THE HISTORICAL METHOD. 



597 



school, I cannot but deem them to be 

 mostly chargeable with a fundamental 

 misconception of the true method of 

 social philosophy. The misconception 

 consists in supposing that the order of 

 succession which we may be able to 

 trace among the different states of 

 society and civilisation which history 

 presents to us, even if that order were 

 more rigidly imiform than it has yet 

 been proved to be, could ever amount 

 to a law of nature. It can only be 

 an empirical law. The succession of 

 states of the human mind and of 

 human society cannot have an inde- 

 pendent law of its own ; it must de- 

 pend on the psychological and etho- 

 logical laws which govern the action 

 of circumstances on men and of men 

 on circumstances. It is conceivable 

 that those laws might be such, and 

 the general circumstances of the 

 human race such, as to determine the 

 successive transformations of man 

 and society to one given and unvary- 

 ing order. But even if the case were 

 so, it cannot be the ultimate aim of 

 science to discover an empirical law. 

 Until that law could be connected 

 with the psychological and ethologi- 

 cal laws on which it must depend, 

 and, by the consilience of deduction d 

 priori with historical evidence, could 

 be converted from an empirical law 

 into a scientific one, it could not be 

 relied on for the prediction of future 

 events, beyond, at most, strictly ad- 

 jacent cases. M. Comte alone, among 

 the new historical school, has seen 

 the necessity of thus connecting all 

 our generalisations from history with 

 the laws of human nature. 



§ 4. But while it is an imperative 

 rule never to introduce any generali- 

 sation from history into the social 

 science unless sufficient grounds can 

 be pointed out for it inhuman nature, I 

 do not think any one will contend that 

 it would have been possible, setting 

 out from the principles of human na- 

 ture and from the general circum- 

 stances of the position of our species, 

 to determine ^ priori the order in 



which human development must take 

 place, and to predict, consequently, 

 the general facts of history up to the 

 present time. After the first few 

 terms of the series, the influence exer- 

 cised over each generation by the 

 generations which preceded it be- 

 comes (as is well observed by the 

 writer last referred to) more and more 

 preponderantover all other influences ; 

 until at length what we now are and 

 do is in a very small degree the re- 

 sult of the universal circumstances of 

 the human race, or even of our own 

 circumstances acting through the ori- 

 ginal qualities of our species, but 

 mainly of the qualities produced in us 

 by the whole previous history of hu- 

 manity. So long a series of actions 

 and reactions between Circumstances 

 and Man, each successive term being 

 composed of an ever greater number 

 and variety of parts, could not pos- 

 sibly be computed by human faculties 

 from the elementary laws which pro- 

 duce it. The mere length of the series 

 would be a sufficient obstacle, since a 

 slight error in any one of the terms 

 would augment in rapid progression 

 at every subsequent step. 



If, therefore, the series of the effects 

 themselves did not, when examined 

 as a whole, manifest any regularity, 

 we should in vain attempt to construct 

 a general science of society. We must 

 in that case have contented ourselves 

 with that subordinate order of socio- 

 logical speculation formerly noticed, 

 namely, with endeavouring to ascer- 

 tain what would be the effect of the 

 introduction of any new cause, in a 

 state of society supposed to be fixed ; 

 a knowledge sufficient for the more 

 common exigencies of daily political 

 practice, but liable to fail in all cases 

 in which the progressive movement of 

 society is one of the influencing ele- 

 ments ; and therefore more precarious 

 in proportion as the case is more im- 

 portant. But since both the natural 

 varieties of mankind, and the original 

 diversities of local circumstances are 

 much less considerable than the points 

 of agreement, there will naturally Ikj 



