might otherwise have been deemed necessary in a work like the 

 present. Ha\ing'now sufficiently illustrated the two erroneous metliods, 

 we shall pass without further prclimiiuiry to the true method ; lliat 

 which proceeds (conformably to the practice of the higher branches 

 of physical science) deductively indeed, but by deduction fnmi many, 

 not from one or a veiy few, original premisses ; cons-idering each efl'ect 

 as (what it really is) an aggregate result of many causes, operating 

 sometimes through the same, sometimes through diflerent mental agen- 

 cies, or laws of human nature. 



CHAPTER IX. 



OF THE PIIVSICAL, OR CONXRETE DEDUCTIVE, METHOD. 



§ 1. After what has been said to illustrate the nature of the inquiry 

 into the social phenomena, the general character of the method pro- 

 per to that inquiry is sufficiently evident, and needs only to be recap- 

 itulated, not proved. However complex the phenomena, all their 

 sequences and coexistences result fiom the laws of the 8«*parate ele- 

 ments. The effect which is produced, in social phenomena, by any 

 complex set of circumstances, amounts precisely to the sum of the 

 effects of the cirounstances tcdven singly: and the comj)lexity does not 

 arise from the number of the laws themselves, which is not remarkably 

 great; but fi-ora the extraordinary number and variety of the data or 

 elements — of the agents which, in obedience to that small number of 

 laws, cooperate towards the effect. The Social Science, therefore, 

 (which I shall henceforth, with M. Comte, tlesignate by ihe more com- 

 pact term Sociology,) is a deductive .science ; not, indeed, after the 

 model of geometr}', but after that of the higher physical scienccfl. It 

 infers the law of each efTi'Ct from the laws of causation upon which 

 that effect depends ; not, hr)wever, from the law merely of one cause, 

 as in the geometrical method ; but by considering all the caiusos which 

 conjunctly influence the efFect, and C(»mj>ounding their laws with one 

 another. Its method, in shf»rt, is the Concrete Dc-ductive M»-thod : 

 that of which a.sti-onomy furnishes the most perfect, natural philoso])hy 

 4B 



