THE CHEMICAL METHOD. 



573 



In the condition, for instance, of 

 Europe or any European country at 

 the present time, — to understand by 

 what causes it had, in any and every 

 particular, been made what it was ; 

 whether it was tending to any, and 

 to what, changes ; what effects each 

 feature of its existing state was likely 

 to produce in the future ; and by 

 what means any of those effects might 

 be prevented, modified, or accelerated, 

 or a different class of effects superin- 

 duced. There is nothing chimerical 

 in the hope that general laws, suffi- 

 cient to enable us to answer these 

 various questions for any country or 

 time with the individual circumstances 

 of which we are well acquainted, do 

 really admit of being ascertained ; 

 and that the other branches of human 

 knowledge, which this undertaking 

 presupposes, are so far advanced that 

 the time is ripe for its commencement. 

 Such is the object of the Social 

 Science. 



That the nature of what I consider 

 the true method of the science may 

 be made more palpable, by first show- 

 ing what that method is not, it will 

 be expedient to characterise briefly 

 two radical misconceptions of the 

 proper mode of philosophising on 

 society and government, one or other 

 of which is, either explicitly or more 

 often unconsciously, entertained by 

 almost all who have meditated or 

 argued respecting the logic of politics 

 since the notion of treating it by strict 

 rules, and on Baconian principles, has 

 been current among the more advanced 

 thinkers. These erroneous methods, 

 if the word method can be applied to 

 erroneous tendencies arising from the 

 absence of any sufficiently distinct 

 conception of method, may be termed 

 the Experimental or Chemical mode 

 of investigation, and the Abstract or 

 Geometrical mode. We shall begin 

 with the former. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OP THE CHEMICAL, OR EXPERIMENTAL, 

 METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. 



§ I. The laws of the phenomena of 

 society are, and can be, nothing but 

 the laws of the actions and passions 

 of human beings united together in 

 the social state. Men, however, in a 

 state of society, are still men ; their 

 actions and passions are obedient to 

 the laws of individual human nature. 

 Men are not, when brought together, 

 converted into another kind of sub- 

 stance, with different properties ; as 

 hydrogen and oxygen are different from 

 water, or as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, 

 and azote are different from nerves, 

 muscles, and tendons. Human be- 

 ings in society have no properties but 

 those which are derived from, and 

 may be resolved into, the laws of the 

 nature of individual man. In social 

 phenomena the Composition of Causes 

 is the universal law. 



Now, the method of philosophising 

 which may be termed chemical over- 

 looks this fact, and proceeds as if the 

 nature of man as an individual were 

 not concerned at all, or were con- 

 cerned in a very inferior degree, in 

 the operations of human beings in 

 society. All reasoning in political or 

 social affairs, grounded on principles 

 of human nature, is objected to by 

 reasoners of this sort, under such 

 names as "abstract theory." For the 

 direction of their opinions and con- 

 duct they profess to demand, in all 

 cases without exception, specific ex- 

 perience. 



This mode of thinking is not only 

 general with practitioners in politics, 

 and with that very numerous class 

 who (on a subject which no one, how- 

 ever ignorant, thinks himself incom- 

 petent to discuss) profess to guide 

 themselves by common sense rather 

 than by science, but is often counte- 

 nanced by persons with greater pre- 

 tensions to instruction — persons who, 

 having sufficient acquaintance with 

 books and with the current ideas to 



