TftE PHYSICAL METHOD. 



583 



hientary reform, should have been 

 held forth by thinkers of such emi- 

 nence as a complete theory. 



It is not to be imagined possible, 

 nor is it true in point of fact, that 

 these philosophers regarded the few 

 premises of their theory as including 

 all that is required for explaining 

 social phenomena, or for determining 

 the choice of forms of government and 

 measures of legislation and adminis- 

 tration. They were too highly in- 

 structed, of too comprehensive intel- 

 lect, and some of them of too sober 

 and practical a character, for such an 

 error. They would have applied, and 

 did apply, their principles with in- 

 numerable allowances. But it is not 

 allowances that are wanted. There 

 is little chance of making due amends 

 in the superstructure of a theory for 

 the want of sufficient breadth in its 

 foundations. It is unphilosophical to 

 construct a science out of a few of the 

 agencies by which the phenomena are 

 determined, and leave the rest to the 

 routine of practice or the sagacity of 

 conjecture. We either ought not to 

 pretend to scientific forms, or we ought 

 to study all the determining agencies 

 equally, and endeavour, so far as it 

 can be done, to include all of them 

 within the pale of the science ; else 

 we shall infallibly bestow a dispropor- 

 tionate attention upon those which 

 our theory takes into account, while 

 we misestimate the rest, and probably 

 underrate their importance. That the 

 deductions should be from the whole 

 and not from a part only of the laws 

 of nature that are concerned, would 

 be desirable even if those omitted were 

 so insignificant in comparison with the 

 others, that they might, for most pur- 

 poses and on most occasions, be left 

 out of the account. But this is far 

 indeed from being true in the social 

 science. The phenomena of society 

 do not depend, in essentials, on some 

 one agency or law of human nature, 

 with only inconsiderable modifications 

 from others. The whole of the quali- 

 ties of human nature influence those 

 phenomena, and there is not one which 



influences them in a small degree. 

 There is not one, the removal or any 

 great alteration of which would not ma- 

 terially affect the whole aspect of so- 

 ciety, and change more or less the se- 

 quences of socialphenomena generally. 

 The theory which has been the 

 subject of these remarks is, in this 

 country at least, the principal cotem- 

 porary example of what I have styled 

 the geometrical method of philosophis- 

 ing in the social science ; and our exa- 

 mination of it has, for this reason, 

 been more detailed than would other- 

 wise have been suitable to a work 

 like the present. Having now suffi- 

 ciently illustrated the two erroneous 

 methods, we shall pass without further 

 preliminary to the true method ; that 

 which proceeds (conformably to the 

 practice of the more complex phyBical 

 sciences) deductively indeed, but by 

 deduction from many, not from one 

 or a very few, original premises; con- 

 sidering each effect as (what it really 

 is) an aggregate result of many causes, 

 operating sometimes through the same, 

 sometimes through different mental 

 agencies, or laws of human nature. 



CHAPTER IX. 



OF THE PHYSICAL, OR CONCRETR 

 DEDUCTIVE METHOD. 



§ I. After what has been said to 

 illustrate the nature of the inquiry 

 into social phenomena, the general 

 character of the method proper to 

 that inquiry is sufficiently evident, 

 and needs only to be recapitulated, 

 not proved. However complex the 

 phenomena, all their sequences and 

 co-existences result from the laws of 

 the separate elements. The effect 

 produced, in social phenomena, by 

 any complex set of circumstances, 

 amounts precisely to the sum of the 

 effects of the circumstances taken 

 singly ; and the complexity does not 

 arise from the number of the laws 

 themselves, which is not remarkably 

 great, but from the extraordinary 



