ation with the concrete
phenomena, or, if possible, with their empirical laws; and then the only
effect of an increase in the complication of the subject will be a
tendency to a disturbance, and sometimes even to an inversion (which,
indeed, M. Comte thinks inseparable from all Sociological enquiries) in
the order of the two processes, obliging us, first, to conjecture the
conclusions by specific experience, and then verify them by _a priori_
reasonings showing their connection with the principles of human nature.

Sociology is a system not of positive predictions, but of tendencies. Of
tendencies themselves, not many can be laid down as true of all
societies alike. Even in the case of any single feature of society, the
_consensus_ which exists in the body politic, as in the body natural,
makes it uncertain whether a cause with a special tendency in one age or
country will have quite the same in another. General propositions,
therefore, in this deductive science, as, to be true, they must be
hypothetical, and state the operation of a given cause in _given
circumstances_, so, to be of any utility, should be limited to those
classes of facts, which, though influenced by all sociological agents,
are yet influenced _immediately_ by a few only, certain fixed
combinations of which are likely to recur often. Thus, Political
Economy, taking the one psychological law that men prefer a greater gain
to a smaller, and ignoring every other motive, except what are
perpetually adverse principles to this, viz. men's aversion to labour
and desire of present costly pleasures, assumes, in enquiring what acts
this desire of gain will produce, that, within the department of human
affairs, where it is actually the main end, it is the _sole_ end. Yet
its general propositions are of great practical use, even though it thus
provisionally overlooks as well miscellaneous concurrent causes (with
some exceptions, as e.g. the principle of population), as also the fact
of the non-existence elsewhere of the conditions of any one particular
country (e.g. the peculiarly British mode of distribution of the produce
of industry among three classes). Another hypothetical or abstract
science, which can be carved out of Sociology, is the as yet unexplored
Political Ethology, i.e. the theory of the causes which determine a
people's, or age's, type of character, which collective character,
besides being the most interesting phenomenon in the particular state of