e and country will show us the causes and tendencies of,
and the means of modifying, its actual condition. A consideration of two
methods, erroneously used for this science, viz. the Experimental or
Chemical, and the Abstract or Geometrical, will introduce us to the true
one.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHEMICAL, OR EXPERIMENTAL, METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.

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 circumstances enough varied for a true
induction. Neither the _direct_ nor the _indirect_ Method of Difference
can be applied, for we cannot find either two single instances differing
in nothing but the presence or absence of a given circumstance (the
_direct_), or two classes respectively agreeing in nothing but the
presence of a circumstance on one side and its absence on the other (the
_indirect_). Then, again, the Method of Agreement is of small value,
because social phenomena admit the widest plurality of causes; and so
also is that of Concomitant Variations, on account of the mutual action
of the coexisting elements of society being such that what affects one
affects all. The Method of Residues is better suited to social enquiries
than the other three. But _it_ is not a method of pure observation and
experiment. It presupposes that we know, by previous deduction from
principles of human nature, the causes of part of the effect. But if
thus part of the truths are, why may not all be, ascertained by
Deduction, and the experimental argument be confined to the verifying of
the deductions?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GEOMETRICAL, OR ABSTRACT, METHOD.

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