A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive Volume II Part 24

5. While on the one hand Psychology is altogether, or princ.i.p.ally, a science of observation and experiment, Ethology, as I have conceived it, is, as I have already remarked, altogether deductive. The one ascertains the simple laws of Mind in general, the other traces their operation in complex combinations of circ.u.mstances. Ethology stands to Psychology in a relation very similar to that in which the various branches of natural philosophy stand to mechanics. The principles of Ethology are properly the middle principles, the _axiomata media_ (as Bacon would have said) of the science of mind: as distinguished, on the one hand from the empirical laws resulting from simple observation, and on the other from the highest generalizations.

And this seems a suitable place for a logical remark, which, though of general application, is of peculiar importance in reference to the present subject. Bacon has judiciously observed that the _axiomata media_ of every science princ.i.p.ally const.i.tute its value. The lowest generalizations, until explained by and resolved into the middle principles of which they are the consequences, have only the imperfect accuracy of empirical laws; while the most general laws are _too_ general, and include too few circ.u.mstances, to give sufficient indication of what happens in individual cases, where the circ.u.mstances are almost always immensely numerous. In the importance, therefore, which Bacon a.s.signs, in every science, to the middle principles, it is impossible not to agree with him. But I conceive him to have been radically wrong in his doctrine respecting the mode in which these _axiomata media_ should be arrived at; though there is no one proposition laid down in his works for which he has been more extravagantly eulogized. He enunciates as an universal rule, that induction should proceed from the lowest to the middle principles, and from those to the highest, never reversing that order, and consequently leaving no room for the discovery of new principles by way of deduction at all. It is not to be conceived that a man of his sagacity could have fallen into this mistake, if there had existed in his time, among the sciences which treat of successive phenomena, one single instance of a deductive science, such as mechanics, astronomy, optics, acoustics, &c.

now are. In those sciences it is evident that the higher and middle principles are by no means derived from the lowest, but the reverse. In some of them the very highest generalizations were those earliest ascertained with any scientific exactness; as, for example (in mechanics), the laws of motion. Those general laws had not indeed at first the acknowledged universality which they acquired after having been successfully employed to explain many cla.s.ses of phenomena to which they were not originally seen to be applicable; as when the laws of motion were employed, in conjunction with other laws, to explain deductively the celestial phenomena. Still, the fact remains, that the propositions which were afterwards recognised as the most general truths of the science, were, of all its accurate generalizations, those earliest arrived at. Bacon's greatest merit cannot therefore consist, as we are so often told that it did, in exploding the vicious method pursued by the ancients of flying to the highest generalizations first, and deducing the middle principles from them; since this is neither a vicious nor an exploded, but the universally accredited method of modern science, and that to which it owes its greatest triumphs. The error of ancient speculation did not consist in making the largest generalizations first, but in making them without the aid or warrant of rigorous inductive methods, and applying them deductively without the needful use of that important part of the Deductive Method termed Verification.

The order in which truths of the various degrees of generality should be ascertained, cannot, I apprehend, be prescribed by any unbending rule. I know of no maxim which can be laid down on the subject, but to obtain those first, in respect to which the conditions of a real induction can be first and most completely realized. Now, wherever our means of investigation can reach causes, without stopping at the empirical laws of the effects, the simplest cases, being those in which fewest causes are simultaneously concerned, will be most amenable to the inductive process; and these are the cases which elicit laws of the greatest comprehensiveness. In every science, therefore, which has reached the stage at which it becomes a science of causes, it will be usual as well as desirable first to obtain the highest generalizations, and then deduce the more special ones from them. Nor can I discover any foundation for the Baconian maxim, so much extolled by subsequent writers, except this: That before we attempt to explain deductively from more general laws any new cla.s.s of phenomena, it is desirable to have gone as far as is practicable in ascertaining the empirical laws of those phenomena; so as to compare the results of deduction, not with one individual instance after another, but with general propositions expressive of the points of agreement which have been found among many instances. For if Newton had been obliged to verify the theory of gravitation, not by deducing from it Kepler's laws, but by deducing all the observed planetary positions which had served Kepler to establish those laws, the Newtonian theory would probably never have emerged from the state of an hypothesis.[6]

The applicability of these remarks to the special case under consideration, cannot admit of question. The science of the formation of character is a science of causes. The subject is one to which those among the canons of induction, by which laws of causation are ascertained, can be rigorously applied. It is, therefore, both natural and advisable to ascertain the simplest, which are necessarily the most general, laws of causation first, and to deduce the middle principles from them. In other words, Ethology, the deductive science, is a system of corollaries from Psychology, the experimental science.

6. Of these, the earlier alone has been, as yet, really conceived or studied as a science; the other, Ethology, is still to be created. But its creation has at length become practicable. The empirical laws, destined to verify its deductions, have been formed in abundance by every successive age of humanity; and the premises for the deductions are now sufficiently complete. Excepting the degree of uncertainty which still exists as to the extent of the natural differences of individual minds, and the physical circ.u.mstances on which these may be dependent, (considerations which are of secondary importance when we are considering mankind in the average, or _en ma.s.se_,) I believe most competent judges will agree that the general laws of the different const.i.tuent elements of human nature are even now sufficiently understood, to render it possible for a competent thinker to deduce from those laws with a considerable approach to certainty, the particular type of character which would be formed, in mankind generally, by any a.s.sumed set of circ.u.mstances. A science of Ethology, founded on the laws of Psychology, is therefore possible; though little has yet been done, and that little not at all systematically, towards forming it. The progress of this important but most imperfect science will depend on a double process: first, that of deducing theoretically the ethological consequences of particular circ.u.mstances of position, and comparing them with the recognised results of common experience; and secondly, the reverse operation; increased study of the various types of human nature that are to be found in the world; conducted by persons not only capable of a.n.a.lysing and recording the circ.u.mstances in which these types severally prevail, but also sufficiently acquainted with psychological laws, to be able to explain and account for the characteristics of the type, by the peculiarities of the circ.u.mstances: the residuum alone, when there proves to be any, being set down to the account of congenital predispositions.

For the experimental or _ posteriori_ part of this process, the materials are continually acc.u.mulating by the observation of mankind. So far as thought is concerned, the great problem of Ethology is to deduce the requisite middle principles from the general laws of Psychology.

The subject to be studied is, the origin and sources of all those qualities in human beings which are interesting to us, either as facts to be produced, to be avoided, or merely to be understood: and the object is, to determine, from the general laws of mind, combined with the general position of our species in the universe, what actual or possible combinations of circ.u.mstances are capable of promoting or of preventing the production of those qualities. A science which possesses middle principles of this kind, arranged in the order, not of causes, but of the effects which it is desirable to produce or to prevent, is duly prepared to be the foundation of the corresponding Art. And when Ethology shall be thus prepared, practical education will be the mere transformation of those principles into a parallel system of precepts, and the adaptation of these to the sum total of the individual circ.u.mstances which exist in each particular case.

It is hardly necessary again to repeat, that, as in every other deductive science, verification _ posteriori_ must proceed _pari pa.s.su_ with deduction _ priori_. The inference given by theory as to the type of character which would be formed by any given circ.u.mstances, must be tested by specific experience of those circ.u.mstances whenever obtainable; and the conclusions of the science as a whole, must undergo a perpetual verification and correction from the general remarks afforded by common experience respecting human nature in our own age, and by history respecting times gone by. The conclusions of theory cannot be trusted, unless confirmed 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 a.n.a.lysis of the circ.u.mstances of the particular situation. It is the accordance of these two kinds of evidence separately taken--the consilience of _ priori_ reasoning and specific experience--which forms the only sufficient ground for the principles of any science so "immersed in matter,"

dealing with such complex and concrete phenomena, as Ethology.

CHAPTER VI.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.

1. Next after the science of individual man, comes the science of man in society: of the actions of collective ma.s.ses of mankind, and the various phenomena which const.i.tute social life.

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 realization: though the subject itself has of all others engaged the most general attention, and been a theme of interested and earnest discussions, almost from the beginning of recorded time.

The condition indeed of politics, as a branch of knowledge, was until very lately, and has scarcely even yet ceased to be, that which Bacon animadverted on, as the natural state of the sciences while their cultivation is abandoned to pract.i.tioners; not being carried on as a branch of speculative inquiry, but only with a view 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.

No wonder that when the phenomena of society have so rarely been contemplated in the point of view characteristic of science, the philosophy of society should have made little progress; should contain few general propositions sufficiently precise and certain, for common inquirers to recognise in them a scientific character. The vulgar notion accordingly is, that all pretension to lay down general truths on politics and society is quackery; that no universality and no certainty are attainable in such matters. What partly excuses this common notion is, that it is really not without foundation in one particular sense. A large proportion of those who have laid claim to the character of philosophic politicians, have attempted, not to ascertain universal sequences, but to frame universal precepts. They have imagined some one form of government, or system of laws, to fit all cases; a pretension well meriting the ridicule with which it is treated by pract.i.tioners, and wholly unsupported by the a.n.a.logy of the art to which, from the nature of its subject, that of politics must be the most nearly allied.

No one now supposes it possible that one remedy can cure all diseases, or even the same disease in all const.i.tutions and habits of body.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances of the particular case, and adapting our measures to the effects which, according to the principles of the science, result from those circ.u.mstances. But although, in so complicated a cla.s.s of subjects, it is impossible to lay down practical maxims of universal application, it does not follow that the phenomena do not conform to universal laws.

2. All phenomena of society are phenomena of human nature, generated by the action of outward circ.u.mstances upon ma.s.ses of human beings: and if, therefore, the phenomena of human thought, feeling, and action, are subject to fixed laws, the phenomena of society cannot but conform to fixed laws, the consequence of the preceding. There is, indeed, no hope that these laws, though our knowledge of them were as certain and as complete as it is in astronomy, would enable us to predict the history of society, like that of the celestial appearances, for thousands of years to come. But the difference of certainty is not in the laws themselves, it is in the data to which these laws are to be applied. In astronomy the causes influencing the result are few, and change little, and that little according to known laws; we can ascertain what they are now, and thence determine what they will be at any epoch of a distant future. The data, therefore, in astronomy, are as certain as the laws themselves. The circ.u.mstances, 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 mult.i.tude 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 impa.s.sable limit to the possibility of calculating them beforehand, even if the powers of the human intellect were otherwise adequate to the task.

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 cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 characterize briefly two radical misconceptions of the proper mode of philosophizing 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 pa.s.sions of human beings united together in the social state. Men, however, in a state of society, are still men; their actions and pa.s.sions 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 philosophizing 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 pract.i.tioners in politics, and with that very numerous cla.s.s 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 have heard that Bacon taught mankind to follow experience, and to ground their conclusions on facts instead of metaphysical dogmas--think that, by treating political facts in as directly experimental a method as chemical facts, they are showing themselves true Baconians, and proving their adversaries to be mere syllogizers and schoolmen. As, however, the notion of the applicability of experimental methods to political philosophy cannot coexist with any just conception of these methods themselves, the kind of arguments from experience which the chemical theory brings forth as its fruits (and which form the staple, in this country especially, of parliamentary and hustings oratory,) are such as, at no time since Bacon, would have been admitted to be valid in chemistry itself, or in any other branch of experimental science. They are such as these; that the prohibition of foreign commodities must conduce to national wealth, because England has flourished under it, or because countries in general which have adopted it have flourished; that our laws, or our internal administration, or our const.i.tution, are excellent for a similar reason: and the eternal arguments from historical examples, from Athens or Rome, from the fires in Smithfield or the French Revolution.

I will not waste time in contending against modes of argumentation which no person, with the smallest practice in estimating evidence, could possibly be betrayed into; which draw conclusions of general application from a single una.n.a.lysed instance, or arbitrarily refer an effect to some one among its antecedents, without any process of elimination or comparison of instances. It is a rule both of justice and of good sense to grapple not with the absurdest, but with, the most reasonable form of a wrong opinion. We shall suppose our inquirer acquainted with the true conditions of experimental investigation, and competent in point of acquirements for realizing them, so far as they can be realized. He shall know as much of the facts of history as mere erudition can teach--as much as can be proved by testimony, without the a.s.sistance of any theory; and if those mere facts, properly collated, can fulfil the conditions of a real induction, he shall be qualified for the task.

But, that no such attempt can have the smallest chance of success, has been abundantly shown in the tenth chapter of the Third Book.[7] We there examined whether effects which depend on a complication of causes can be made the subject of a true induction by observation and experiment; and concluded, on the most convincing grounds, that they cannot. Since, of all effects, none depend on so great a complication of causes as social phenomena, we might leave our case to rest in safety on that previous showing. But a logical principle as yet so little familiar to the ordinary run of thinkers, requires to be insisted on more than once, in order to make the due impression; and the present being the case which of all others exemplifies it the most strongly, there will be advantage in re-stating the grounds of the general maxim, as applied to the specialities of the cla.s.s of inquiries now under consideration.

2. The first difficulty which meets us in the attempt to apply experimental methods for ascertaining the laws of social phenomena, is that we are without the means of making artificial experiments. Even if we could contrive experiments at leisure, and try them without limit, we should do so under immense disadvantage; both from the impossibility of ascertaining and taking note of all the facts of each case, and because (those facts being in a perpetual state of change) before sufficient time had elapsed to ascertain the result of the experiment, some material circ.u.mstances would always have ceased to be the same. But it is unnecessary to consider the logical objections which would exist to the conclusiveness of our experiments, since we palpably never have the power of trying any. We can only watch those which nature produces, or which are produced for other reasons. We cannot adapt our logical means to our wants, by varying the circ.u.mstances as the exigencies of elimination may require. If the spontaneous instances, formed by cotemporary events and by the successions of phenomena recorded in history, afford a sufficient variation of circ.u.mstances, an induction from specific experience is attainable; otherwise not. The question to be resolved is, therefore, whether the requisites for induction respecting the causes of political effects or the properties of political agents, are to be met with in history? including under the term, cotemporary history. And in order to give fixity to our conceptions, it will be advisable to suppose this question asked in reference to some special subject of political inquiry or controversy; such as that frequent topic of debate in the present century, the operation of restrictive and prohibitory commercial legislation upon national wealth. Let this, then, be the scientific question to be investigated by specific experience.

3. In order to apply to the case the most perfect of the methods of experimental inquiry, the Method of Difference, we require to find two instances, which tally in every particular except the one which is the subject of inquiry. If two nations can be found which are alike in all natural advantages and disadvantages; whose people resemble each other in every quality, physical and moral, spontaneous and acquired; whose habits, usages, opinions, laws and inst.i.tutions are the same in all respects, except that one of them has a more protective tariff, or in other respects interferes more with the freedom of industry; if one of these nations is found to be rich, and the other poor, or one richer than the other, this will be an _experimentum crucis_: a real proof by experience, which of the two systems is most favourable to national riches. But the supposition that two such instances can be met with is manifestly absurd. Nor is such a concurrence even abstractly possible.

Two nations which agreed in everything except their commercial policy, would agree also in that. Differences of legislation are not inherent and ultimate diversities; are not properties of Kinds. They are effects of pre-existing causes. If the two nations differ in this portion of their inst.i.tutions, it is from some difference in their position, and thence in their apparent interests, or in some portion or other of their opinions, habits, and tendencies; which opens a view of further differences without any a.s.signable limit, capable of operating on their industrial prosperity, as well as on every other feature of their condition, in more ways than can be enumerated or imagined. There is thus a demonstrated impossibility of obtaining, in the investigations of the social science, the conditions required for the most conclusive form of inquiry by specific experience.

In the absence of the direct, we may next try, as in other cases, the supplementary resource, called in a former place the Indirect Method of Difference: which, instead of two instances differing in nothing but the presence or absence of a given circ.u.mstance, compares two _cla.s.ses_ of instances respectively agreeing in nothing but the presence of a circ.u.mstance on the one side and its absence on the other. To choose the most advantageous case conceivable, (a case far too advantageous to be ever obtained,) suppose that we compare one nation which has a restrictive policy, with two or more nations agreeing in nothing but in permitting free trade. We need not now suppose that either of these nations agrees with the first in all its circ.u.mstances; one may agree with it in some of its circ.u.mstances, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 mult.i.tude of favourable circ.u.mstances; and of these, the restrictive nation may unite a greater number than either of the others, though it may have all of those circ.u.mstances in common with either one or the other of them. Its prosperity may be partly owing to circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 circ.u.mstance whatever, except in having a restrictive system, and in being prosperous; or a number of nations, all prosperous, which have no antecedent circ.u.mstances 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 cotemporary observation, that such is really the fact: that the nations agree in no other circ.u.mstance 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 phenomena, 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 their production or in their prevention. From the mere fact, therefore, of our having been able to eliminate some circ.u.mstance, we can by no means infer that this circ.u.mstance 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.

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 coexisting 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 quant.i.ty 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 component 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances which are known to have existed in the case. Something similar to this is the method which Coleridge[8] 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 ent.i.tled 'A comparison of France under Napoleon with Rome under the first Csars,'

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 influence, concluded that the remainder 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 we have shown that these cannot have been known by specific experience, they must have been learnt by deduction from principles of human nature; experience being called in only as a supplementary resource, to determine the causes which produced an unexplained residue. But if the principles of human nature may be had recourse to for the establishment of some political truths, they may for all. If it be admissible to say, England must have prospered by reason of the prohibitory system, because after allowing for all the other tendencies which have been operating, there is a portion of prosperity still to be accounted for; it must be admissible to go to the same source for the effect of the prohibitory system, and examine what account the laws of human motives and actions will enable us to give of _its_ tendencies. Nor, in fact, will the experimental argument amount to anything, except in verification of a conclusion drawn from those general laws. For we may subtract the effect of one, two, three, or four causes, but we shall never succeed in subtracting the effect of all causes except one: while it would be a curious instance of the dangers of too much caution, if, to avoid depending on _ priori_ reasoning concerning the effect of a single cause, we should oblige ourselves to depend on as many separate _ priori_ reasonings as there are causes operating concurrently with that particular cause in some given instance.

We have now sufficiently characterized the gross misconception of the mode of investigation proper to political phenomena, which I have termed the Chemical Method. So lengthened a discussion would not have been necessary, if the claim to decide authoritatively on political doctrines were confined to persons who had competently studied any one of the higher departments of physical science. But since the generality of those who reason on political subjects, satisfactorily to themselves and to a more or less numerous body of admirers, know nothing whatever of the methods of physical investigation beyond a few precepts which they continue to parrot after Bacon, being entirely unaware that Bacon's conception of scientific inquiry has done its work, and that science has now advanced into a higher stage; there are probably many to whom such remarks as the foregoing may still be useful. In an age in which chemistry itself, when attempting to deal with the more complex chemical sequences, those of the animal or even the vegetable organism, has found it necessary to become, and has succeeded in becoming, a Deductive Science--it is not to be apprehended that any person of scientific habits, who has kept pace with the general progress of the knowledge of nature, can be in danger of applying the methods of elementary chemistry to explore the sequences of the most complex order of phenomena in existence.