taken into account in attempting any
such prediction. And this is so, I think, because the laws are
descriptions--within limits accurate descriptions--of actually existing
facts as to the social mechanism. They are not mere abstract
hypotheses, in the sense sometimes attached to that phrase; but
accounts of the plan upon which the industrial arrangements of
civilised countries are, as a matter of fact, constructed. Such a
classification and systematic account of facts is, as I should suggest,
absolutely necessary for any sound historical method. Facts are not
simply things lying about, which anybody can pick up and describe for
the mere pains of collecting them. We cannot even see a fact without
reflection and observation and judgment; and to arrange them in an
order which shall be both systematic and fruitful, to look at them from
that point of view in which we can detect the general underlying
principles, is, in all cases, an essential process before we can begin
to apply a truly historical method. Anything, it is said, may be proved
by facts; and that is painfully true until we have the right method of
what has been called "colligating" facts. The Catholic and the
Protestant, the Conservative and the Radical, the Individualist and the
Socialist, have equal facility in proving their own doctrines with
arguments, which habitually begin, "All history shows". Printers should
be instructed always to strike out that phrase as an erratum; and to
substitute, "I choose to take for granted". In order to judge between
them we have to come to some conclusion as to what is the right method
of conceiving of history, and probably to try many methods before
reaching that which arranges the shifting and complicated chaos of
phenomena in something like an intelligible order. A first step and a
necessary basis, as I believe, for all the more complex inquiries will
have to be found by disentangling the various orders of laws (if I may
so speak), and considering by themselves those laws of industrial
growth which are nearest to the physical sciences in certain respects,
and which, within certain limits, can be considered apart, inasmuch as
they represent the working of forces which are comparatively
independent of forces of a higher order. What I should say for
Political Economists is that they have done a good deal in this
direction; that they have explained, and, I suppose, with considerable
accuracy, what is the actual nature of the in