572 



LOGIC OF THE MOHAL SCIENCES. 



characteristic of science, the philo- 

 sophy of society should have made 

 little progress ; should contain few 

 general propositions sufficiently pre- 

 cise and certain for common inquirers 

 to recognise in them a scientific cha- 

 racter. The vulgar notion accord- 

 ingly is, that all pretension to lay 

 dovm general truths on politics and 

 society is quackery ; that no univer- 

 sality and no certainty are attainable 

 in such matters. What partly excuses 

 this common notion is, that it is really 

 not without foundation in one parti- 

 cular sense. A large proportion of 

 those who have laid claim to the cha- 

 racter of philosophic politicians have 

 attempted, not to ascertain universal 

 sequences, but to frame universal pre- 

 cepts. They have imagined some one 

 form of government, or system of laws, 

 to fit all cases ; a pretension well 

 meriting the ridicule with which it is 

 treated by practitioners, and wholly 

 unsupported by the analogy of the 

 art to which, from the nature of its 

 subject, that of politics must be the 

 most nearly allied. No one now sup- 

 poses it possible that one remedy can 

 cure all diseases, or even the same 

 disease in all constitutions and habits 

 of body. 



It is not necessary even to the per- 

 fection of a science that the corre- 

 sponding art should possess universal, 

 or even general rules. The phenomena 

 of society might not only be completely 

 dependent on known causes, but the 

 mode of action of all those causes might 

 be reducible to laws of considerable 

 simplicity, and yet no two cases might 

 admit of being treated in precisely the 

 same manner. So great might be the 

 variety of circumstances on which the 

 results in different cases depend, that 

 the art might not have a single general 

 precept to give, except that of watch- 

 ing the circumstances of the particular 

 case, and adapting our measures to 

 the effects which, according to the 

 principles of the science, result from 

 those circumstances. But although, 

 in so complicated a class of subjects, 

 it is impossible to lay down practical 



maxims of universal application, it 

 does not follow that the phenomena 

 do not conform to universal laws. 



§ 2. All phenomena of society are 

 phenomena of human nature, gene- 

 rated by the action of outward cir- 

 cumstances upon masses of human 

 beings : and if, therefore, the pheno- 

 mena of human thought, feeling, and 

 action, are subject to fixed laws, the 

 phenomena of society cannot but con- 

 form to fixed laws, the consequence of 

 the preceding. There is, indeed, no 

 hope that these laws, though our 

 knowledge of them were as certain 

 and as complete as it is in astronomy, 

 would enable us to predict the history 

 of society, like that of the celestial 

 appearances, for thousands of years 

 to come. But the difference of cer- 

 tainty is not in the laws themselves, 

 it is in the data to which these laws 

 are to be applied. In astronomy the 

 causes influencing the result are few, 

 and change little, and that little ac- 

 cording to known laws ; we can ascer- 

 tain what they are now, and thence 

 determine what they will be at any 

 epoch of a distant future. The data, 

 therefore, in astronomy, are as certain 

 as the laws themselves. The circum- 

 stances, on the contrary, which influ- 

 ence the condition and progress of 

 society, are innumerable, and perpe- 

 tually changing ; and though they all 

 change in obedience to causes, and 

 therefore to laws, the multitude of 

 the causes is so great as to defy our 

 limited powers of calculation. Not 

 to say that the impossibility of apply- 

 ing precise numbers to facts of such a 

 description, would set an impassable 

 limit to the possibility of calculating 

 them beforehand, even if the powers 

 of the human intellect were otherwise 

 adequate to the task. 



But, as before remarked, an amount 

 of knowledge quite insufficient for 

 prediction may be most valuable for 

 guidance. The science of society 

 would have attained a very high 

 point of perfection if it enabled us, in 

 any given condition of social affairs, — 



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