TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 657 



of Social Science, which has been at once rendered indefinite and vulgarized 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 happens 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 structure, 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. Liiciferous 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." And in human affairs, it is in general impossible to solve 

 special questions correctly without just conceptions of ensemble — all particular 

 problems of government, of education, of social action of whatever kind, connect 

 themselves with the largest ideas concerning the fundamental constitution of 

 society, its spontaneous tendencies, and its moral ideal. 



I have as yet said nothing of Statistics, with which the name of this Section at 

 first exclusively connected it, and which are still recognized as forming one of its 

 objects. But it is plain that though Statistics may be combined with Sociology 

 in the title of the Section, the two cannot occupy a co-ordinate position. For it is 

 impossible to vindicate for Statistics the character of a science ; they constitute only 

 one of the aids or adminicula of science. The ascertainment and systematic 

 arrangement of numerical facts is useful in many branches of research, but, till law 

 emerges, there is no science; and the law, when it does emerge, takes its place 

 in the science whose function it is to deal with the particular class of phenomena 

 to which the facts belong. We may arrange meteorological facts in this way as 

 well as sociological ; and, if doing so helps us to the discovery of a law, the law 

 belongs to meteorology : and, in the same manner, a law discovered by the aid of 

 statistics would belong to sociology. 



But though the character of a science cannot be claimed for Statistics, it is 

 obvious that if the views I have advocated as to the true nature and conditions of 

 economic study should prevail, the importance of statistical inquiries will rise, as 

 the abstract and deductive method declines in estimation. Senior objected to the 

 saying that political economy is avide de faits, because, according to him and the 

 school of Ricardo in general, its work was mainly one of inference from a few 

 primary assumptions. But if the latter notion is given up, every form of careful 

 and conscientious search after the realities of the material life of societv, in the 

 present as in the past, will regain its normal importance. This search must, of 

 course, be regulated by definite principles, and must not degenerate into a purpose- 

 less and fortuitous accumulation of facts ; for here, as in every branch of inquiry, 

 it is true that " Prudens interrogatio est dimidium soientiee." 



I do not expect that the news I have put forward as to the necessity of a 

 reform of economic studies will be immediately adopted either in this Section or 

 elsewhere. They may, I am aware, whilst probably in some quarters meeting 

 with at least partial sympathy, in others encounter determined hostility. And it 

 is possible that I may be accused of presumption in venturing to criticize methods 

 used in practice, and justified in principle, by many distinguished men. I should 

 scarcely have undertaken such an office, however profoundly convinced of the 

 urgency of a reform, had I not been supported by what seemed to me the 

 unanswered arguments of an illustrious thinker, and "by the knowledge that the 

 growing movement of philosophic Europe is in the direction he recommended as 

 the right one. No one can feel more strongly than myself the inadequacy of my 

 treatment of the subject. But my object has not been so much to produce 

 conviction as to awaken attention. Our economists have undeniably been slow 

 in observing the currents of European thought. Whilst such foreign writers as 

 echo the doctrines of the so-called orthodox school are read and quoted in 

 1878. u u 



