29S 



INDUCTION. 



If so little can be done by the ex- 

 perimental method to determine the 

 conditions of an eflfect of many com- 

 bined causes, in the case of medical 

 science ; still less is this method ap- 

 plicable to a class of phenomena more 

 complicated than even those of physio- 

 logy, the phenomena of politics and 

 history. There, Plurality of Causes 

 exists in almost boundless excess, and 

 effects are, for the most part, inextri- 

 cably interwoven veith one another. 

 To add to the embarrassment, most 

 of the inquiries in political science 

 relate to the production of effects of a 

 most comprehensive description, such 

 as the public wealth, public security, 

 public morality, and the like : results 

 liable to be affected directly or in- 

 directly either in plus or in minus by 

 nearly every fact which exists, or 

 event which occurs in human society. 

 The vulgar -notion that the safe me- 

 thods on political subjects are those 

 of Baconian induction — that the true 

 guide is not general reasoning, but 

 specific experience — will one day be 

 quoted as among the most unequivocal 

 marks of a low state of the speculative 

 faculties in any age in which it is 

 accredited. Nothing can be more 

 ludicrous than the sort of parodies on 

 experimental reasoning which one is 

 accustomed to meet with, not in popu- 

 lar discussion only, but in grave trea- 

 tises, when the affairs of nations are 

 the theme. " How," it is asked, " can 

 an institution be bad, when the 

 country has prospered under it ? " 

 " How can such or such causes have 

 contributed to the prosperity of one 

 country, when another has prospered 

 without them ? " "Whoever makes use 

 of an argument of this kind, not in- 



have been discovered, and probably could 

 only have been discovered, by experiments 

 on living animals. Observation and ex- 



Eeriment are the ultimate basis of all 

 nowledge : from them we obtain the ele- 

 mentary laws of life, as we obtain all other 

 elementary truths. It is in dealing with 

 the complex combinations that the ex- 

 perimental methods are for the most part 

 illusory, and the deductive mode of inves- 

 Mgation must be invoked to disentangle 

 the complexity. 



tending to deceive, should be sent 

 back to learn the elements of some 

 one of the more easy physical sciences. 

 Such reasoners ignore the fact of 

 Plurality of Causes in the very case 

 which affords the most signal example 

 of it. So little could be concluded, 

 in such a case, from any possible col- 

 lation of individual instances, that 

 even the impossibility, in social phe- 

 nomena, of making artificial experi- 

 ments, a circumstance otherwise so 

 prejudicial to directly inductive in- 

 quiry, hardly affords, in this case, 

 additional reason of regret. For even 

 if we could try experiments upon a 

 nation or upon the human race, with 

 as little scruple as M. Magendie tried 

 them on dogs and rabbits, we should 

 never succeed in making two instances 

 identical in every respect except the 

 presence or absence of some one defi- 

 nite circumstance. The nearest ap- 

 proach to an experiment in the philo- 

 sophical sense, which takes place 

 in politics, is the introduction of a 

 new operative element into national 

 affairs by some special and assignable 

 measure of government, such as the 

 enactment or repeal of a particular 

 law. But where there are so many 

 influences at work, it requires some 

 time for the influence of any new 

 cause upon national phenomena to be- 

 come apparent ; and as the causes 

 operating in so extensive a sphere are 

 nofc only infinitely numerous, but in a 

 state of perpetual alteration, it is al- 

 ways certain that before the effect of 

 the new cause becomes conspicuous 

 enough to be a subject of induction, 

 so many of the other influencing cir- 

 cumstances will have changed as tc 

 vitiate the experiment.* 



• Professor Bain, though concurring 

 generally in the views expressed in this 

 chapter, seems to estimate more highly 

 than I do the scope for specific experi- 

 mental evidence in politics (Logic, ii. 333- 

 337). There are, it is true, as he remarks 

 (p. 336), some cases "when an agent sud- 

 denly introduced is almost instantaneously 

 followed by some other changes, as when 

 the announcement of a diplomatic rup- 

 ture between two nations is followed the 

 same day by a derangement of the money- 



