584 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



ation and another, it is the whole which produces the whole, rather 

 than any part a part. Little progiess therefore can be made in estab- 

 lishing the filiation, directly from laws of human nature, without having 

 first ascertained the immediate or derivative laws according to which 

 social states generate one another as society advances ; the axiomata 

 media of General Sociology. 



The empirical laws which are most readily obtained by generaliza- 

 tion from history do not amount to this ; they are not the " middle 

 principles" themselves, but only evidence towards the establishment 

 of such principles. They consist of certain general tendencies which 

 may be perceived in society ; a progressive increase of some social 

 elements and diminution of others, or a gradual change in the general 

 character of certain elements. It is easily seen, for instance, that, as 

 society advances, mental tend more and more to prevail over bodily 

 qualities, and masses over individuals : that the occupation of all that 

 portion of mankind who are not under external restraint is at first 

 chiefly military, but society becomes progressively more and more en- 

 grossed with productive pursuits, and the military spirit gi'adually gives 

 way to the industrial : to which many other similar truths might easily 

 be added. And wvth generalizations of this description, ordinary in- 

 quirers, even of the historical school now predominant on the Conti- 

 nent, are satisfied. But these and all such results are still at too great 

 a distance from the elementary laws of human nature on which they 

 depend, — too many links intervene, and the concurrence of causes at 

 each link is far too complicated, — to enable these propositions to be 

 presented as direct corollaries from those elementary principles. They 

 have, therefore, in the minds of most inquirers, remained in the state 

 of empirical laws, applicable only within the bounds of actual obser- 

 vation ; without any means of determining their real limits, and of 

 judging whether the changes which have hitherto been in progi'ess 

 are destined to continue indefinitely, or to terminate, or even to be 

 reversed. 



§ 7. In order to obtain better empirical laws, we must not rest sat- 

 isfied with noting the progressive changes which manifest themselves 

 in the separate elements of society, and in which nothing is indicated 

 but the relation of the fragments of the effect to corresponding frag- 

 ments of the cause. It is necessary to combine the statical view of 

 social phenomena with the dynamical, considering not only the pro- 

 gressive changes of the different elements, but the contemporaneous 

 condition of each ; and thus obtain empirically the law of correspond- 

 ence not only between the simultaneous states, but between the simul- 

 taneous changes, of those elements. This law of correspondence it is, 

 which, after being duly verified a priori, will become the real scien- 

 tific derivative law of the development of humanity and human affairs. 



In the difficult process of obsei-sation and comparison which is here 

 required, it would evidently be a very great assistance if it should 

 happen to be the fact, that some one element in the complex existence 

 of social man is preeminent over all others as the prime agent of the 

 social movement. For we could then take the progress of that one 

 element as the central chain, to each successive link of which, the cor- 

 responding links of all the other progressions being appended, the suc- 

 cession of the facts would by this alon^be presented in a kind of spon- 



