CHAPTER VI. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE § 1. NEXT after the science of individual man comes the science of man in society; of the actions of collective masses of mankind, and the various phenomena which constitute social life. engaged the most general attention, and been a theme of interested and earnest discussions, almost from the beginning of recorded time. firmed by observation; nor those of observation, unless they can be affiliated to theory, by deducing them from the laws of human nature, and from a close analysis of the circum- The condition indeed of politics, as stances of the particular situation. a branch of knowledge, was until It is the accordance of these two very lately, and has scarcely even kinds of evidence separately taken-yet ceased to be, that which Bacon the consilience of à priori reasoning animadverted on, as the natural state and specific experience-which forms of the sciences while their cultivation the only sufficient ground for the prin- is abandoned to practitioners; not ciples of any science so "immersed in being carried on as a branch of specumatter," dealing with such complex lative inquiry, but only with a view and concrete phenomena, as Ethology. to the exigencies of daily practice, and the fructifera experimenta, therefore, being aimed at, almost to the exclusion of the lucifera. Such was medical investigation before physiology and natural history began to be cultivated as branches of general knowledge. The only questions examined were, what diet is wholesome, or what medicine will cure some given disease, without any previous systematic inquiry into the laws of nutrition, and of the healthy and morbid action of the different organs, on which laws the effect of any diet or medicine must evidently depend. And in politics, the questions which engaged general attention were similar:-Is such an enactment, or such a form of government, beneficial or the reverse-either universally, or to some particular community? without any previous inquiry into the general conditions by which the operation of legislative measures, or the effects produced by forms of government, are determined. Students in politics thus attempted to study the pathology and therapeutics of the social body before they had laid the necessary foundation in its physiology; to cure disease without understanding the laws of health. And the result was such as it must always be when persons, even of ability, attempt to deal with the complex questions of a science before its simpler and more elementary truths have been established. If the formation of individual character is already a complex subject of study, this subject must be, in appearance at least, still more complex; because the number of concurrent causes, all exercising more or less influence on the total effect, is greater, in the proportion in which a nation, or the species at large, exposes a larger surface to the operation of agents, psychological and physical, than any single individual. If it was necessary to prove, in opposition to an existing prejudice, that the simpler of the two is capable of being a subject of science; the prejudice is likely to be yet stronger against the possibility of giving a scientific character to the study of Politics, and of the phenomena of Society. It is, accordingly, but of yesterday that the conception of a political or social science has existed anywhere but in the mind of here and there an insulated thinker, generally very ill prepared for its realisation: though the subject itself has of all others No wonder that when the phenomena of society have so rarely been contemplated in the point of view characteristic of science, the philo- | maxims of universal application, it sophy of society should have made does not follow that the phenomena little progress; should contain few do not conform to universal laws. general propositions sufficiently precise and certain for common inquirers § 2. All phenomena of society are to recognise in them a scientific cha- phenomena of human nature, generacter. The vulgar notion accord-rated by the action of outward ciringly is, that all pretension to lay cumstances upon masses of human down general truths on politics and beings: and if, therefore, the phenosociety is quackery; that no univer- mena of human thought, feeling, and sality and no certainty are attainable action, are subject to fixed laws, the in such matters. What partly excuses phenomena of society cannot but con-. this common notion is, that it is really form to fixed laws, the consequence of not without foundation in one parti- the preceding. There is, indeed, no cular sense. A large proportion of hope that these laws, though our those who have laid claim to the cha- knowledge of them were as certain racter of philosophic politicians have and as complete as it is in astronomy, attempted, not to ascertain universal would enable us to predict the history sequences, but to frame universal pre- of society, like that of the celestial cepts. They have imagined some one appearances, for thousands of years form of government, or system of laws, to come. But the difference of certo fit all cases; a pretension well tainty is not in the laws themselves, meriting the ridicule with which it is it is in the data to which these laws treated by practitioners, and wholly are to be applied. In astronomy the unsupported by the analogy of the causes influencing the result are few, art to which, from the nature of its and change little, and that little acsubject, that of politics must be the cording to known laws; we can ascermost nearly allied. No one now sup- tain what they are now, and thence poses it possible that one remedy can determine what they will be at any cure all diseases, or even the same epoch of a distant future. The data, disease in all constitutions and habits therefore, in astronomy, are as certain of body. as the laws themselves. The circumstances, on the contrary, which influence the condition and progress of society, are innumerable, and perpetually changing; and though they all change in obedience to causes, and therefore to laws, the multitude of the causes is so great as to defy our limited powers of calculation. Not to say that the impossibility of applying precise numbers to facts of such a description, would set an impassable limit to the possibility of calculating them beforehand, even if the powers of the human intellect were otherwise adequate to the task. It is not necessary even to the perfection of a science that the corresponding art should possess universal, or even general rules. The phenomena of society might not only be completely dependent on known causes, but the mode of action of all those causes might be reducible to laws of considerable simplicity, and yet no two cases might admit of being treated in precisely the same manner. So great might be the variety of circumstances on which the results in different cases depend, that the art might not have a single general precept to give, except that of watching the circumstances of the particular case, and adapting our measures to the effects which, according to the principles of the science, result from those circumstances. But although, in so complicated a class of subjects, it is impossible to lay down practical But, as before remarked, an amount of knowledge quite insufficient for prediction may be most valuable for guidance. The science of society would have attained a very high point of perfection if it enabled us, in any given condition of social affairs, — in the condition, for instance, of Europe or any European country at the present time,-to understand by what causes it had, in any and every particular, been made what it was; whether it was tending to any, and to what, changes; what effects each feature of its existing state was likely to produce in the future; and by what means any of those effects might be prevented, modified, or accelerated, or a different class of effects superinduced. There is nothing chimerical in the hope that general laws, sufficient to enable us to answer these various questions for any country or time with the individual circumstances of which we are well acquainted, do really admit of being ascertained; and that the other branches of human knowledge, which this undertaking presupposes, are so far advanced that the time is ripe for its commencement. Such is the object of the Social Science. That the nature of what I consider the true method of the science may be made more palpable, by first showing what that method is not, it will be expedient to characterise briefly two radical misconceptions of the proper mode of philosophising on society and government, one or other of which is, either explicitly or more often unconsciously, entertained by almost all who have meditated or argued respecting the logic of politics since the notion of treating it by strict rules, and on Baconian principles, has been current among the more advanced thinkers. These erroneous methods, if the word method can be applied to erroneous tendencies arising from the absence of any sufficiently distinct conception of method, may be termed the Experimental or Chemical mode of investigation, and the Abstract or Geometrical mode. We shall begin with the former. CHAPTER VII. OF THE CHEMICAL, OR EXPERIMENTAL, METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE. § 1. THE laws of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings united together in the social state. Men, however, in a state of society, are still men; their actions and passions are obedient to the laws of individual human nature. Men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance, with different properties; as hydrogen and oxygen are different from water, or as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and azote are different from nerves, muscles, and tendons. Human beings in society have no properties but those which are derived from, and may be resolved into, the laws of the nature of individual man. In social phenomena the Composition of Causes is the universal law. Now, the method of philosophising which may be termed chemical overlooks this fact, and proceeds as if the nature of man as an individual were not concerned at all, or were concerned in a very inferior degree, in the operations of human beings in society. All reasoning in political or social affairs, grounded on principles of human nature, is objected to by reasoners of this sort, under such names as "abstract theory." For the direction of their opinions and conduct they profess to demand, in all cases without exception, specific experience. This mode of thinking is not only general with practitioners in politics, and with that very numerous class who (on a subject which no one, however ignorant, thinks himself incompetent to discuss) profess to guide themselves by common sense rather than by science, but is often countenanced by persons with greater pretensions to instruction-persons who, having sufficient acquaintance with books and with the current ideas to in all its circumstances; one may agree with it in some of its circumstances, and another in the remainder. And it may be argued, that if these nations remain poorer than the restrictive nation, it cannot be for want either of the first or of the second set of circumstances, but it must be for want of the protective system. If (we might say) the restrictive nation had prospered from the one set of causes, the first of the free-trade nations would have prospered equally: if, by reason of the other, the second would: but neither has therefore the prosperity was owing to the restrictions. This will be allowed to be a very favourable specimen of an argument from specific experience in politics, and if this be inconclusive, it would not be easy to find another preferable to it. Yet that it is inconclusive scarcely requires to be pointed out. Why must the prosperous nation have prospered from one cause exclusively? National prosperity is always the collective result of a multitude of favourable circumstances; and of these, the restrictive nation may unite a greater number than either of the others, though it may have all of those circumstances in common with either one or the other of them. Its prosperity may be partly owing to circumstances common to it with one of those nations, and partly with the other, while they, having each of them only half the number of favourable circumstances, have remained inferior. So that the closest imitation which can be made in the social science of a legitimate induction from direct experience gives but a specious semblance of conclusiveness, without any real value. § 4. The Method of Difference in either of its forms being thus completely out of the question, there remains the Method of Agreement. But we are already aware of how little value this method is in cases admitting Plurality of Causes; and social phenomena are those in which the plurality prevails in the utmost possible extent. Suppose that the observer makes the luckiest hit which could be given by any conceivable combination of chances that he finds two nations which agree in no circumstance whatever, except in having a restrictive system and in being prosperous; or a number of nations, all prosperous, which have no antecedent circumstances common to them all but that of having a restrictive policy. It is unnecessary to go into the consideration of the impossibility of ascertaining from history, or even from contemporary observation, that such is really the fact: that the nations agree in no other circumstance capable of influencing the case. Let us suppose this impossibility vanquished, and the fact ascertained that they agree only in a restrictive system as an antecedent, and industrial prosperity as a consequent. What degree of presumption does this raise, that the restrictive system caused the prosperity? One so trifling as to be equivalent to none at all. That some one antecedent is the cause of a given effect, because all other antecedents have been found capable of being eliminated, is a just inference only if the effect can have but one cause. If it admits of several, nothing is more natural than that each of these should separately admit of being eliminated. Now, in the case of political pheno mena, the supposition of unity of cause is not only wide of the truth, but at an immeasurable distance from it. The causes of every social phenomenon which we are particularly interested about, security, wealth, freedom, good government, public virtue, general intelligence, or their opposites, are infinitely numerous, especially the external or remote causes, which alone are, for the most part, accessible to direct observation. No one cause suffices of itself to produce any of these phenomena; while there are countless causes which have some influence over them, and may co-operate either in tion. From the mere fact, therefore, of our having been able to eliminate some circumstance, we can by no means infer that this circumstance was not instrumental to the effect in some of the very instances from which we have eliminated it. We can conclude that the effect is sometimes produced without it, but not that, when present, it does not contribute its share. their production or in their preven- | cumstances which are known to have existed in the case. Something similar to this is the method which Coleridge* describes himself as having followed in his political Essays in the Morning Post. "On every great occurrence I endeavoured to discover in past history the event that most nearly resembled it. I procured, whenever it was possible, the contemporary historians, memorialists, and pamphleteers. Then fairly subtracting the points of difference from those of likeness, as the balance favoured the former or the latter, I conjectured that the result would be the same or different. As, for instance, in the series of essays entitled 'A Comparison of France under Napoleon with Rome under the first Cæsars,' and in those which followed, 'on the probable final restoration of the Bourbons.' The same plan I pursued at the commencement of the Spanish Revolution, and with the same success, taking the war of the United Provinces with Philip II. as the groundwork of the comparison." In this inquiry he no doubt employed the Method of Residues, for, in "subtracting the points of difference from those of likeness," he doubtless weighed, and did not content himself with numbering, them: he doubtless took those points of agreement only which he presumed from their own nature to be capable of influencing the effect, and, allowing for that in Similar objections will be found to apply to the Method of Concomitant Variations. If the causes which act upon the state of any society produced effects differing from one another in kind; if wealth depended on one cause, peace on another, a third made people virtuous, a fourth intelligent, we might, though unable to sever the causes from one another, refer to each of them that property of the effect which waxed as it waxed, and which waned as it waned. But every attribute of the social body is influenced by innumerable causes; and such is the mutual action of the co-existing elements of society, that whatever affects any one of the more important of them, will by that alone, if it does not affect the others directly, affect them indirectly. The effects, therefore, of different agents not being different in quality, while the quantity of each is the mixed result of all the agents, the variations of the aggregate cannot bear an uniform proportion to those of any one of its com-fluence, concluded that the remainder ponent parts. § 5. There remains the Method of Residues, which appears, on the first view, less foreign to this kind of inquiry than the three other methods, because it only requires that we should accurately note the circumstances of some one country, or state of society. Making allowance, thereupon, for the effect of all causes whose tendencies are known, the residue which those causes are inadequate to explain may plausibly be imputed to the remainder of the cir of the result would be referable to the points of difference. Whatever may be the efficacy of this method, it is, as we long ago remarked, not a method of pure observation and experiment; it concludes, not from a comparison of instances, but from the comparison of an instance with the result of a previous deduction. Applied to social phenomena, it presupposes that the causes from which part of the effect proceeded are already known; and as |