572 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



will presently be shown that the general science of society, which 

 inquires into the laws of succession and coexistence of the great facts 

 constituting the state of society and civilization at any time, can pro- 

 ceed in no other manner than by making such generalizations — after- 

 wards to be confirmed by connecting them with the psychological and 

 ethological laws on which they must really depend. 



§ 6. But (reserving this question for its proper place), in those more 

 special sociological inquiries which form the subject of the separate 

 branches of the social science, this two-fold logical process and recip- 

 rocal verification is not possible ; specific experience affords nothing 

 amounting to empirical laws. This is particularly the case where the 

 object is to determine the effect of any one sociological cause among 

 a great number acting simultaneously ; the effect, for example, of 

 corn laws, or of a prohibitive commercial system generally. Although 

 it may be perfectly certain, from theory, what kind of effects corn laws 

 must produce, and in what general direction their influence must tell 

 upon industrial prosperity ; their effect is yet of necessity so much 

 disguised by the similar or contrary effects of other influencing 

 agents, that specific experience can at most only show that in the 

 average of some great number of instances, the cases where there 

 were corn laws exhibited the effect in a greater degree than those 

 where there were not. Now the number of instances necessary to 

 take in the whole round of combinations of the various influential cir- 

 cumstances, and thus afford a fair average, never can be obtained. 

 Not only we can never learn with sufficient authenticity the facts of so 

 many instances, but the world itself does not afford them in sufficient 

 numbers, within the limits of the given state of society and civilization 

 which such inquiries always presuppose. Having thus no previous 

 empirical generalizations with which to collate the conclusions of the- 

 ory, the only mode of direct verification which remains is to compare 

 those conclusions with the result of an individual experiment or in- 

 stance. But here the difficulty is equally gi-cat. For in order to ver- 

 ify a theory by an experiment, the circumstances of the experiment 

 must be exactly the same with those contemplated in the theory. But 

 in social phenomena the circumstances of no two experiments are ex- 

 actly alike. A ti-ial of com laws in another country, or in a former 

 generation, would go a very little way towards verifying a conclusion 

 drawn respecting their effect in this generation and in this country. It 

 thus happens in most cases that the only individual instance really fitted 

 to verify the predictions of theory is the very instance for which the 

 predictions were made ; and the verification comes too late to be of 

 any avail for practical guidance. 



Although, however, direct verification is impossible, there is an in- 

 direct verification, which is scarcely of less value, and which is always 

 practicable. The conclusion drawn as to the individual case, can only 

 be directly verified in that case ; but it is verified indirectly, by the 

 verification of other conclusions, drawn in other individual cases from 

 the same laws. The experience which comes too late to verify the 

 particular proposition to which it refers, is not too late to help towards 

 verifying the general sufficiency of the theory. The test of the degree 

 in which the science affords safe ground for predicting (and conse- 

 quently for practically dealing with) what has not yet happened, ia 



