deductive science. Thus, it seems to have been supposed by many
philosophers, that each social phenomenon results from only one force,
one single property of human nature. For instance, Hobbes assumed (eking
out his assumption by the fiction of an original contract), that
government is founded on fear. Even the scientific Bentham School based
a general theory on one premiss, viz. that men's actions are always
determined by their interests, meaning probably thereby, that the bulk
of the conduct of any succession, or of the majority of any body of men,
is determined by their private or worldly interests. They inferred
thence, that those rulers alone will govern according to the interest of
the governed, whose selfish interests are identified with it (forgetting
that, apart from the philanthropy and sense of duty of many, the
conduct of _all_ rulers must be influenced by the habits of mind, both
of the whole community, and also of their own class in it, and by the
maxims of their predecessors). Lastly, they laid down that this sense of
identity of interest with the governed is producible only by
responsibility (whereas the personal interest of rulers often prompts
them to acts, e.g. for the suppression of anarchy, which are also for
the interest of the governed). In fact, this school was pleading for
parliamentary reform, and saw truly, that it is against the selfish
interests of rulers that constitutional checks are needed, and that, in
modern Europe, a feeling in the governors of identity of interest, when
not active enough, can be roused only by responsibility to the governed.
Their mistake was, that they based on just these few premisses a general
theory of government, in forgetfulness that such should proceed by
deduction from _the whole_ of the laws of human nature, since each
effect is an aggregate result of many causes operating now through the
same ones, now through different ones, of these laws.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PHYSICAL, OR CONCRETE DEDUCTIVE, METHOD.

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 coll