564 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



remark, however, must here be once more repeated, that knowledge 

 insufficient for prediction may be most vakaable for guidance. It is 

 not necessary for the wise conduct of the affairs of society, no more 

 than of any man's private concerns, that we should be able to foresee 

 infallibly the results of what we do. We must seek our objects by 

 means which may perhaps be defeated, and take precautions against 

 dangers which possibly may never be realized. The aim of practical 

 politics is to surround the society which is under our superintendence 

 with the greatest possible number of circumstances of which the ten 

 dencies are beneficial, and to remove or counteract, as far as practi- 

 cable, those of which the tendencies are injurious. A knowledge of 

 the tendencies only, though without the power of accurately predicting 

 their conjunct result, gives us to a certain extent this power. 



It would, however, be an error to suppose that even with respect to 

 tendencies, we could arrive in this manner at any great number of prop- 

 ositions which will be true in all societies without exception. Such a 

 supposition would be inconsistent with the eminently modifiable nature 

 of the social phenomena, and the multitude and variety of the circum- 

 stances by which they are modified; circumstances never the same, or 

 even nearly the same, in two different societies, or in two different 

 periods of the same society. This would not be so serious an obstacle 

 if, though the causes acting upon society in general are numerous, 

 those which influence any one feature of society were limited in num- 

 ber ; for we might then insulate any particular social phenomenon, and 

 investigate its laws without disturbance from the rest. But the truth 

 is the very opposite of this. Whatever affects, in an appreciable degree, 

 any one element of the social state, affects through it all the other ele- 

 ments. The mode of production of all social phenomena is one great 

 case of Intermixture of Laws. We can never either understand in 

 theory or command in practice the condition of a society in any one 

 respect, without taking into consideration its condition in all other 

 respects. There is no social phenomenon which is not more or less 

 influenced by every other part of the condition of the same society, 

 and therefore by every cause which is influencing any other of the 

 contemporaneous social phenomena. There is, in short, a consensus 

 (to borrow an expression from physiology) similar to that existing 

 among the various organs and functions of the physical frame of man 

 and the more perfect animals ; and constituting one of the many anal- 

 ogies which have rendered universal such expressions as the " body 

 politic " and " body natural." It follows from this consensus, that unless 

 two societies could be alike in all the circumstances which surround 

 and influence them (which would imply their being alike in their pre- 

 vious history), no portion whatever of their phenomena will, unless by 

 accident, precisely conespond ; no one cause will produce exactly the 

 same effect in both. Every cause, as its effect spreads through society, 

 comes somewhere in contact with different sets of agencies, and thus has 

 its effects on some of the social phenomena differently modified ; and 

 these differences, by their reaction, produce a difference even in those of 

 the effects which would otherwise have been the same. We can never, 

 therefore, affirm with certainty that a cause which has a particular ten- 

 dency in one people or in one age will have exactly the same tendency 

 in another, without referring back to our premisses, and perforaiing 

 over again for the second age or nation, that analysis of the whole of 



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