society, is the _main_ cause of the social state which follows, and
moulds _entirely_ customs and laws. The neglect of national diversities
sometimes (as e.g. the assumption by our political economists, that in
commercial populations everywhere, equally as in Great Britain and
America, all motives yield to the desire of gain) vitiates only the
practical application of a proposition; but when the national character
is mixed up at every step with the phenomena (as is the case in
questions respecting the tendencies of forms of government), the
phenomena cannot properly be insulated in a separate branch of
Sociology.

As in Ethology and other deductive sciences, so in Statistics and
History there are empirical laws. The immediate causes of social facts
are often not open to direct observation; and the deductive science can
determine only what causes produce a given effect, and not the frequency
and quantities of them; in such cases, the empirical law of the causes
(which, however, can be applied to new cases only if we know that the
remoter causes, on which these latter causes depend, remain unchanged)
must be found through that of the effects, the Deductive Science relying
then for its data on indirect observation. But, in the separate branches
of Sociology, we cannot obtain empirical laws by specific experience. It
is so particularly (on account both of the number of the causes, and
also the fewness of the instances to be compared with the one in point)
when the effect of any one (e.g. Corn Laws) of many simultaneous social
causes has to be determined. We can, however, in such cases, verify
_indirectly_ a theory as to the influence of a particular cause in given
circumstances, by seeing if the same theory accounts for the _existing_
state of actual social facts which that cause has a tendency to
influence.

CHAPTER X.

THE INVERSE DEDUCTIVE, OR HISTORICAL, METHOD.

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 between the phenomena is itself a law resulting
fr