578 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



since the evolution of each people, which is at first determined exclu- 

 sively by the nature and circumstances of that people, is gradually 

 brought under the influence (which becomes stronger as civilization 

 advances) of the other nations of the earth, and of the circumstances 

 by which they have been influenced. History accordingly does, when 

 judiciously examined, afford Empirical Laws of Society. And the 

 problem of general sociology is to ascertain these, and connect them 

 with the laws of human nature by deductions showing that such were 

 the derivative laws naturally to be expected as the consequences of 

 those ultimate ones. 



It is indeed, in most cases, hardly possible, even after history has 

 suggested the derivative law, to demonstrate a priori that such was . 

 the only order of succession or of coexistence in which the effects 

 could, consistently with the laws of human nature, have been pro- 

 duced. We can at most make out that there were strong a priori 

 reasons for expecting it, and that no other order of succession or co- 

 existence would have been by any means so likely to result from the 

 nature of man and his position upon earth. This, .however — which, 

 in the Inverse Deductive Method that we are now characterizing, is a 

 real process of verification — is as indispensable (to be more so is im- 

 possible) as verification by specific experience has been shown to be 

 where the conclusion is originally obtained by the direct way of deduc- 

 tion. The empirical laws must be the result of but a few instances, 

 since few nations have ever attained at all, and still fewer by their own 

 independent development, a high stage of social progress. If, there- 

 fore, even one or two of these few instances be insufficiently kno\vn, or 

 imperfectly analyzed into its elements, and therefore not adequately 

 compared with other instances, nothing is more probable than that a 

 wrong empirical law will result instead of the right one. Accordingly,* 

 the most erroneous generalizations are continually made from the 

 course of history : not only in this country, where history cannot yet 

 be said to be at all cultivated as a science, but in other countries, 

 where it is so cultivated, and by persons well versed in it. The only 

 check or coiTective is, constant verification by psychological and etho- 

 logical laws. We may add to this, that no one but a person compe- 

 tently skilled in those laws is capable of preparing the materials for 

 historical generalization by analyzing the facts of history, or even by 

 observing the social phenomena of his own time. No other will be 

 aware of the comparative importance of different facts, nor conse- 

 quently know what facts he is to look out for, or what to obser\'e ; still 

 less will he be capable of estimating the evidence of those facts which, 

 as is the case with most, cannot be observed directly, but must be in- 

 ferred from marks. 



§ 5. The Empirical Laws of Society are of two kinds ; some are 

 uniformities of coexistence, some of succession. According as the 

 science is occupied in asceitaining and verifying the former sort of 

 uniformities, or the latter, M. Comte gives it the title of Social Statics, 

 or of Social Dynamics ; conformably to the distinction in mechanics 

 between the conditions of equilibrium and those of movement ; or in 

 biology, between the laws of organization and those of life. The first 

 branch of the science ascertains the conditions of stability in the social 

 union; the second, the laws of progress. Social Dynamics is the the- 



