THE CHEMICAL METHOD. 



577 



their production or in their preven- 

 tion. From the mere fact, therefore, 

 of our having been able to ehminate 

 some circumstance, we can by no 

 means infer that this circumstance 

 was not instrumental to the effect 

 in some of the very instances from 

 which we have eliminated it. We 

 can conclude that the effect is some- 

 times produced without it, but not 

 that, when present, it does not con- 

 tribute its share. 



Similar objections will be found to 

 apply to the Method of Concomitant 

 Variations. If the causes which act 

 upon the state of any society pro- 

 duced effects differing from one an- 

 other in kind ; if wealth depended 

 on one cause, peace on another, a 

 third made people virtuous, a fourth 

 intelligent, we might, though unable 

 to sever the causes from one another, 

 refer to each of them that property 

 of the effect which waxed as it waxed, 

 and which waned as it waned. But 

 every attribute of the social body is 

 influenced by innumerable causes ; 

 and such is the mutual action of the 

 co-existing elements of society, that 

 whatever affects any one of the more 

 important of them, will by that alone, 

 if it does not affect the others directly, 

 affect them indirectly. The effects, 

 therefore, of different agents not being 

 different in quality, while the quan- 

 tity of each is the mixed result of all 

 the agents, the variations of the ag- 

 gregate cannot bear an uniform pro- 

 portion to those of any one of its com- 

 ponent parts. 



§ 5. There remains the Method of 

 Residues, which appears, on the first 

 view, less foreign to this kind of in- 

 quiry than the three other methods, 

 because it only requires that we 

 should accurately note the circum- 

 stances of some one country, or state 

 of society. Making allowance, there- 

 upon, for the effect of all causes 

 whose tendencies are known, the re- 

 sidue which those causes are inade- 

 quate to explain may plausibly be 

 imputed to the remainder of the oir- 



cumstances which are known to have 

 existed in the case. Something simi- 

 lar to this is the method which Cole^ 

 ridge * describes himself as having 

 followed in his political Essays in 

 the Mwming Post. *' On every great 

 occurrence I endeavoured to discover 

 in past history the event that most 

 nearly resembled it. I procured, 

 whenever it was possible, the con- 

 temporary historians, memorialists, 

 and pamphleteers. Then fairly sub- 

 tracting the points of difference from 

 those of likeness, as the balance 

 favoured the former or the latter, I 

 conjectured that the result would be 

 the same or different. As, for in- 

 stance, in the series of essays en- 

 titled *A Comparison of France under 

 Napoleon with Rome under the first 

 Caesars,' and in those which followed, 

 *on the probable final restoration of 

 the Bourbons.' The same plan I 

 pursued at the commencement of the 

 Spanish Revolution, and with the 

 same success, taking the war of the 

 United Provinces with Philip II. as 

 the groundwork of the comparison." 

 In this inquiry he no doubt employed 

 the Method of Residues, for, in 

 *' subtracting the points of difference 

 from those of likeness," he doubtless 

 weighed, and did not content himself 

 with numbering, them : he doubtless 

 took those points of agreement only 

 which he presumed from their own 

 nature to be capable of influencing 

 the effect, and, allowing for that in- 

 fluence, concluded that the remainder 

 of the result would be referable to 

 the points of difference. 



Whatever may be the efficacy of 

 this method, it is, as we long ago re- 

 marked, not a method of pure obser- 

 vation and experiment ; it concludes, 

 not from a comparison of instances, 

 but from the comparison of an in- 

 stance with the result of a previous 

 deduction. Applied to social pheno- 

 mena, it presupposes that the causes 

 from which part of the effect pro- 

 ceeded are already knowna ; and as 



* Biographia literaria, i. 214. 

 2 O 



