h deals with the subject matter of our
inquiries. Is it more than a name for a science which may or may not
some day come into existence? What is science? It is simply organised
knowledge; that part of our knowledge which is definite, established
beyond reasonable doubt, and which achieves its task by formulating
what are called "scientific laws". Laws in this sense are general
formulae, which, when the necessary data are supplied, will enable us to
extend our knowledge beyond the immediate facts of perception. Given a
planet, moving at a given speed in a given direction, and controlled by
given attractive forces, we can determine its place at a future moment.
Or given a vegetable organism in a given environment, we can predict
within certain limits the way in which it will grow, although the laws
are too obscure and too vague to enable us to speak of it with any
approach to the precision of astronomy. And we should have reached a
similar stage in sociology if from a given social or political
constitution adopted by a given population, we could prophesy what
would be the results. I need not say that any approximation to such
achievements is almost indefinitely distant. Personal claims to such
powers of prediction rather tend to bring discredit upon the embryo
science. Coleridge gives in the _Biographia Literaria_ a quaint
statement of his own method. On every great occurrence, he says, he
tried to discover in past history the event that most nearly resembled
it. He examined the original authorities. "Then fairly subtracting the
points of difference from the points of likeness," as the balance
favoured the former or the latter, he conjectured that the result would
be the same, or different. So, for example, he was able to prophesy the
end of the Spanish rising against Napoleon from the event of the war
between Philip II. and the Dutch provinces. That is, he cried, "Heads!"
and on this occasion the coin did not come down tails. But I need
hardly point out how impossible is the process of political arithmetic.
What is meant by adding or subtracting in this connection? Such a rule
of three would certainly puzzle me, and, I fancy, most other observers.
We may say that the insurrection of a patriotic people, when they are
helped from without, and their oppressors have to operate from a
distant base and to fight all Europe at the same time, will often
succeed; and we may often be right; but we should not give ourselves
the airs