TEAKSACXlO^vS OF f^ECIlON V. 757 



population question, avowing himself nn opponent of the views of Malthus and 

 Mill, and claiming for his leaders Mr. Chadwick and Dr. Farr. He also spoke at 

 some length upon the imposition of what he considered needlessly high fares and 

 rates upon goods and passengers by railway, and recalled his own opposition 

 to the policy of Sir Robert Peel in not treating railways as monopolies, whose 

 powers should, for the sake of the public, be carefully restricted, and he further 

 advocated making the union, instead of the parish, the unit of English 

 administration under a County Representative Board. 



It is difficult in conducting the proceedings of this Section to hit the golden 

 mean between being too abstract and too popular. In the year 1875 the pendulum 

 swung perhaps a little too much to the popular direction, and subjects were 

 discussed which were thought by some hardly compatible with the scientific 

 character of the British Association. This led to a great deal of criticism, and 

 in the year 1876 the question was raised — and raised by a very eminent person — 

 whether we of Section F should continue to hold our place. The attack was 

 able ; the defence was not particularly brilliant, but the goodness of our cause 

 or the leniency of our judges carried us through, and we were adjudged to have 

 successfully restated the reasons for our existence. It was well, perhaps, that the 

 question was raised, for out of this discussion came the elaborate and brilliant 

 address — the most elaborate and brilliant to which this Section has ever listened — 

 which was delivered at Dublin by Professor Ingram, in 1878, on the position and 

 prospects of political economy. 



Professor Ingram recapitulated the philosophical conclusions he had endeavoured 

 to enforce, as follows : — 



(1) That the study of the economic phenomena of society ought to be 

 systematically combined with that of the other aspects of social existence. 

 (2) That the excessive tendency to abstraction and to unreal simplifications 

 should be checked. (3) That the a priori deductive method should be changed 

 for the historical, (i) That economic laws, and the practical prescriptions 

 founded on those laws, should be conceived and expressed in a less absolute 

 form. 'These are, in my opinion,' he says, 'the great reforms which are required 

 both in the conduct of economic research and in the exposition of its conclusions.' 

 He then proceeded to say that ' If the proper study of mankind is man, the work 

 of the Association, after the extrusion of our Section, would be like the play with 

 the part of the protagonist left out. What appears to be the reasonable suggestion 

 is, that the field of the Section should be enlarged, so as to comprehend the whole 

 of sociology. The economic facts of society, as I have endeavoured to show, 

 cannot he scientifically considered apart, and there is no reason why the researches 

 of Sir Henry Maine, or those of Mr. Spencer, should not be as much at home here 

 as those of Mr. Fawcett or Professor Price. Many of the subjects, too, at present 

 included in the artificial assemblage of heterogeneous inquiries known by the name 

 of Anthropology, really connect themselves with the laws of social development ; 

 and if our Section bore the title of the Sociological, the studies of Mr. Tylor and 

 Sir John Lubbock, concerning the early history of civilization, would find in it 

 their most appropriate place. I prefer the name Sociology to that of Social 

 Science, which has been rendered indefinite in common use, and has come to be 

 regarded as denoting a congeries of incoherent details respecting every practical 

 matter bearing directly or remotely on public interests which happen for the 

 moment to engage attention. There are other societies in which an opportunity- 

 is afforded for discussing such current questions in a comparatively popular arena. 

 But if we are to be associated here with the students of the other sciences, it is 

 our duty, as well as our interest, to aim at a genuinely scientific character in our 

 work. Our main object should be to assist in fixing theoretic ideas on the struc- 

 ture, functions, and development of society. Some may regard this view of the 

 subject with impatience, as proposing to us investigations not bearing on the 

 great and real needs of contemporary social life. But that would be a very 

 mistaken notion. Luciferous research, in the words of Bacon, must come before 

 fructiferous. 'Effectual practice,' says Mr. Spencer, 'depends on superiority of 

 ideas ; methods that answer are preceded by thoughts that are true.' 



