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WORKS BY JOHN STUART MILL,M.P. FOR WESTMINSTER.
WORKS BY JOHN STUART MILL,M.P. FOR WESTMINSTER.
A SYSTEM of LOGIC, RATIOCINATIVE and INDUCTIVE. Sixth Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 25 s. An EXAMINATION of SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S PHILOSOPHY, and of the Principal Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings. Third Edition, revised. 8vo. 14 s. PRINCIPLES of POLITICAL ECONOMY, with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. Sixth Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 30 s. PRINCIPLES of POLITICAL ECONOMY. By John Stuart Mill , M.P. People's Edition. Crown 8vo. 5 s. CONSIDERATIONS on REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
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PREFACE
PREFACE
The author's aim has been to produce such a condensation of the original work as may recall its contents to those who have read it, and may serve those who are now reading it in the place of a full body of marginal notes. Mr. Mill's conclusions on the true province and method of Logic have a high substantive value, independent even of the arguments and illustrations by which they are supported; and these conclusions may be adequately, and, it is believed, with much practical utility, embodied in
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INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION.
No adequate definition is possible till the properties of the thing to be defined are known. Previously we can define only the scope of the inquiry. Now, Logic has been considered as both the science of reasoning, i.e. the analysis of the mental process when we reason, and the art of reasoning, i.e. the rules for the process. The term reasoning , however, is not wide enough. Reasoning means either syllogising, or (and this is its truer sense) the drawing inferences from assertions already admitt
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
The fact of Logic being a portion of the art of thinking, and of thought's chief instrument being words, is one reason why we must first inquire into the right use of words. But further, the import of propositions cannot really be examined apart from that of words; and (since whatever can be an object of belief assumes the form of a proposition, and in propositions all truth and error lie) this is a paramount reason why we must, as a preliminary, consider the import of names, the neglecting whic
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
Hobbes's assertion that a name is a sign, not of a thing, but of our conception of it, is untrue (unless he merely mean that the conception, and not the thing itself, is imparted to the hearer); for we intend by a name, not only to make men conceive what we conceive, but to inform them what we believe as to the things themselves. Names may be divided according to five principles of classification. The first way of dividing them is into General (not as equivalent to Collective) and Individual nam
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
Logic is the theory of Proof, and everything provable can be exhibited as a proposition, propositions alone being objects of belief. Therefore, the import of propositions, that is, the import of predication, must be ascertained. But, as to make a proposition, i.e. to predicate, is to assert one thing of another thing , the way to learn the import of predication is, by discovering what are the things signified by names which are capable of being subject or predicate. It was with this object that
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
The copula is a mere sign of predication, though it is often confounded with to be , the verb of existence (and that not merely by Greeks, but even by moderns, whose larger experience how one word in one language often answers to several in another, should have saved them from thinking that things with a common name must have a common nature). The first division of propositions is into Affirmative and Negative, the copula in the latter being is not . Hobbes and others, by joining the not to the
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
The object of an inquiry into the nature of propositions must be to analyse, either, 1, the state of mind called belief, or 2, what is believed. Philosophers have usually, but wrongly, thought the former, i.e. an analysis of the act of judgment, the chief duty of Logic, considering a proposition to consist in the denying or affirming one idea of another. True, we must have the two ideas in the mind together, in order to believe the assertion about the two things ; but so we must also in order to
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
The object of Logic is to find how propositions are to be proved. As preliminary to this, it has been already shown that the Conceptualist view of propositions, viz. that they assert a relation between two ideas, and the Nominalist, that they assert agreement or disagreement between the meanings of two names, are both wrong as general theories: for that generally the import of propositions is, to affirm or deny respecting a phenomenon, or its hidden source, one of five kinds of facts. There is,
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
It is merely an accident when general names are names of classes of real objects: e.g. The unity of God, in the Christian sense, and the non-existence of the things called dragons, do not prevent those names being general names. The using a name to connote attributes, turns the things, whether real or imaginary, into a class. But, in predicating the name, we predicate only the attributes; and even when a name (as, e.g. those in Cuvier's system) is introduced as a means of grouping certain object
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
A definition is a proposition declaring either the special or the ordinary meaning, i.e. in the case of connotative names, the connotation, of a word. This may be effected by stating directly the attributes connoted; but it is more usual to predicate of the subject of definition one name of synonymous, or several which, when combined, are of equivalent, connotation. So that, a definition of a name being thus generally the sum total of the essential propositions which could be framed with that na
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
The preceding book treated, not of the proper subject of logic, viz. the nature of proof, but of assertion. Assertions (as, e.g. definitions) which relate to the meaning of words, are, since that is arbitrary, incapable of truth or falsehood, and therefore of proof or disproof. But there are assertions which are subjects for proof or disproof, viz. the propositions (the real, and not the verbal) whose subject is some fact of consciousness, or its hidden cause, about which is predicated, in the a
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
The syllogistic figures are determined by the position of the middle term. There are four, or, if the fourth be classed under the first, three. But syllogisms in the other figures can be reduced to the first by conversion. Such reduction may not indeed be necessary, for different arguments are suited to different figures; the first figure, says Lambert, being best adapted to the discovery or proof of the properties of things; the second, of the distinctions between things; the third, of instance
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
The question is, whether the syllogistic process is one of inference, i.e. a process from the known to the unknown. Its assailants say, and truly, that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii ; and Dr. Whately's defence of it, that its object is to unfold assertions wrapped up and implied (i.e. in fact, asserted unconsciously ) in those with which we set out, represents it as a sort of trap. Yet, though no reasoning from generals to par
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
The minor premiss always asserts a resemblance between a new case and cases previously known. When this resemblance is not obvious to the senses, or ascertainable at once by direct observation, but is itself matter of inference, the conclusion is the result of a train of reasoning. However, even then the conclusion is really the result of induction, the only difference being that there are two or more inductions instead of one. The inference is still from particulars to particulars, though drawn
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CHAPTERS V. AND VI.
CHAPTERS V. AND VI.
All sciences are based on induction; yet some, e.g. mathematics, and commonly also those branches of natural philosophy which have been made deductive through mathematics, are called Exact Sciences, and systems of Necessary Truth. Now, their necessity, and even their alleged certainty, are illusions. For the conclusions, e.g. of geometry, flow only seemingly from the definitions (since from definitions, as such, only propositions about the meaning of words can be deduced): really, they flow from
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
As all knowledge not intuitive comes exclusively from inductions, induction is the main topic of Logic; and yet neither have metaphysicians analysed this operation with a view to practice, nor, on the other hand, have discoverers in physics cared to generalise the methods they employed. Inferences are equally inductive , whether, as in science, which needs its conclusions for record, not for instant use, they pass through the intermediate stage of a general proposition (to which class Dr. Whewel
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
Induction is the process by which what is true at certain times, or of certain individuals, is inferred to be true in like circumstances at all times, or of a whole class. There must be an inference from the known to the unknown, and not merely from a less to a more general expression. Consequently, there is no valid induction, 1, in those cases laid down in the common works on Logic as the only perfect instances of induction, viz. where what we affirm of the class has already been ascertained t
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
Induction is generalisation from experience. It assumes, that whatever is true in any one case, is true in all cases of a certain description, whether past, present, or future (and not merely in future cases, as is wrongly implied in the statement by Reid's and Stewart's school, that the principle of induction is 'our intuitive conviction that the future will resemble the past'). It assumes, in short, that the course of nature is uniform, that is, that all things take place according to general
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
The uniformity of the course of nature is a complex fact made up of all the separate uniformities in respect to single phenomena. Each of these separate uniformities, if it be not a mere case of and result from others, is a law of nature; for, though law is used for any general proposition expressing a uniformity, law of nature is restricted to cases where it has been thought that a separate act of creative will is necessary to account for the uniformity. Laws of nature, in the aggregate, are th
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
Phenomena in nature stand to each other in two relations, that of simultaneity, and that of succession. On a knowledge of the truths respecting the succession of facts depends our power of predicting and influencing the future. The object, therefore, must be to find some law of succession not liable to be defeated or suspended by any change of circumstances, by being tested by, and deduced from which law, all other uniformities of succession may be raised to equal certainty. Such a law is not to
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
An effect is almost always the result of the concurrence of several causes. When all have their full effect, precisely as if they had operated successively , the joint effect (and it is not inconsistent to give the name of joint effect even to the mutual obliteration of the separate ones) may be deduced from the laws which govern the causes when acting separately. Sciences in which, as in mechanics, this principle, viz. the composition of causes , prevails, are deductive and demonstrative. Pheno
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
Since the whole of the present facts are the infallible result of the whole of the past, so that if the prior state of the entire universe could recur it would be followed by the present, the process of ascertaining the relations of cause and effect is an analysis or resolution of this complex uniformity into the simpler uniformities which make it up. We must first mentally analyse the facts, not making this analysis minuter than is needed for our object at the time, but at the same time not reg
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CHAPTER VIII. and Note to CHAPTER IX.[1]
CHAPTER VIII. and Note to CHAPTER IX.[1]
Five canons may be laid down as the principles of experimental enquiry. The first is that of the Method of Agreement, viz.: If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the circumstances agree is the cause or the effect of the given phenomenon. The second canon is that of the Method of Difference, viz.: If an instance in which the phenomenon occurs and an instance in which it does not occur have every cir
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
The difficulty in tracing the laws of nature arises chiefly from the Intermixture of Effects, and from the Plurality of Causes. The possibility of the latter in any given case—that is, the possibility that the same effect may have been produced by different causes—makes the Method of Agreement (when applied to positive instances) inconclusive, if the instances are few; for that Method involves a tacit supposition, that the same effect in different instances, which have one common antecedent, mus
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
The deductive method is the main source of our knowledge of complex phenomena, and the sole source of all the theories through which vast and complicated facts have been embraced under a few simple laws. It consists of processes of Induction, Ratiocination, and Verification. First, by one of the four inductive methods, the simple laws (whence may be deduced the complex) of each separate cause which shares in producing the effect, must be first ascertained. This is difficult, when the causes or r
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CHAPTERS XII. AND XIII.
CHAPTERS XII. AND XIII.
The aim, in the deductive method, is either to discover the law of the effect, or to account for it by explaining it, that is, by pointing out some more general phenomenon (though often less familiar to us) of which this is a case and a partial exemplification, or some laws of causation which produce it by their joint or successive action. This explanation may be made, either—1. By resolving the laws of the complex effect into its elements, which consist as well of the separate laws of the cause
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CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XIV.
The constant tendency of science, operating by the Deductive Method, is to resolve all laws, even those which once seemed ultimate and not derivative, into others still more general. But no process of resolving will ever reduce the number of ultimate laws below the number of those varieties of our feelings which are distinguishable in quality, and not merely in quantity or degree. The ideal limit of the explanation of natural phenomena is to show that each of these ultimate facts has (since the
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CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV.
Sometimes a complex effect results, not (as has been supposed in the last four chapters) from several, but from one law. The following is the way. Some effects are instantaneous (e.g. some sensations), and are prolonged only by the prolongation of the causes; others are in their own nature permanent. In some cases of the latter class, the original is also the proximate cause (e.g. Exposure to moist air is both the original and the proximate cause of iron rust). But in others of the same class, t
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CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
Empirical laws are derivative laws, of which the derivation is not known. They are observed uniformities, which we compare with the result of any deduction to verify it; but of which the why , and also the limits, are unrevealed, through their being, though resolvable, not yet resolved into the simpler laws. They depend usually, not solely on the ultimate laws into which they are resolvable; but on those, together with an ultimate fact, viz. the mode of coexistence of some of the component eleme
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CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII.
Empirical laws are certain only in those limits within which they have been observed to be true. But, even within those limits, the connection of two phenomena may, as the same effect may be produced by several different causes, be due to Chance; that is, it may, though being, as all facts must be, the result of some law, be a coincidence whence, simply because we do not know all the circumstances, we have no ground to infer an uniformity. When neither Deduction, nor the Method of Difference, ca
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CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
In order to calculate chances, we must know that of several events one, and no more, must happen, and also not know, or have any reason to suspect, which of them that one will be. Thus, with the simple knowledge that the issue must be one of a certain number of possibilities, we may conclude that one supposition is most probable to us . For this purpose it is not necessary that specific experience or reason should have also proved the occurrence of each of the several events to be, as a fact, eq
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CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XIX.
Derivative laws are inferior to ultimate laws, both in the extent of the propositions, and in their degree of certainty within that extent. In particular, the uniformities of coexistence and sequence which obtain between effects depending on different primæval causes, vary along with any variation in the collocation of these causes. Even when the derivative uniformity is between different effects of the same cause, it cannot be trusted to, since one or more of the effects may be producible by an
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CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XX.
One of the many meanings of Analogy is, Resemblance of Relations. The value of an analogical argument in this sense depends on the showing that, on the common circumstance which is the fundamentum relationis , the rest of the circumstances of the case depend. But, generally, to argue from analogy signifies to infer from resemblance in some points (not necessarily in relations ) resemblance in others. Induction does the same: but analogy differs from induction in not requiring the previous proof,
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CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXI.
The validity of all the four inductive methods depends on our assuming that there is a cause for every event. The belief in this, i.e. in the law of universal causation, some affirm, is an instinct which needs no warrant other than all men's disposition to believe it; and they argue that to demand evidence of it is to appeal to the intellect from the intellect. But, though there is no appeal from the faculties all together, there may be from one to another: and, as belief is not proof (for it ma
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CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXII.
Besides uniformities of succession, which always depend on causation, there are uniformities of coexistence. These also, whenever the coexisting phenomena are effects of causes, whether of one common cause or of several different causes, depend on the laws of their cause or causes; and, till resolved into these laws, are mere empirical laws. But there are some uniformities of coexistence, viz. those between the ultimate properties of kinds , which do not depend on causation, and therefore seem e
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CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The inferences called probable rest on approximate generalisations. Such generalisations, besides the inferior assurance with which they can be applied to individual cases, are generally almost useless as premisses in a deduction; and therefore in Science they are valuable chiefly as steps towards universal truths, the discovery of which is its proper end. But in practice we are forced to use them—1, when we have no others, in consequence of not knowing what general property distinguishes the po
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CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXIV.
There are, we have seen, five facts, one of which every proposition must assert, viz. Existence, Order in Place, Order in Time, Causation, and Resemblance. Causation is not fundamentally different from Coexistence and Sequence, which are the two modes of Order in Time. They have been already discussed. Of the rest, Existence, if of things in themselves, is a topic for Metaphysics, Logic regarding the existence of phenomena only; and as this, when it is not perceived directly, is proved by provin
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CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXV.
The result of examining evidence is not always belief, or even suspension of judgment, but is sometimes positive disbelief. This can ensue only when the affirmative evidence does not amount to full proof, but is based on some approximate generalisation. In such cases, if the negative evidence consist of a stronger, though still only an approximate, generalisation, we think the fact improbable, and disbelieve it provisionally; but if of a complete generalisation based on a rigorous induction, it
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
The mental process which Logic deals with, viz. the investigation of truth by means of evidence, is always a process of Induction. Since Induction is simply the extension to a class of something observed to be true of certain members of it, Observation is the first preliminary to it. It is, therefore, right to consider, not indeed how or what to observe (for this belongs to the art of Education), but under what conditions observation is to be relied on. The sole condition is, that the supposed o
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
Abstract Ideas, that is, General Conceptions, certainly do exist, however Metaphysics may decide as to their composition. They represent in our minds the whole classes of things called by the general names; and, being implied in the mental operation whereby classes are formed, viz. in the comparison of phenomena, to ascertain in what they agree, cannot be dispensed with in induction, since such a comparison is a necessary preliminary to an induction, and more than two objects cannot well be comp
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
As reasoning is from particulars to particulars, and consists simply in recognising one fact as a mark of another, or a mark of a mark of another, the only necessary conditions of the exertion of the reasoning power are senses, to perceive that two facts are conjoined; and association, as the law by which one of the two facts raises up the idea of the other. The existence of artificial signs is not a third necessary condition. It is only, however, the rudest inductions (and of such even brutes a
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
Concrete general names (and the meaning of abstract names depends on the concrete) should have a fixed and knowable connotation. This is easy enough when, as in the case of new technical names, we choose the connotation for ourselves; but it is hard when, as generally happens with names in common use, the same name has been applied to different objects, from only a vague feeling of resemblance. For, then, after a time, general propositions are made, in which predicates are applied to those names
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
The connotation of names shifts not only by reason of gradual inattention to some of the common properties, which, if language were ruled by convention alone, would be in their entirety both the perpetual and the sole constituents of the connotation; but also from the incorporation in the connotation, in addition to these, and often, finally, to the exclusion of them altogether, of other circumstances at first only casually associated with it. These collateral associations are the cause why ther
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
Not only must words have a fixed and knowable meaning; but also, no important meaning should be without its word: that is, there should be a name for everything which we have often to make assertions about. There should be, therefore, first, names suited to describe all the individual facts; secondly, a name for every important common property detected by comparing those facts; and, thirdly, a name for every kind . First, it conduces to brevity and clearness to have separate names for the oft-re
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
Every name which connotes an attribute thereby divides, but only incidentally, all things, known and unknown, real and imagined, into two classes, viz. those which have, and those which have not the attribute. But sometimes the naming itself is but the secondary and subsidiary, and the classification, the primary object. The general problem of such classification is, to provide that things shall be thought of in such groups, and the groups in such an order, as will best promote the remembrance a
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
The object of Classification generally is to bring our ideas of objects into the order best fitted for prosecuting inductive enquiries into the laws of the phenomena generally. But a Classification which aims at facilitating an inductive enquiry into the laws of some special phenomenon, must be based on that phenomenon itself. The requisites of such a classification are, first, the bringing into one class all kinds of things which exhibit the phenomenon; next, the arranging them in a series , ac
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
The habit of reasoning well is the only complete safeguard against reasoning ill, that is, against drawing conclusions with insufficient evidence, a practice which the various contradictory opinions, particularly about the phenomena relating to Man, show to be even now common, and that too among the most enlightened. But, to be able to explain an error is a necessary condition of seeing the truth; for, 'Contrariorum eadem est Scientia.' Consequently, a work on Logic must classify Fallacies, that
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
The business of Logic is, not to enumerate false opinions, but to enquire what property in the facts led to them, that is, what peculiarity of relation between two facts made us suppose them habitually conjoined or disjoined, and thus regard the presence or absence of the one as evidence of that of the other. For every such property in the facts, or our mode of considering them, there is a corresponding class of Fallacies. As the supposed habitual connexion or repugnance of two facts may be admi
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
There must be some à priori knowledge, some propositions to be received without proof; for there cannot be a chain suspended from nothing. What these are is disputed, one school recognising as ultimate premisses only the facts of our subjective consciousness, e.g. Sensations, while Ontologists hold that the mind intuitively, and not through experience, recognises as realities other existences, e.g. Substances, which are suggested by, though not inferrible from, those facts of consciousness. But,
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
A fallacy of Observation (the first of the three fallacies of Proof) may be either negative or positive. 1. The former, which is called Non-observation, is a case, not of a positive mis-estimate of evidence, or of the proper faculties (whether the senses or reason) not having been employed, but simply of the non-employment of any of the faculties. It arises α ([Greek: a]) from neglect of instances. Sometimes this is when there is a stronger motive to remember the instances on the one side, and t
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
This class includes whatever errors of generalisation are not mere blunders, but arise from some wrong general conception of the inductive process. Only a few kinds can be noted. 1. Under this Fallacy come generalisations which cannot be established by experience, e.g. inferences from the order in the Solar System to other and unknown parts of the universe; and also, except when a particular effect would contradict either the laws of number and extension, or the universal law of causality, all i
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
These fallacies (to which the name Fallacy is commonly applied exclusively) would generally be detected if the arguments were set out formally; and the value of the syllogistic rules is, that they force the reasoner to be aware what it is that he is really asserting. The frequent errors in processes such as Conversion and Opposition, which are in appearance, though not in reality, inferences from premisses, may for convenience be here referred to. Such are the simple conversion of an universal a
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
Under this head come all fallacies which arise, not so much from a false estimate of the probative force of known evidence, as from an indistinct conception what the evidence is. 1. Thus, where there is an ambiguous middle, or a term used in different senses in the premisses and in the conclusion, the argument proceeds as though there were evidence to the point, when, in fact, there is none. This error does not occur much in direct inductions, since the things themselves are there present to the
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
Many complex problems have been resolved through the use of the Scientific Methods, and thus only. The most complex of all problems are the problems relating to Man himself; and of them those concerned with the Mind and Society have never been scientifically resolved. They can be rescued from empiricism, if at all, only by being submitted to some of the methods already characterised as applicable to science in general. Which of these methods must be selected, and why; what are the causes of prev
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
The theory of free will , viz. that the will is determined by itself, and not by antecedents, was invented as being more in accordance with the dignity of human nature and our consciousness of freedom, than philosophical necessity . The latter doctrine, in laying down simply that our volitions and actions are invariable consequents of our antecedent states of mind, and that, given our motives, character, and disposition, other men could predict our conduct as certainly as any physical event, sta
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
Any facts may be a subject of science, if they follow one another according to constant laws; and this, whether, although the ultimate laws are known, yet, of the derivative laws on which a phenomenon directly depends, either none , as in Meteorology, or, as in Tidology, only the laws of the greater causes on which the chief part of a phenomenon directly depends, have been ascertained, and not those of all the minor modifying causes; or, as in Astronomy (which is therefore called an exact scienc
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
By the laws of mind (i.e. as considered in this treatise, the laws of mental phenomena) are meant the laws according to which one state of mind is produced by another. If M. Comte and others be right in saying that, in like manner with the mental phenomena called sensations, all the other states of mind have for their proximate causes nervous states, there would be no original laws of mind, and Psychology would be a mere branch of Physiology. But at present, this tenet is not proved, however hig
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
Till the Empirical laws of Mind, i.e. the truths of common experience, are explained by being resolved into the causal laws (the subject of the last chapter), they are mere approximate generalisations which cannot be safely applied beyond the limits in which they were collected by observation. But this does not prove aught against the universality and simplicity of the ultimate mental laws; for the same is the case with the empirical laws even in astronomy, where each effect results from but few
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
Political and social phenomena have been thought too complex for scientific treatment. Practitioners hitherto have been the only students; and so, as in medicine, before the rise of Physiology and Natural History, experimenta fructifera , and not lucifera , have been sought. The scheme of such a science has even been thought quackery, through the vain attempts of some theorists to frame universal precepts, as though their failure (arising from the variety of human circumstances) proved that the
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
The followers of this method do not recognise the laws of social phenomena as merely a composition of the laws of individual human nature. They demand specific experience in all cases; and they attempt to make effects, which depend on the greatest possible complication of causes, the subject of induction by observation and experiment. The attempt must fail; for, we can neither get by experiment appropriate artificial instances, nor, by observation, spontaneous instances (from history), with the
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Methods of Elementary Chemistry are applied to social phenomena from carelessness as to, or ignorance of, any of the higher physical sciences: the Geometrical Method, from the belief that Geometry, that is, a science of coexistent, not successive facts, where there are no conflicting forces, is, and that the now deductive physical sciences of Causation, where there are conflicting forces, are not , the type of deductive science. Thus, it seems to have been supposed by many philosophers, that
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CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
The complexity in social effects arises from the number, not of the laws, but of the data. Therefore, Sociology, i.e. Social Science, must use the Concrete Deductive Method, compounding with one another the laws of all the causes on which any one effect depends, and inferring its law from them all. As in the easiest case to which the Method of Deduction applies, so in this, the most difficult, the conclusions of ratiocination must be verified by collation with the concrete phenomena, or, if poss
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
The general Science of Society, as contrasted with the branches, shows, not what effect will follow from a given cause under given circumstances, but what are the causes and characteristic phenomena of States of Society generally. A State of Society is the simultaneous state of all the chief social facts (e.g. employments, beliefs, laws). It is a condition of the whole organism; and, when analysed, it exhibits uniformities of coexistence between its different elements. But, as this correlation b
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
Practical Ethics, i.e. Morality, is an art; and therefore its Method must be that of Art in general. Now, Art from the major premiss, supplied by itself, viz. that the end is desirable, and from the theorem, lent by Science, of the combinations of circumstances by which the end can be reached, concludes that to secure this combination of circumstances is desirable; if it also appear practicable, it turns the theorem into a rule. Unless Science's report as to the circumstances is a full one, the
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