THE HISTORICAL METHOD. 



special kind of inquiry must be limited 

 and controlled. 



§ 2. In order to conceive correctly 

 the scope of this general science, and 

 distinguish it from the subordinate 

 departments of sociological specula- 

 tion, it is necessary to fix the ideas 

 attached to the phrase "a State of 

 Society. " What is called a state of 

 society is the simultaneous state of 

 all the greater social facts or pheno- 

 mena. Such are the degree of know- 

 ledge, and of intellectual and moral 

 culture, existing in the community, 

 and of every class of it ; the state of 

 industry, of wealth and its distribu- 

 tion ; the habitual occupations of the 

 community ; their division into classes, 

 and the relations of those classes 

 to one another ; the common beliefs 

 which they entertain on all the sub- 

 jects most important to mankind, and 

 the degree of assurance with which 

 those beliefs are held ; their tastes, 

 and the character and degree of their 

 aesthetic development ; their form of 

 government, and the more important 

 of their laws and customs. The con- 

 dition of all these things, and of many 

 more which will readily suggest them- 

 selves, constitute the state of society 

 or the state of civilisation at any given 

 time. 



When states of society, and the 

 causes which produce them, are spoken 

 of as a subject of science, it is implied 

 that there exists a natural correlation 

 among these different elements ; that 

 not every variety of combination of 

 these general social facts is possible, 

 but only certain combinations ; that, 

 in short, there exist Uniformities of 

 Co-existence between the states of the 

 various social phenomena. And such 

 is the truth ; as is indeed a neces.sary 

 consequence of the influence exercised 

 by every one of those phenomena over 

 every other. It is a fact implied in 

 the consensvis of the various parts of 

 the social body. 



States of society are like different 

 constitutions or different ages in the 

 physical frame ; they are conditions 



595 



not of one or a few organs or func- 

 tions, but of the whole organism. 

 Accordingly, the information which 

 we possess respecting past ages, and 

 respecting the various states of society 

 now existing in different regions of 

 the earth, does, when duly analysed, 

 exhibit uniformities. It is f< -und that 

 when one of the features of society is 

 in a particular state, a state of many 

 other features, more or less precisely 

 determinate, always or usually co- 

 exists with it. 



But the uniformities of co-existence 

 obtaining among phenomena which 

 are effects of causes must (as we have 

 so often observed) be corollaries from 

 the laws of causation by which these 

 phenomena are really determined. 

 The mutual correlation between the 

 different elements of each state of 

 society is therefore a derivative law, 

 resulting from the laws which regu- 

 late the succession between one state 

 of society and another ; for the proxi- 

 mate cause of every state of society is 

 the state of society immediately pre- 

 ceding it. The fundamental problem, 

 therefore, of the social science, is to 

 find the laws according to which any 

 state of society produces the state 

 which succeeds it and takes its place. 

 This opens the great and vexed ques- 

 tion of the progressiveness of man and 

 society ; an idea involved in every 

 just conception of social phenomena 

 as the subject of a science. 



§ 3. It is one of the characters, not 

 absolutely peculiar to the sciences of 

 human nature and society, but be- 

 longing to them in a peculiar degree, 

 to be conversant with a subject-matter 

 whose properties are changeable. I 

 do not mean changeable from day to 

 day, but from age to age ; so that not 

 only the qualities of individuals vary, 

 but those of the majority are not the 

 same in one age as in another. 



The principal cause of this peculi- 

 arity is the extensive and constant re- 

 action of the effects upon their causes. 

 The circumstances in which mankind 

 are placed, operating according to 



