HISTORICAL METHOD, 575 



which we possess respecting past ages, and respecting the various states 

 of society now existing in difierent regions of tlie earth, does, when 

 duly analyzed, exhib it suchuniforniities. It is found that when ono 

 of the features of society is in a [)articular state, a state of all the other 

 features, more or less precisely detenninate, always coexists witli it. 



But the uniformities of coexistence obtaining among phenomena 

 which are effects of causes, must (as we have so often observed) be mere 

 corollaries from the laws of causation by which these plicnoniena are 

 actually determined. The mutual correlation between tlio different 

 elements of each state of society, is therefore a derivative law, result- 

 ing from the laws which regulate the succession between one state of 

 society and another: for the proximate cause of every state of society 

 is the state of society immediately preceding it. The fundamental 

 problem, therefore, of sociology is to rtnd the laws according to which 

 any state of society produces the state which succeeds it and takes its 

 place. This opens the great and vexed questioti of the progressive- 

 ness of man and society ; an idea involved in every just concej)tion of 

 social phenomena as the subject of a science. 



§ 3. It is one of the characters, not absolutely peculiar to the 

 sciences of human nature and society, but belonging to them in a pe- 

 culiar degree, to be conversant with a subject matter whose properties 

 are changeable. I do not mean changeable from day to day, but from 

 age to age : so that not only the qualities of individuals vary, but those 

 of the majority are not the same in one age as in another. 



The principal cause of this peculiarity is the extensive and constant 

 reaction of the efl'ects upon their causes. The circumstances in which 

 mankind are placed, operating according to their own laws and to the 

 laws of human nature, form the characters of the men ; but the men, 

 in their turn, mould and shape the circumstances, for themselves and 

 for those who come after them. From this reciprocal action there must 

 necessarily result either a cycle or a progress. In astronomy also 

 every fact is at once effect and cause ; the successive positions of the 

 various heavenly bodies produce changes both in the direction and in 

 the intensity of the forces by which those positions are determined. 

 But, in the case of the solar system, these mutual actions bring round 

 again, after a certain number of changes, the former state of circum- 

 stances, which of course leads to the perpetual recurrence of the same 

 series in an unvarying order. TIkjso bodies, in short, revolve in 

 orbits : but there are (or, conformably to the laws of astronomy, there 

 might be) others which, instead of an orbit, describe a trajectory, or a 

 course not returning into itself One or other of these must be the 

 type to which human affairs must also confonn. 



One of the thinkers who earliest conceived the succession of histori- 

 cal events as subject to fixed laws, and endeavored to discover these 

 laws by an analytical survey of history, Vice, the celebr.ated authyr of 

 the Scieiiza Nuoia, adopted the former of these opinions. He con- 

 ceived the phenomena of human society as revolving in an orbit ; as 

 going through periodically the same series of changes. Though there 

 were not wanting circumstances tending to give some plausibility to 

 this vi(!W, it would not bear a close scrutiny : and those who have suc- 

 ceeded Vico in this kind of speculations have universally adopted the 

 idea of a trajectory or progress, in lieu of an orbit or cycle. 



