July 16, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



47 



rejected, does not alter the case. The man who 

 tries to reason without rigid hypotheses cripples 

 his power of investigation. Any one who under- 

 stands the real power and importance of verifica- 

 tion is justly indignant at any such conception of 

 science as will prevent the use of verification as a 

 means of discovery. The failures of the attempt 

 to work without rigid hypotheses, from Lord 

 Bacon down, have been so conspicuous that they 

 hardly need repetition. Where the German school 

 of economists has made any advance in the field 

 of political economy itself, it has been done by an 

 abandonment of the so-called historical method, 

 and by a rigid application of deductive reasoning 

 combined with careful verification. It is Cohn, 

 and not Roscher, who represents the really fruit- 

 ful line of German thought ; and, whatever Cohn 

 may at times have professed, he relies strongly 

 both on abstract reasoning and on the rigidity of 

 law. 



There is one class of cases where these distinc- 

 tions fall away, and where the Baconian method 

 is a good one. When a science is so crude as to 

 be mainly occupied with description and classifi- 

 cation, there is httle chance for the use of rigid 

 hypotheses. Here the distinction between the 

 material and the science falls away. Physics re- 

 naained in this condition till the seventeenth cen- 

 tury ; chemistry, till the eighteenth ; it was not till 

 the nineteenth that ' natural history ' began to give 

 place to biology. 



Sociology as a whole can hardly be said to have 

 advanced beyond this stage ; but certain depart- 

 ments of sociology are distinctly beyond it, nota- 

 bly law and x^olitical economy. They have reached 

 the point where it is possible to frame hypotheses 

 and to carry out deductions and verifications. 

 The field of each science is limited ; but, within its 

 proper sphere, each is a true science. It is right 

 enough to say that each is a part of something 

 greater. In the future we may hope that a scien- 

 tific sociology will be developed which shall in- 

 clude many other sciences. But we have a science 

 of political economy, and we have not as yet a 

 science of sociology in any thing like the same 

 sense. To reject the part which we have for the 

 sake of the whole, which we have not, would be 

 the extreme of folly. It would be the same tiling 

 as to have rejected the undulatory theory of light 

 fifty years ago because the correlation of forces 

 was not yet discovered. The theory of light was 

 but a part of the truth ; but it was only on the 

 basis of such parts that the whole could be built 

 up, A scientific part is a better starting-point 

 than an unscientific whole. 



There is another class of dangers to which we 

 are exposed when we deny all independence to 



economic reasoning. The man or state that re- 

 fuses to recognize the rigidity of economic laws is 

 likely to suffer for it, sooner or later, in his practi- 

 cal experience. 



It is impossible for a man not to let his habits 

 of thought affect his habits of action. If he is ac- 

 customed to make rigid assumptions, he tries to 

 make things conform to these assumptions, and 

 to insist that something is wrong where they do 

 not. If, on the other hand, he reasons loosely, he 

 comes to act recklessly, and to believe that his 

 own luck or skill will save him from the necessity 

 of careful calculation. The error of reckless over- 

 confidence is at once more destructive and more 

 common than the eiTor of fatalism ; and any tiling 

 which encourages the former is usually more dan- 

 gerous than that which encourages the latter. 



If a nearly spent cannon-ball is slowly rolhng 

 toward you, the natural and sensible thing to do 

 is to get out of the way. The fatalist may refuse 

 to do so because of his blind belief in fate. The 

 fool may refuse to do so because he thinks it is 

 not coming fast enough to hurt him. Now, either 

 extreme is bad ; but the practical danger is from 

 the latter. The experience of army surgeons will 

 show that in the instance given there are probably 

 ten fools to one fatalist. 



And in like manner the danger of believing that 

 economic laws can be interfered with by human 

 effort is ten times greater than the danger of an 

 extreme belief in laissez-faire. Human nature is 

 far more inclined to the former error. Where the 

 economists make a mistake in opposing state inter- 

 ference (as when they tried to stop English factory 

 legislation), people will generally take their own 

 course in spite of them. Where they make the 

 mistake of not opposing it, people will be only too 

 ready to seize upon their arguments. And the 

 same thing holds true of individual action as well 

 as of state action. The danger of believing that 

 the results of past experience are uncertain is far 

 greater than the danger of believing that we are 

 helpless to improve upon them. 



As a matter of fact, there are limits within 

 which the results of past experience are sm-pris- 

 ingly rigid. That the worse ciu'rency drives out 

 the better ; tliat food prices depend upon the mar- 

 gm of cultivation rather than upon rent ; that 

 reckless marriage means starvation wages, — are 

 laws which nations have been for centuries at- 

 tempting to disregard, and of which they are 

 hardly yet learning the fuU force. They mark 

 limits, and effective limits, upon legislative activity. 

 As long as political economy is occupied with 

 defining those limits, it can maintain its claim to 

 the position of an authoritative science. It says 

 to the legislator, ' Thus far shalt thou go, and no 



