Of The Inverse Deductive, Or Historical, Method.
§ 1. There are two kinds of sociological inquiry. In the first kind, the
question proposed is, what effect will follow from a given cause, a
certain general condition of social circumstances being presupposed. As,
for example, what would be the effect of imposing or of repealing corn
laws, of abolishing monarchy or introducing universal suffrage, in the
present condition of society and civilization in any European country, or
under any other given supposition with regard to the circumstances of
society in general, without reference to the changes which might take
place, or which may already be in progress, in those circumstances. But
there is also a second inquiry, namely, what are the laws which determine
those general circumstances themselves. In this last the question is, not
what will be the effect of a given cause in a certain state of society,
but what are the causes which produce, and the phenomena which
characterize, states of society generally. In the solution of this
question consists the general Science of Society; by which the conclusions
of the other and more special kind of inquiry must be limited and
controlled.
§ 2. In order to conceive correctly the scope of this general science, and
distinguish it from the subordinate departments of sociological
speculation, it is necessary to fix the ideas attached to the phrase, “A
State of Society.” What is called a state of society, is the simultaneous
state of all the greater social facts or phenomena. Such are: the degree
of knowledge, and of intellectual and moral culture, existing in the
community, and in every class of it; the state of industry, of wealth and
its distribution; the habitual occupations of the community; their
division into classes, and the relations of those classes to one another;
the common beliefs which they entertain on all the subjects most important
to mankind, and the degree of assurance with which those beliefs are held;
their tastes, and the character and degree of their æsthetic development;
their form of government, and the more important of their laws and
customs. The condition of all these things, and of many more which will
readily suggest themselves, constitute the state of society, or the state
of civilization, at any given time.
When states of society, and the causes which produce them, are spoken of
as a subject of science, it is implied that there exists a natural
correlation among these different elements; that not every variety of
combination of these general social facts is possible, but only certain
combinations; that, in short, there exist Uniformities of Co-existence
between the states of the various social phenomena. And such is the truth;
as is indeed a necessary consequence of the influence exercised by every
one of those phenomena over every other. It is a fact implied in the
_consensus_ of the various parts of the social body.
States of society are like different constitutions or different ages in
the physical frame; they are conditions not of one or a few organs or
functions, but of the whole organism. Accordingly, the information which
we possess respecting past ages, and respecting the various states of
society now existing in different regions of the earth, does, when duly
analyzed, exhibit uniformities. It is found that when one of the features
of society is in a particular state, a state of many other features, more
or less precisely determinate, always or usually co-exists with it.
But the uniformities of co-existence obtaining among phenomena which are
effects of causes, must (as we have so often observed) be corollaries from
the laws of causation by which these phenomena are really determined. The
mutual correlation between the different elements of each state of
society, is, therefore, a derivative law, resulting from the laws which
regulate the succession between one state of society and another; for the
proximate cause of every state of society is the state of society
immediately preceding it. The fundamental problem, therefore, of the
social science, is to find the laws according to which any state of
society produces the state which succeeds it and takes its place. This
opens the great and vexed question of the progressiveness of man and
society; an idea involved in every just conception of social phenomena as
the subject of a science.
§ 3. It is one of the characters, not absolutely peculiar to the sciences
of human nature and society, but belonging to them in a peculiar degree,
to be conversant with a subject-matter whose properties are changeable. I
do not mean changeable from day to day, but from age to age; so that not
only the qualities of individuals vary, but those of the majority are not
the same in one age as in another.
The principal cause of this peculiarity is the extensive and constant
reaction of the effects upon their causes. The circumstances in which
mankind are placed, operating according to their own laws and to the laws
of human nature, form the characters of the human beings; but the human
beings, in their turn, mould and shape the circumstances for themselves
and for those who come after them. From this reciprocal action there must
necessarily result either a cycle or a progress. In astronomy also, every
fact is at once effect and cause; the successive positions of the various
heavenly bodies produce changes both in the direction and in the intensity
of the forces by which those positions are determined. But in the case of
the solar system, these mutual actions bring around again, after a certain
number of changes, the former state of circumstances; which, of course,
leads to the perpetual recurrence of the same series in an unvarying
order. Those bodies, in short, revolve in orbits: but there are (or,
conformably to the laws of astronomy, there might be) others which,
instead of an orbit, describe a trajectory—a course not returning into
itself. One or other of these must be the type to which human affairs must
conform.
One of the thinkers who earliest conceived the succession of historical
events as subject to fixed laws, and endeavored to discover these laws by
an analytical survey of history, Vico, the celebrated author of the
_Scienza Nuova_, adopted the former of these opinions. He conceived the
phenomena of human society as revolving in an orbit; as going through
periodically the same series of changes. Though there were not wanting
circumstances tending to give some plausibility to this view, it would not
bear a close scrutiny: and those who have succeeded Vico in this kind of
speculations have universally adopted the idea of a trajectory or
progress, in lieu of an orbit or cycle.
The words Progress and Progressiveness are not here to be understood as
synonymous with improvement and tendency to improvement. It is conceivable
that the laws of human nature might determine, and even necessitate, a
certain series of changes in man and society, which might not in every
case, or which might not on the whole, be improvements. It is my belief,
indeed, that the general tendency is, and will continue to be, saving
occasional and temporary exceptions, one of improvement; a tendency toward
a better and happier state. This, however, is not a question of the method
of the social science, but a theorem of the science itself. For our
purpose it is sufficient that there is a progressive change both in the
character of the human race and in their outward circumstances, so far as
moulded by themselves; that in each successive age the principal phenomena
of society are different from what they were in the age preceding, and
still more different from any previous age: the periods which most
distinctly mark these successive changes being intervals of one
generation, during which a new set of human beings have been educated,
have grown up from childhood, and taken possession of society.
The progressiveness of the human race is the foundation on which a method
of philosophizing in the social science has been of late years erected,
far superior to either of the two modes which had previously been
prevalent, the chemical or experimental, and the geometrical modes. This
method, which is now generally adopted by the most advanced thinkers on
the Continent, consists in attempting, by a study and analysis of the
general facts of history, to discover (what these philosophers term) the
law of progress: which law, once ascertained, must according to them
enable us to predict future events, just as after a few terms of an
infinite series in algebra we are able to detect the principle, of
regularity in their formation, and to predict the rest of the series to
any number of terms we please. The principal aim of historical speculation
in France, of late years, has been to ascertain this law. But while I
gladly acknowledge the great services which have been rendered to
historical knowledge by this school, I can not but deem them to be mostly
chargeable with a fundamental misconception of the true method of social
philosophy. The misconception consists in supposing that the order of
succession which we may be able to trace among the different states of
society and civilization which history presents to us, even if that order
were more rigidly uniform than it has yet been proved to be, could ever
amount to a law of nature. It can only be an empirical law. The succession
of states of the human mind and of human society can not have an
independent law of its own; it must depend on the psychological and
ethological laws which govern the action of circumstances on men and of
men on circumstances. It is conceivable that those laws might be such, and
the general circumstances of the human race such, as to determine the
successive transformations of man and society to one given and unvarying
order. But even if the case were so, it can not be the ultimate aim of
science to discover an empirical law. Until that law could be connected
with the psychological and ethological laws on which it must depend, and,
by the consilience of deduction _a priori_ with historical evidence, could
be converted from an empirical law into a scientific one, it could not be
relied on for the prediction of future events, beyond, at most, strictly
adjacent cases. M. Comte alone, among the new historical school, has seen
the necessity of thus connecting all our generalizations from history with
the laws of human nature.
§ 4. But, while it is an imperative rule never to introduce any
generalization from history into the social science unless sufficient
grounds can be pointed out for it in human nature, I do not think any one
will contend that it would have been possible, setting out from the
principles of human nature and from the general circumstances of the
position of our species, to determine _a priori_ the order in which human
development must take place, and to predict, consequently, the general
facts of history up to the present time. After the first few terms of the
series, the influence exercised, over each generation by the generations
which preceded it, becomes, (as is well observed by the writer last
referred to) more and more preponderant over all other influences; until
at length what we now are and do, is in a very small degree the result of
the universal circumstances of the human race, or even of our own
circumstances acting through the original qualities of our species, but
mainly of the qualities produced in us by the whole previous history of
humanity. So long a series of actions and reactions between Circumstances
and Man, each successive term being composed of an ever greater number and
variety of parts, could not possibly be computed by human faculties from
the elementary laws which produce it. The mere length of the series would
be a sufficient obstacle, since a slight error in any one of the terms
would augment in rapid progression at every subsequent step.
If, therefore, the series of the effects themselves did not, when examined
as a whole, manifest any regularity, we should in vain attempt to
construct a general science of society. We must in that case have
contented ourselves with that subordinate order of sociological
speculation formerly noticed, namely, with endeavoring to ascertain what
would be the effect of the introduction of any new cause, in a state of
society supposed to be fixed—a knowledge sufficient for the more common
exigencies of daily political practice, but liable to fail in all cases in
which the progressive movement of society is one of the influencing
elements; and therefore more precarious in proportion as the case is more
important. But since both the natural varieties of mankind, and the
original diversities of local circumstances, are much less considerable
than the points of agreement, there will naturally be a certain degree of
uniformity in the progressive development of the species and of its works.
And this uniformity tends to become greater, not less, as society
advances; since the evolution of each people, which is at first determined
exclusively by the nature and circumstances of that people, is gradually
brought under the influence (which becomes stronger as civilization
advances) of the other nations of the earth, and of the circumstances by
which they have been influenced. History accordingly does, when
judiciously examined, afford Empirical Laws of Society. And the problem of
general sociology is to ascertain these, and connect them with the laws of
human nature, by deductions showing that such were the derivative laws
naturally to be expected as the consequences of those ultimate ones.
It is, indeed, hardly ever possible, even after history has suggested the
derivative law, to demonstrate _a priori_ that such was the only order of
succession or of co-existence in which the effects could, consistently
with the laws of human nature, have been produced. We can at most make out
that there were strong _a priori_ reasons for expecting it, and that no
other order of succession or co-existence would have been so likely to
result from the nature of man and the general circumstances of his
position. Often we can not do even this; we can not even show that what
did take place was probable _a priori_, but only that it was possible.
This, however—which, in the Inverse Deductive Method that we are now
characterizing, is a real process of verification—is as indispensable, as
verification by specific experience has been shown to be, where the
conclusion is originally obtained by the direct way of deduction. The
empirical laws must be the result of but a few instances, since few
nations have ever attained at all, and still fewer by their own
independent development, a high stage of social progress. If, therefore,
even one or two of these few instances be insufficiently known, or
imperfectly analyzed into their elements, and therefore not adequately
compared with other instances, nothing is more probable than that a wrong
empirical law will emerge instead of the right one. Accordingly, the most
erroneous generalizations are continually made from the course of history;
not only in this country, where history can not yet be said to be at all
cultivated as a science, but in other countries where it is so cultivated,
and by persons well versed in it. The only check or corrective is,
constant verification by psychological and ethological laws. We may add to
this, that no one but a person competently skilled in those laws is
capable of preparing the materials for historical generalization, by
analyzing the facts of history, or even by observing the social phenomena
of his own time. No other will be aware of the comparative importance of
different facts, nor consequently know what facts to look for, or to
observe; still less will he be capable of estimating the evidence of facts
which, as is the case with most, can not be ascertained by direct
observation or learned from testimony, but must be inferred from marks.
§ 5. The Empirical Laws of Society are of two kinds; some are uniformities
of co-existence, some of succession. According as the science is occupied
in ascertaining and verifying the former sort of uniformities or the
latter, M. Comte gives it the title of Social Statics, or of Social
Dynamics; conformably to the distinction in mechanics between the
conditions of equilibrium and those of movement; or in biology, between
the laws of organization and those of life. The first branch of the
science ascertains the conditions of stability in the social union; the
second, the laws of progress. Social Dynamics is the theory of Society
considered in a state of progressive movement; while Social Statics is the
theory of the _consensus_ already spoken of as existing among the
different parts of the social organism; in other words, the theory of the
mutual actions and reactions of contemporaneous social phenomena;
making(279) provisionally, as far as possible, abstraction, for scientific
purposes, of the fundamental movement which is at all times gradually
modifying the whole of them.
“In this first point of view, the provisions of sociology will enable us
to infer one from another (subject to ulterior verification by direct
observation) the various characteristic marks of each distinct mode of
social existence, in a manner essentially analogous to what is now
habitually practiced in the anatomy of the physical body. This preliminary
aspect, therefore, of political science, of necessity supposes that
(contrary to the existing habits of philosophers) each of the numerous
elements of the social state, ceasing to be looked at independently and
absolutely, shall be always and exclusively considered relatively to all
the other elements, with the whole of which it is united by mutual
interdependence. It would be superfluous to insist here upon the great and
constant utility of this branch of sociological speculation. It is, in the
first place, the indispensable basis of the theory of social progress. It
may, moreover, be employed, immediately, and of itself, to supply the
place, provisionally at least, of direct observation, which in many cases
is not always practicable for some of the elements of society, the real
condition of which may, however, be sufficiently judged of by means of the
relations which connect them with others previously known. The history of
the sciences may give us some notion of the habitual importance of this
auxiliary resource, by reminding us, for example, how the vulgar errors of
mere erudition concerning the pretended acquirements of the ancient
Egyptians in the higher astronomy were irrevocably dissipated (even before
sentence had been passed on them by a sounder erudition) from the single
consideration of the inevitable connection between the general state of
astronomy and that of abstract geometry, then evidently in its infancy. It
would be easy to cite a multitude of analogous cases, the character of
which could admit of no dispute. In order to avoid exaggeration, however,
it should be remarked, that these necessary relations among the different
aspects of society can not, from their very nature, be so simple and
precise that the results observed could only have arisen from some one
mode of mutual co-ordination. Such a notion, already too narrow in the
science of life, would be completely at variance with the still more
complex nature of sociological speculations. But the exact estimation of
these limits of variation, both in the healthy and in the morbid state,
constitutes, at least as much as in the anatomy of the natural body, an
indispensable complement to every theory of Sociological Statics; without
which the indirect exploration above spoken of would often lead into
error.
“This is not the place for methodically demonstrating the existence of a
necessary relation among all the possible aspects of the same social
organism; a point on which, in principle at least, there is now little
difference of opinion among sound thinkers. From whichever of the social
elements we choose to set out, we may easily recognize that it has always
a connection, more or less immediate, with all the other elements, even
with those which at first sight appear the most independent of it. The
dynamical consideration of the progressive development of civilized
humanity, affords, no doubt, a still more efficacious means of effecting
this interesting verification of the _consensus_ of the social phenomena,
by displaying the manner in which every change in any one part, operates
immediately, or very speedily, upon all the rest. But this indication may
be preceded, or at all events followed, by a confirmation of a purely
statical kind; for, in politics as in mechanics, the communication of
motion from one object to another proves a connection between them.
Without descending to the minute interdependence of the different branches
of any one science or art, is it not evident that among the different
sciences, as well as among most of the arts, there exists such a
connection, that if the state of any one well-marked division of them is
sufficiently known to us, we can with real scientific assurance infer,
from their necessary correlation, the contemporaneous state of every one
of the others? By a further extension of this consideration, we may
conceive the necessary relation which exists between the condition of the
sciences in general and that of the arts in general, except that the
mutual dependence is less intense in proportion as it is more indirect.
The same is the case, when, instead of considering the aggregate of the
social phenomena in some one people, we examine it simultaneously in
different contemporaneous nations; between which the perpetual reciprocity
of influence, especially in modern times, can not be contested, though the
_consensus_ must in this case be ordinarily of a less decided character,
and must decrease gradually with the affinity of the cases and the
multiplicity of the points of contact, so as at last, in some cases, to
disappear almost entirely; as for, example, between Western Europe and
Eastern Asia, of which the various general states of society appear to
have been hitherto almost independent of one another.”
These remarks are followed by illustrations of one of the most important,
and until lately, most neglected, of the general principles which, in this
division of the social science, may be considered as established; namely,
the necessary correlation between the form of government existing in any
society and the contemporaneous state of civilization: a natural law which
stamps the endless discussions and innumerable theories respecting forms
of government in the abstract, as fruitless and worthless, for any other
purpose than as a preparatory treatment of materials to be afterward used
for the construction of a better philosophy.
As already remarked, one of the main results of the science of social
statics would be to ascertain the requisites of stable political union.
There are some circumstances which, being found in all societies without
exception, and in the greatest degree where the social union is most
complete, may be considered (when psychological and ethological laws
confirm the indication) as conditions of the existence of the complex
phenomena called a State. For example, no numerous society has ever been
held together without laws, or usages equivalent to them; without
tribunals, and an organized force of some sort to execute their decisions.
There have always been public authorities whom, with more or less
strictness and in cases more or less accurately defined, the rest of the
community obeyed, or according to general opinion were bound to obey. By
following out this course of inquiry we shall find a number of requisites,
which have been present in every society that has maintained a collective
existence, and on the cessation of which it has either merged in some
other society, or reconstructed itself on some new basis, in which the
conditions were conformed to. Although these results, obtained by
comparing different forms and states of society, amount in themselves only
to empirical laws; some of them, when once suggested, are found to follow
with so much probability from general laws of human nature, that the
consilience of the two processes raises the evidence to proof, and the
generalizations to the rank of scientific truths.
This seems to be affirmable (for instance) of the conclusions arrived at
in the following passage, extracted, with some alterations, from a
criticism on the negative philosophy of the eighteenth century,(280) and
which I quote, though (as in some former instances) from myself, because I
have no better way of illustrating the conception I have formed of the
kind of theorems of which sociological statics would consist.
“The very first element of the social union, obedience to a government of
some sort, has not been found so easy a thing to establish in the world.
Among a timid and spiritless race like the inhabitants of the vast plains
of tropical countries, passive obedience may be of natural growth; though
even there we doubt whether it has ever been found among any people with
whom fatalism, or in other words, submission to the pressure of
circumstances as a divine decree, did not prevail as a religious doctrine.
But the difficulty of inducing a brave and warlike race to submit their
individual _arbitrium_ to any common umpire, has always been felt to be so
great, that nothing short of supernatural power has been deemed adequate
to overcome it; and such tribes have always assigned to the first
institution of civil society a divine origin. So differently did those
judge who knew savage men by actual experience, from those who had no
acquaintance with them except in the civilized state. In modern Europe
itself, after the fall of the Roman empire, to subdue the feudal anarchy
and bring the whole people of any European nation into subjection to
government (though Christianity in the most concentrated form of its
influence was co-operating in the work) required thrice as many centuries
as have elapsed since that time.
“Now if these philosophers had known human nature under any other type
than that of their own age, and of the particular classes of society among
whom they lived, it would have occurred to them, that wherever this
habitual submission to law and government has been firmly and durably
established, and yet the vigor and manliness of character which resisted
its establishment have been in any degree preserved, certain requisites
have existed, certain conditions have been fulfilled, of which the
following may be regarded as the principal.
“First: there has existed, for all who were accounted citizens—for all who
were not slaves, kept down by brute force—a system of _education_,
beginning with infancy and continued through life, of which whatever else
it might include, one main and incessant ingredient was _restraining
discipline_. To train the human being in the habit, and thence the power,
of subordinating his personal impulses and aims to what were considered
the ends of society; of adhering, against all temptation, to the course of
conduct which those ends prescribed; of controlling in himself all
feelings which were liable to militate against those ends, and encouraging
all such as tended toward them; this was the purpose, to which every
outward motive that the authority directing the system could command, and
every inward power or principle which its knowledge of human nature
enabled it to evoke, were endeavored to be rendered instrumental. The
entire civil and military policy of the ancient commonwealths was such a
system of training; in modern nations its place has been attempted to be
supplied, principally, by religious teaching. And whenever and in
proportion as the strictness of the restraining discipline was relaxed,
the natural tendency of mankind to anarchy re-asserted itself; the state
became disorganized from within; mutual conflict for selfish ends,
neutralized the energies which were required to keep up the contest
against natural causes of evil; and the nation, after a longer or briefer
interval of progressive decline, became either the slave of a despotism,
or the prey of a foreign invader.
“The second condition of permanent political society has been found to be,
the existence, in some form or other, of the feeling of allegiance or
loyalty. This feeling may vary in its objects, and is not confined to any
particular form of government; but whether in a democracy or in a
monarchy, its essence is always the same; viz., that there be in the
constitution of the state _something_ which is settled, something
permanent, and not to be called in question; something which, by general
agreement, has a right to be where it is, and to be secure against
disturbance, whatever else may change. This feeling may attach itself, as
among the Jews (and in most of the commonwealths of antiquity), to a
common God or gods, the protectors and guardians of their state. Or it may
attach itself to certain persons, who are deemed to be, whether by divine
appointment, by long prescription, or by the general recognition of their
superior capacity and worthiness, the rightful guides and guardians of the
rest. Or it may connect itself with laws; with ancient liberties or
ordinances. Or, finally, (and this is the only shape in which the feeling
is likely to exist hereafter), it may attach itself to the principles of
individual freedom and political and social equality, as realized in
institutions which as yet exist nowhere, or exist only in a rudimentary
state. But in all political societies which have had a durable existence,
there has been some fixed point: something which people agreed in holding
sacred; which, wherever freedom of discussion was a recognized principle,
it was of course lawful to contest in theory, but which no one could
either fear or hope to see shaken in practice; which, in short (except
perhaps during some temporary crisis), was in the common estimation placed
beyond discussion. And the necessity of this may easily be made evident. A
state never is, nor until mankind are vastly improved, can hope to be, for
any long time exempt from internal dissension; for there neither is nor
has ever been any state of society in which collisions did not occur
between the immediate interests and passions of powerful sections of the
people. What, then, enables nations to weather these storms, and pass
through turbulent times without any permanent weakening of the securities
for peaceable existence? Precisely this—that however important the
interests about which men fell out, the conflict did not affect the
fundamental principle of the system of social union which happened to
exist; nor threaten large portions of the community with the subversion of
that on which they had built their calculations, and with which their
hopes and aims had become identified. But when the questioning of these
fundamental principles is (not the occasional disease, or salutary
medicine, but) the habitual condition of the body politic, and when all
the violent animosities are called forth, which spring naturally from such
a situation, the state is virtually in a position of civil war; and can
never long remain free from it in act and fact.
“The third essential condition of stability in political society, is a
strong and active principle of cohesion among the members of the same
community or state. We need scarcely say that we do not mean nationality,
in the vulgar sense of the term; a senseless antipathy to foreigners;
indifference to the general welfare of the human race, or an unjust
preference of the supposed interests of our own country; a cherishing of
bad peculiarities because they are national, or a refusal to adopt what
has been found good by other countries. We mean a principle of sympathy,
not of hostility; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common
interest among those who live under the same government, and are contained
within the same natural or historical boundaries. We mean, that one part
of the community do not consider themselves as foreigners with regard to
another part; that they set a value on their connection—feel that they are
one people, that their lot is cast together, that evil to any of their
fellow-countrymen is evil to themselves, and do not desire selfishly to
free themselves from their share of any common inconvenience by severing
the connection. How strong this feeling was in those ancient commonwealths
which attained any durable greatness, every one knows. How happily Rome,
in spite of all her tyranny, succeeded in establishing the feeling of a
common country among the provinces of her vast and divided empire, will
appear when any one who has given due attention to the subject shall take
the trouble to point it out. In modern times the countries which have had
that feeling in the strongest degree have been the most powerful
countries: England, France, and, in proportion to their territory and
resources, Holland and Switzerland; while England in her connection with
Ireland is one of the most signal examples of the consequences of its
absence. Every Italian knows why Italy is under a foreign yoke; every
German knows what maintains despotism in the Austrian empire;(281) the
evils of Spain flow as much from the absence of nationality among the
Spaniards themselves, as from the presence of it in their relations with
foreigners: while the completest illustration of all is afforded by the
republics of South America, where the parts of one and the same state
adhere so slightly together, that no sooner does any province think itself
aggrieved by the general government than it proclaims itself a separate
nation.”
§ 6. While the derivative laws of social statics are ascertained by
analyzing different states of society, and comparing them with one
another, without regard to the order of their succession, the
consideration of the successive order is, on the contrary, predominant in
the study of social dynamics, of which the aim is to observe and explain
the sequences of social conditions. This branch of the social science
would be as complete as it can be made, if every one of the leading
general circumstances of each generation were traced to its causes in the
generation immediately preceding. But the _consensus_ is so complete
(especially in modern history), that in the filiation of one generation
and another, it is the whole which produces the whole, rather than any
part a part. Little progress, therefore, can be made in establishing the
filiation, directly from laws of human nature, without having first
ascertained the immediate or derivative laws according to which social
states generate one another as society advances; the _axiomata media_ of
General Sociology.
The empirical laws which are most readily obtained by generalization from
history do not amount to this. They are not the “middle principles”
themselves, but only evidence toward the establishment of such principles.
They consist of certain general tendencies which may be perceived in
society; a progressive increase of some social elements, and diminution of
others, or a gradual change in the general character of certain elements.
It is easily seen, for instance, that as society advances, mental tend
more and more to prevail over bodily qualities, and masses over
individuals; that the occupation of all that portion of mankind who are
not under external restraint is at first chiefly military, but society
becomes progressively more and more engrossed with productive pursuits,
and the military spirit gradually gives way to the industrial; to which
many similar truths might be added. And with generalizations of this
description, ordinary inquirers, even of the historical school now
predominant on the Continent, are satisfied. But these and all such
results are still at too great a distance from the elementary laws of
human nature on which they depend—too many links intervene, and the
concurrence of causes at each link is far too complicated—to enable these
propositions to be presented as direct corollaries from those elementary
principles. They have, therefore, in the minds of most inquirers, remained
in the state of empirical laws, applicable only within the bounds of
actual observation; without any means of determining their real limits,
and of judging whether the changes which have hitherto been in progress
are destined to continue indefinitely, or to terminate, or even to be
reversed.
§ 7. In order to obtain better empirical laws, we must not rest satisfied
with noting the progressive changes which manifest themselves in the
separate elements of society, and in which nothing is indicated but the
relation of fragments of the effect to corresponding fragments of the
cause. It is necessary to combine the statical view of social phenomena
with the dynamical, considering not only the progressive changes of the
different elements, but the contemporaneous condition of each; and thus
obtain empirically the law of correspondence not only between the
simultaneous states, but between the simultaneous changes, of those
elements. This law of correspondence it is, which, duly verified _a
priori_, would become the real scientific derivative law of the
development of humanity and human affairs.
In the difficult process of observation and comparison which is here
required, it would evidently be a great assistance if it should happen to
be the fact, that some one element in the complex existence of social man
is pre-eminent over all others as the prime agent of the social movement.
For we could then take the progress of that one element as the central
chain, to each successive link of which, the corresponding links of all
the other progressions being appended, the succession of the facts would
by this alone be presented in a kind of spontaneous order, far more nearly
approaching to the real order of their filiation than could be obtained by
any other merely empirical process.
Now, the evidence of history and that of human nature combine, by a
striking instance of consilience, to show that there really is one social
element which is thus predominant, and almost paramount, among the agents
of the social progression. This is, the state of the speculative faculties
of mankind; including the nature of the beliefs which by any means they
have arrived at, concerning themselves and the world by which they are
surrounded.
It would be a great error, and one very little likely to be committed, to
assert that speculation, intellectual activity, the pursuit of truth, is
among the more powerful propensities of human nature, or holds a
predominating place in the lives of any, save decidedly exceptional,
individuals. But, notwithstanding the relative weakness of this principle
among other sociological agents, its influence is the main determining
cause of the social progress; all the other dispositions of our nature
which contribute to that progress being dependent on it for the means of
accomplishing their share of the work. Thus (to take the most obvious case
first), the impelling force to most of the improvements effected in the
arts of life, is the desire of increased material comfort; but as we can
only act upon external objects in proportion to our knowledge of them, the
state of knowledge at any time is the limit of the industrial improvements
possible at that time; and the progress of industry must follow, and
depend on, the progress of knowledge. The same thing may be shown to be
true, though it is not quite so obvious, of the progress of the fine arts.
Further, as the strongest propensities of uncultivated or half-cultivated
human nature (being the purely selfish ones, and those of a sympathetic
character which partake most of the nature of selfishness) evidently tend
in themselves to disunite mankind, not to unite them—to make them rivals,
not confederates, social existence is only possible by a disciplining of
those more powerful propensities, which consists in subordinating them to
a common system of opinions. The degree of this subordination is the
measure of the completeness of the social union, and the nature of the
common opinions determines its kind. But in order that mankind should
conform their actions to any set of opinions, these opinions must exist,
must be believed by them. And thus, the state of the speculative
faculties, the character of the propositions assented to by the intellect,
essentially determines the moral and political state of the community, as
we have already seen that it determines the physical.
These conclusions, deduced from the laws of human nature, are in entire
accordance with the general facts of history. Every considerable change
historically known to us in the condition of any portion of mankind, when
not brought about by external force, has been preceded by a change, of
proportional extent, in the state of their knowledge, or in their
prevalent beliefs. As between any given state of speculation, and the
correlative state of every thing else, it was almost always the former
which first showed itself; though the effects, no doubt, reacted potently
upon the cause. Every considerable advance in material civilization has
been preceded by an advance in knowledge: and when any great social change
has come to pass, either in the way of gradual development or of sudden
conflict, it has had for its precursor a great change in the opinions and
modes of thinking of society. Polytheism, Judaism, Christianity,
Protestantism, the critical philosophy of modern Europe, and its positive
science—each of these has been a primary agent in making society what it
was at each successive period, while society was but secondarily
instrumental in making _them_, each of them (so far as causes can be
assigned for its existence) being mainly an emanation not from the
practical life of the period, but from the previous state of belief and
thought. The weakness of the speculative propensity in mankind generally
has not, therefore, prevented the progress of speculation from governing
that of society at large; it has only, and too often, prevented progress
altogether, where the intellectual progression has come to an early stand
for want of sufficiently favorable circumstances.
From this accumulated evidence, we are justified in concluding, that the
order of human progression in all respects will mainly depend on the order
of progression in the intellectual convictions of mankind, that is, on the
law of the successive transformations of human opinions. The question
remains, whether this law can be determined; at first from history as an
empirical law, then converted into a scientific theorem by deducing it _a
priori_ from the principles of human nature. As the progress of knowledge
and the changes in the opinions of mankind are very slow, and manifest
themselves in a well-defined manner only at long intervals, it can not be
expected that the general order of sequence should be discoverable from
the examination of less than a very considerable part of the duration of
the social progress. It is necessary to take into consideration the whole
of past time, from the first recorded condition of the human race, to the
memorable phenomena of the last and present generations.
§ 8. The investigation which I have thus endeavored to characterize, has
been systematically attempted, up to the present time, by M. Comte alone.
His work is hitherto the only known example of the study of social
phenomena according to this conception of the Historical Method. Without
discussing here the worth of his conclusions, and especially of his
predictions and recommendations with respect to the Future of society,
which appear to me greatly inferior in value to his appreciation of the
Past, I shall confine myself to mentioning one important generalization,
which M. Comte regards as the fundamental law of the progress of human
knowledge. Speculation he conceives to have, on every subject of human
inquiry, three successive stages; in the first of which it tends to
explain the phenomena by supernatural agencies, in the second by
metaphysical abstractions, and in the third or final state confines itself
to ascertaining their laws of succession and similitude. This
generalization appears to me to have that high degree of scientific
evidence which is derived from the concurrence of the indications of
history with the probabilities derived from the constitution of the human
mind. Nor could it be easily conceived, from the mere enunciation of such
a proposition, what a flood of light it lets in upon the whole course of
history, when its consequences are traced, by connecting with each of the
three states of human intellect which it distinguishes, and with each
successive modification of those three states, the correlative condition
of other social phenomena.(282)
But whatever decision competent judges may pronounce on the results
arrived at by any individual inquirer, the method now characterized is
that by which the derivative laws of social order and of social progress
must be sought. By its aid we may hereafter succeed not only in looking
far forward into the future history of the human race, but in determining
what artificial means may be used, and to what extent, to accelerate the
natural progress in so far as it is beneficial; to compensate for whatever
may be its inherent inconveniences or disadvantages; and to guard against
the dangers or accidents to which our species is exposed from the
necessary incidents of its progression. Such practical instructions,
founded on the highest branch of speculative sociology, will form the
noblest and most beneficial portion of the Political Art.
That of this science and art even the foundations are but beginning to be
laid, is sufficiently evident. But the superior minds are fairly turning
themselves toward that object. It has become the aim of really scientific
thinkers to connect by theories the facts of universal history: it is
acknowledged to be one of the requisites of a general system of social
doctrine, that it should explain, so far as the data exist, the main facts
of history; and a Philosophy of History is generally admitted to be at
once the verification, and the initial form, of the Philosophy of the
Progress of Society.
If the endeavors now making in all the more cultivated nations, and
beginning to be made even in England (usually the last to enter into the
general movement of the European mind) for the construction of a
Philosophy of History, shall be directed and controlled by those views of
the nature of sociological evidence which I have (very briefly and
imperfectly) attempted to characterize; they can not fail to give birth to
a sociological system widely removed from the vague and conjectural
character of all former attempts, and worthy to take its place, at last,
among the sciences. When this time shall come, no important branch of
human affairs will be any longer abandoned to empiricism and unscientific
surmise: the circle of human knowledge will be complete, and it can only
thereafter receive further enlargement by perpetual expansion from within.
Chapter XI.
Additional Elucidations Of The Science Of History.
§ 1. The doctrine which the preceding chapters were intended to enforce
and elucidate—that the collective series of social phenomena, in other
words the course of history, is subject to general laws, which philosophy
may possibly detect—has been familiar for generations to the scientific
thinkers of the Continent, and has for the last quarter of a century
passed out of their peculiar domain, into that of newspapers and ordinary
political discussion. In our own country, however, at the time of the
first publication of this Treatise, it was almost a novelty, and the
prevailing habits of thought on historical subjects were the very reverse
of a preparation for it. Since then a great change has taken place, and
has been eminently promoted by the important work of Mr. Buckle; who, with
characteristic energy, flung down this great principle, together with many
striking exemplifications of it, into the arena of popular discussion, to
be fought over by a sort of combatants, in the presence of a sort of
spectators, who would never even have been aware that there existed such a
principle if they had been left to learn its existence from the
speculations of pure science. And hence has arisen a considerable amount
of controversy, tending not only to make the principle rapidly familiar to
the majority of cultivated minds, but also to clear it from the confusions
and misunderstandings by which it was but natural that it should for a
time be clouded, and which impair the worth of the doctrine to those who
accept it, and are the stumbling-block of many who do not.
Among the impediments to the general acknowledgment, by thoughtful minds,
of the subjection of historical facts to scientific laws, the most
fundamental continues to be that which is grounded on the doctrine of Free
Will, or, in other words, on the denial that the law of invariable
Causation holds true of human volitions; for if it does not, the course of
history, being the result of human volitions, can not be a subject of
scientific laws, since the volitions on which it depends can neither be
foreseen, nor reduced to any canon of regularity even after they have
occurred. I have discussed this question, as far as seemed suitable to the
occasion, in a former chapter; and I only think it necessary to repeat,
that the doctrine of the Causation of human actions, improperly called the
doctrine of Necessity, affirms no mysterious _nexus_, or overruling
fatality: it asserts only that men’s actions are the joint result of the
general laws and circumstances of human nature, and of their own
particular characters; those characters again being the consequence of the
natural and artificial circumstances that constituted their education,
among which circumstances must be reckoned their own conscious efforts.
Any one who is willing to take (if the expression may be permitted) the
trouble of thinking himself into the doctrine as thus stated, will find
it, I believe, not only a faithful interpretation of the universal
experience of human conduct, but a correct representation of the mode in
which he himself, in every particular case, spontaneously interprets his
own experience of that conduct.
But if this principle is true of individual man, it must be true of
collective man. If it is the law of human life, the law must be realized
in history. The experience of human affairs when looked at _en masse_,
must be in accordance with it if true, or repugnant to it if false. The
support which this _a posteriori_ verification affords to the law, is the
part of the case which has been most clearly and triumphantly brought out
by Mr. Buckle.
The facts of statistics, since they have been made a subject of careful
recordation and study, have yielded conclusions, some of which have been
very startling to persons not accustomed to regard moral actions as
subject to uniform laws. The very events which in their own nature appear
most capricious and uncertain, and which in any individual case no
attainable degree of knowledge would enable us to foresee, occur, when
considerable numbers are taken into the account, with a degree of
regularity approaching to mathematical. What act is there which all would
consider as more completely dependent on individual character, and on the
exercise of individual free will, than that of slaying a fellow-creature?
Yet in any large country, the number of murders, in proportion to the
population, varies (it has been found) very little from one year to
another, and in its variations never deviates widely from a certain
average. What is still more remarkable, there is a similar approach to
constancy in the proportion of these murders annually committed with every
particular kind of instrument. There is a like approximation to identity,
as between one year and another, in the comparative number of legitimate
and of illegitimate births. The same thing is found true of suicides,
accidents, and all other social phenomena of which the registration is
sufficiently perfect; one of the most curiously illustrative examples
being the fact, ascertained by the registers of the London and Paris
post-offices, that the number of letters posted which the writers have
forgotten to direct, is nearly the same, in proportion to the whole number
of letters posted, in one year as in another. “Year after year,” says Mr.
Buckle, “the same proportion of letter-writers forget this simple act; so
that for each successive period we can actually foretell the number of
persons whose memory will fail them in regard to this trifling, and as it
might appear, accidental occurrence.”(283)
This singular degree of regularity _en masse_, combined with the extreme
of irregularity in the cases composing the mass, is a felicitous
verification _a posteriori_ of the law of causation in its application to
human conduct. Assuming the truth of that law, every human action, every
murder, for instance, is the concurrent result of two sets of causes. On
the one part, the general circumstances of the country and its
inhabitants; the moral, educational, economical, and other influences
operating on the whole people, and constituting what we term the state of
civilization. On the other part, the great variety of influences special
to the individual: his temperament, and other peculiarities of
organization, his parentage, habitual associates, temptations, and so
forth. If we now take the whole of the instances which occur within a
sufficiently large field to exhaust all the combinations of these special
influences, or, in other words, to eliminate chance; and if all these
instances have occurred within such narrow limits of time, that no
material change can have taken place in the general influences
constituting the state of civilization of the country; we may be certain,
that if human actions are governed by invariable laws, the aggregate
result will be something like a constant quantity. The number of murders
committed within that space and time, being the effect partly of general
causes which have not varied, and partly of partial causes the whole round
of whose variations has been included, will be, practically speaking,
invariable.
Literally and mathematically invariable it is not, and could not be
expected to be: because the period of a year is too short to include _all_
the possible combinations of partial causes, while it is, at the same
time, sufficiently long to make it probable that in some years at least,
of every series, there will have been introduced new influences of a more
or less general character; such as a more vigorous or a more relaxed
police; some temporary excitement from political or religious causes; or
some incident generally notorious, of a nature to act morbidly on the
imagination. That in spite of these unavoidable imperfections in the data,
there should be so very trifling a margin of variation in the annual
results, is a brilliant continuation of the general theory.
§ 2. The same considerations which thus strikingly corroborate the
evidence of the doctrine, that historical facts are the invariable effects
of causes, tend equally to clear that doctrine from various
misapprehensions, the existence of which has been put in evidence by the
recent discussions. Some persons, for instance, seemingly imagine the
doctrine to imply, not merely that the total number of murders committed
in a given space and time is entirely the effect of the general
circumstances of society, but that every particular murder is so too—that
the individual murderer is, so to speak, a mere instrument in the hands of
general causes that he himself has no option, or, if he has, and chose to
exercise it, some one else would be necessitated to take his place; that
if any one of the actual murderers had abstained from the crime, some
person who would otherwise have remained innocent, would have committed an
extra murder to make up the average. Such a corollary would certainly
convict any theory which necessarily led to it of absurdity. It is
obvious, however, that each particular murder depends, not on the general
state of society only, but on that combined with causes special to the
case, which are generally much more powerful; and if these special causes,
which have greater influence than the general ones in causing every
particular murder, have no influence on the number of murders in a given
period, it is because the field of observation is so extensive as to
include all possible combinations of the special causes—all varieties of
individual character and individual temptation compatible with the general
state of society. The collective experiment, as it may be termed, exactly
separates the effect of the general from that of the special causes, and
shows the net result of the former; but it declares nothing at all
respecting the amount of influence of the special causes, be it greater or
smaller, since the scale of the experiment extends to the number of cases
within which the effects of the special causes balance one another, and
disappear in that of the general causes.
I will not pretend that all the defenders of the theory have always kept
their language free from this same confusion, and have shown no tendency
to exalt the influence of general causes at the expense of special. I am
of opinion, on the contrary, that they have done so in a very great
degree, and by so doing have encumbered their theory with difficulties,
and laid it open to objections, which do not necessarily affect it. Some,
for example (among whom is Mr. Buckle himself), have inferred, or allowed
it to be supposed that they inferred, from the regularity in the
recurrence of events which depend on moral qualities, that the moral
qualities of mankind are little capable of being improved, or are of
little importance in the general progress of society, compared with
intellectual or economic causes. But to draw this inference is to forget
that the statistical tables, from which the invariable averages are
deduced, were compiled from facts occurring within narrow geographical
limits and in a small number of successive years; that is, from a field
the whole of which was under the operation of the same general causes, and
during too short a time to allow of much change therein. All moral causes
but those common to the country generally, have been eliminated by the
great number of instances taken; and those which are common to the whole
country have not varied considerably, in the short space of time comprised
in the observations. If we admit the supposition that they have varied; if
we compare one age with another, or one country with another, or even one
part of a country with another, differing in position and character as to
the moral elements, the crimes committed within a year give no longer the
same, but a widely different numerical aggregate. And this can not but be
the case: for, inasmuch as every single crime committed by an individual
mainly depends on his moral qualities, the crimes committed by the entire
population of the country must depend in an equal degree on their
collective moral qualities. To render this element inoperative upon the
large scale, it would be necessary to suppose that the general moral
average of mankind does not vary from country to country or from age to
age; which is not true, and, even if it were true, could not possibly be
proved by any existing statistics. I do not on this account the less agree
in the opinion of Mr. Buckle, that the intellectual element in mankind,
including in that expression the nature of their beliefs, the amount of
their knowledge, and the development of their intelligence, is the
predominant circumstance in determining their progress. But I am of this
opinion, not because I regard their moral or economical condition either
as less powerful or less variable agencies, but because these are in a
great degree the consequences of the intellectual condition, and are, in
all cases, limited by it; as was observed in the preceding chapter. The
intellectual changes are the most conspicuous agents in history, not from
their superior force, considered in themselves, but because practically
they work with the united power belonging to all three.(284)
§ 3. There is another distinction often neglected in the discussion of
this subject, which it is extremely important to observe. The theory of
the subjection of social progress to invariable laws, is often held in
conjunction with the doctrine, that social progress can not be materially
influenced by the exertions of individual persons, or by the acts of
governments. But though these opinions are often held by the same persons,
they are two very different opinions, and the confusion between them is
the eternally recurring error of confounding Causation with Fatalism.
Because whatever happens will be the effect of causes, human volitions
among the rest, it does not follow that volitions, even those of peculiar
individuals, are not of great efficacy as causes. If any one in a storm at
sea, because about the same number of persons in every year perish by
shipwreck, should conclude that it was useless for him to attempt to save
his own life, we should call him a Fatalist; and should remind him that
the efforts of shipwrecked persons to save their lives are so far from
being immaterial, that the average amount of those efforts is one of the
causes on which the ascertained annual number of deaths by shipwreck
depend. However universal the laws of social development may be, they can
not be more universal or more rigorous than those of the physical agencies
of nature; yet human will can convert these into instruments of its
designs, and the extent to which it does so makes the chief difference
between savages and the most highly civilized people. Human and social
facts, from their more complicated nature, are not less, but more,
modifiable than mechanical and chemical facts; human agency, therefore,
has still greater power over them. And accordingly, those who maintain
that the evolution of society depends exclusively, or almost exclusively,
on general causes, always include among these the collective knowledge and
intellectual development of the race. But if of the race, why not also of
some powerful monarch or thinker, or of the ruling portion of some
political society, acting through its government? Though the varieties of
character among ordinary individuals neutralize one another on any large
scale, exceptional individuals in important positions do not in any given
age neutralize one another; there was not another Themistocles, or Luther,
or Julius Cæsar, of equal powers and contrary dispositions, who exactly
balanced the given Themistocles, Luther, and Cæsar, and prevented them
from having any permanent effect. Moreover, for aught that appears, the
volitions of exceptional persons, or the opinions and purposes of the
individuals who at some particular time compose a government, may be
indispensable links in the chain of causation by which even the general
causes produce their effects; and I believe this to be the only tenable
form of the theory.
Lord Macaulay, in a celebrated passage of one of his early essays (let me
add that it was one which he did not himself choose to reprint), gives
expression to the doctrine of the absolute inoperativeness of great men,
more unqualified, I should think, than has been given to it by any writer
of equal abilities. He compares them to persons who merely stand on a
loftier height, and thence receive the sun’s rays a little earlier, than
the rest of the human race. “The sun illuminates the hills while it is
still below the horizon, and truth is discovered by the highest minds a
little before it becomes manifest to the multitude. This is the extent of
their superiority. They are the first to catch and reflect a light which,
without their assistance, must in a short time be visible to those who lie
far beneath them.”(285) If this metaphor is to be carried out, it follows
that if there had been no Newton, the world would not only have had the
Newtonian system, but would have had it equally soon; as the sun would
have risen just as early to spectators in the plain if there had been no
mountain at hand to catch still earlier rays. And so it would be, if
truths, like the sun, rose by their own proper motion, without human
effort; but not otherwise. I believe that if Newton had not lived, the
world must have waited for the Newtonian philosophy until there had been
another Newton, or his equivalent. No ordinary man, and no succession of
ordinary men, could have achieved it. I will not go the length of saying
that what Newton did in a single life, might not have been done in
successive steps by some of those who followed him, each singly inferior
to him in genius. But even the least of those steps required a man of
great intellectual superiority. Eminent men do not merely see the coming
light from the hill-top, they mount on the hill-top and evoke it; and if
no one had ever ascended thither, the light, in many cases, might never
have risen upon the plain at all. Philosophy and religion are abundantly
amenable to general causes; yet few will doubt that, had there been no
Socrates, no Plato, and no Aristotle, there would have been no philosophy
for the next two thousand years, nor in all probability then; and that if
there had been no Christ, and no St. Paul, there would have been no
Christianity.
The point in which, above all, the influence of remarkable individuals is
decisive, is in determining the celerity of the movement. In most states
of society it is the existence of great men which decides even whether
there shall be any progress. It is conceivable that Greece, or that
Christian Europe, might have been progressive in certain periods of their
history through general causes only: but if there had been no Mohammed,
would Arabia have produced Avicenna or Averroes, or Caliphs of Bagdad or
of Cordova? In determining, however, in what manner and order the progress
of mankind shall take place if it take place at all, much less depends on
the character of individuals. There is a sort of necessity established in
this respect by the general laws of human nature—by the constitution of
the human mind. Certain truths can not be discovered, nor inventions made,
unless certain others have been made first; certain social improvements,
from the nature of the case, can only follow, and not precede, others. The
order of human progress, therefore, may to a certain extent have definite
laws assigned to it: while as to its celerity, or even as to its taking
place at all, no generalization, extending to the human species generally,
can possibly be made; but only some very precarious approximate
generalizations, confined to the small portion of mankind in whom there
has been any thing like consecutive progress within the historical period,
and deduced from their special position, or collected from their
particular history. Even looking to the _manner_ of progress, the order of
succession of social states, there is need of great flexibility in our
generalizations. The limits of variation in the possible development of
social, as of animal life, are a subject of which little is yet
understood, and are one of the great problems in social science. It is, at
all events, a fact, that different portions of mankind, under the
influence of different circumstances, have developed themselves in a more
or less different manner and into different forms; and among these
determining circumstances, the individual character of their great
speculative thinkers or practical organizers may well have been one. Who
can tell how profoundly the whole subsequent history of China may have
been influenced by the individuality of Confucius? and of Sparta (and
hence of Greece and the world) by that of Lycurgus?
Concerning the nature and extent of what a great man under favorable
circumstances can do for mankind, as well as of what a government can do
for a nation, many different opinions are possible; and every shade of
opinion on these points is consistent with the fullest recognition that
there are invariable laws of historical phenomena. Of course the degree of
influence which has to be assigned to these more special agencies, makes a
great difference in the precision which can be given to the general laws,
and in the confidence with which predictions can be grounded on them.
Whatever depends on the peculiarities of individuals, combined with the
accident of the positions they hold, is necessarily incapable of being
foreseen. Undoubtedly these casual combinations might be eliminated like
any others, by taking a sufficiently large cycle: the peculiarities of a
great historical character make their influence felt in history sometimes
for several thousand years, but it is highly probable that they will make
no difference at all at the end of fifty millions. Since, however, we can
not obtain an average of the vast length of time necessary to exhaust all
the possible combinations of great men and circumstances, as much of the
law of evolution of human affairs as depends upon this average, is and
remains inaccessible to us; and within the next thousand years, which are
of considerably more importance to us than the whole remainder of the
fifty millions, the favorable and unfavorable combinations which will
occur will be to us purely accidental. We can not foresee the advent of
great men. Those who introduce new speculative thoughts or great practical
conceptions into the world, can not have their epoch fixed beforehand.
What science can do, is this. It can trace through past history the
general causes which had brought mankind into that preliminary state
which, when the right sort of great man appeared, rendered them accessible
to his influence. If this state continues, experience renders it tolerably
certain that in a longer or shorter period the great man will be produced;
provided that the general circumstances of the country and people are
(which very often they are not) compatible with his existence; of which
point also, science can in some measure judge. It is in this manner that
the results of progress, except as to the celerity of their production,
can be, to a certain extent, reduced to regularity and law. And the belief
that they can be so, is equally consistent with assigning very great, or
very little efficacy, to the influence of exceptional men, or of the acts
of governments. And the same may be said of all other accidents and
disturbing causes.
§ 4. It would nevertheless be a great error to assign only a trifling
importance to the agency of eminent individuals, or of governments. It
must not be concluded that the influence of either is small, because they
can not bestow what the general circumstances of society, and the course
of its previous history, have not prepared it to receive. Neither thinkers
nor governments effect all that they intend, but in compensation they
often produce important results which they did not in the least foresee.
Great men, and great actions, are seldom wasted; they send forth a
thousand unseen influences, more effective than those which are seen; and
though nine out of every ten things done, with a good purpose, by those
who are in advance of their age, produce no material effect, the tenth
thing produces effects twenty times as great as any one would have dreamed
of predicting from it. Even the men who for want of sufficiently favorable
circumstances left no impress at all upon their own age, have often been
of the greatest value to posterity. Who could appear to have lived more
entirely in vain than some of the early heretics? They were burned or
massacred, their writings extirpated, their memory anathematized, and
their very names and existence left for seven or eight centuries in the
obscurity of musty manuscripts—their history to be gathered, perhaps, only
from the sentences by which they were condemned. Yet the memory of these
men—men who resisted certain pretensions or certain dogmas of the Church
in the very age in which the unanimous assent of Christendom was afterward
claimed as having been given to them, and asserted as the ground of their
authority—broke the chain of tradition, established a series of precedents
for resistance, inspired later Reformers with the courage, and armed them
with the weapons, which they needed when mankind were better prepared to
follow their impulse. To this example from men, let us add another from
governments. The comparatively enlightened rule of which Spain had the
benefit during a considerable part of the eighteenth century, did not
correct the fundamental defects of the Spanish people; and in consequence,
though it did great temporary good, so much of that good perished with it,
that it may plausibly be affirmed to have had no permanent effect. The
case has been cited as a proof how little governments can do in opposition
to the causes which have determined the general character of the nation.
It does show how much there is which they can not do; but not that they
can do nothing. Compare what Spain was at the beginning of that
half-century of liberal government, with what she had become at its close.
That period fairly let in the light of European thought upon the more
educated classes; and it never afterward ceased to go on spreading.
Previous to that time the change was in an inverse direction; culture,
light, intellectual and even material activity, were becoming
extinguished. Was it nothing to arrest this downward and convert it into
an upward course? How much that Charles the Third and Aranda could not do,
has been the ultimate consequence of what they did! To that half-century
Spain owes that she has got rid of the Inquisition, that she has got rid
of the monks, that she now has parliaments and (save in exceptional
intervals) a free press, and the feelings of freedom and citizenship, and
is acquiring railroads and all the other constituents of material and
economical progress. In the Spain which preceded that era, there was not a
single element at work which could have led to these results in any length
of time, if the country had continued to be governed as it was by the last
princes of the Austrian dynasty, or if the Bourbon rulers had been from
the first what, both in Spain and in Naples, they afterward became.
And if a government can do much, even when it seems to have done little,
in causing positive improvement, still greater are the issues dependent on
it in the way of warding off evils, both internal and external, which else
would stop improvement altogether. A good or a bad counselor, in a single
city at a particular crisis, has affected the whole subsequent fate of the
world. It is as certain as any contingent judgment respecting historical
events can be, that if there had been no Themistocles there would have
been no victory of Salamis; and had there not, where would have been all
our civilization? How different, again, would have been the issue if
Epaminondas, or Timoleon, or even Iphicrates, instead of Chares and
Lysicles, had commanded at Chæroneia. As is well said in the second of two
Essays on the Study of History,(286) in my judgment the soundest and most
philosophical productions which the recent controversies on this subject
have called forth, historical science authorizes not absolute, but only
conditional predictions. General causes count for much, but individuals
also “produce great changes in history, and color its whole complexion
long after their death.... No one can doubt that the Roman republic would
have subsided into a military despotism if Julius Cæsar had never lived”
(thus much was rendered practically certain by general causes); “but is it
at all clear that in that case Gaul would ever have formed a province of
the empire? Might not Varus have lost his three legions on the banks of
the Rhone? and might not that river have become the frontier instead of
the Rhine? This might well have happened if Cæsar and Crassus had changed
provinces; and it is surely impossible to say that in such an event the
venue (as lawyers say) of European civilization might not have been
changed. The Norman Conquest in the same way was as much the act of a
single man, as the writing of a newspaper article; and knowing as we do
the history of that man and his family, we can retrospectively predict
with all but infallible certainty, that no other person” (no other in that
age, I presume, is meant) “could have accomplished the enterprise. If it
had not been accomplished, is there any ground to suppose that either our
history or our national character would have been what they are?”
As is most truly remarked by the same writer, the whole stream of Grecian
history, as cleared up by Mr. Grote, is one series of examples how often
events on which the whole destiny of subsequent civilization turned, were
dependent on the personal character for good or evil of some one
individual. It must be said, however, that Greece furnishes the most
extreme example of this nature to be found in history, and is a very
exaggerated specimen of the general tendency. It has happened only that
once, and will probably never happen again, that the fortunes of mankind
depended upon keeping a certain order of things in existence in a single
town, or a country scarcely larger than Yorkshire; capable of being ruined
or saved by a hundred causes, of very slight magnitude in comparison with
the general tendencies of human affairs. Neither ordinary accidents, nor
the characters of individuals, can ever again be so vitally important as
they then were. The longer our species lasts, and the more civilized it
becomes, the more, as Comte remarks, does the influence of past
generations over the present, and of mankind _en masse_ over every
individual in it, predominate over other forces; and though the course of
affairs never ceases to be susceptible of alteration both by accidents and
by personal qualities, the increasing preponderance of the collective
agency of the species over all minor causes, is constantly bringing the
general evolution of the race into something which deviates less from a
certain and preappointed track. Historical science, therefore, is always
becoming more possible; not solely because it is better studied, but
because, in every generation, it becomes better adapted for study.
Chapter XII.
Of The Logic Of Practice, Or Art; Including Morality And Policy.
§ 1. In the preceding chapters we have endeavored to characterize the
present state of those among the branches of knowledge called Moral, which
are sciences in the only proper sense of the term, that is, inquiries into
the course of nature. It is customary, however, to include under the term
moral knowledge, and even (though improperly) under that of moral science,
an inquiry the results of which do not express themselves in the
indicative, but in the imperative mood, or in periphrases equivalent to
it; what is called the knowledge of duties; practical ethics, or morality.
Now, the imperative mood is the characteristic of art, as distinguished
from science. Whatever speaks in rules, or precepts, not in assertions
respecting matters of fact, is art; and ethics, or morality, is properly a
portion of the art corresponding to the sciences of human nature and
society.(287)
The Method, therefore, of Ethics, can be no other than that of Art, or
Practice, in general; and the portion yet uncompleted of the task which we
proposed to ourselves in the concluding Book, is to characterize the
general Method of Art, as distinguished from Science.
§ 2. In all branches of practical business there are cases in which
individuals are bound to conform their practice to a pre-established rule,
while there are others in which it is part of their task to find or
construct the rule by which they are to govern their conduct. The first,
for example, is the case of a judge, under a definite written code. The
judge is not called upon to determine what course would be intrinsically
the most advisable in the particular case in hand, but only within what
rule of law it falls; what the legislature has ordained to be done in the
kind of case, and must therefore be presumed to have intended in the
individual case. The method must here be wholly and exclusively one of
ratiocination, or syllogism; and the process is obviously, what in our
analysis of the syllogism we showed that all ratiocination is, namely the
interpretation of a formula.
In order that our illustration of the opposite case may be taken from the
same class of subjects as the former, we will suppose, in contrast with
the situation of the judge, the position of the legislator. As the judge
has laws for his guidance, so the legislator has rules, and maxims of
policy; but it would be a manifest error to suppose that the legislator is
bound by these maxims in the same manner as the judge is bound by the
laws, and that all he has to do is to argue down from them to the
particular case, as the judge does from the laws. The legislator is bound
to take into consideration the reasons or grounds of the maxim; the judge
has nothing to do with those of the law, except so far as a consideration
of them may throw light upon the intention of the law-maker, where his
words have left it doubtful. To the judge, the rule, once positively
ascertained, is final; but the legislator, or other practitioner, who goes
by rules rather than by their reasons, like the old-fashioned German
tacticians who were vanquished by Napoleon, or the physician who preferred
that his patients should die by rule rather than recover contrary to it,
is rightly judged to be a mere pedant, and the slave of his formulas.
Now, the reasons of a maxim of policy, or of any other rule of art, can be
no other than the theorems of the corresponding science.
The relation in which rules of art stand to doctrines of science may be
thus characterized. The art proposes to itself an end to be attained,
defines the end, and hands it over to the science. The science receives
it, considers it as a phenomenon or effect to be studied, and having
investigated its causes and conditions, sends it back to art with a
theorem of the combination of circumstances by which it could be produced.
Art then examines these combinations of circumstances, and according as
any of them are or are not in human power, pronounces the end attainable
or not. The only one of the premises, therefore, which Art supplies, is
the original major premise, which asserts that the attainment of the given
end is desirable. Science then lends to Art the proposition (obtained by a
series of inductions or of deductions) that the performance of certain
actions will attain the end. From these premises Art concludes that the
performance of these actions is desirable, and finding it also
practicable, converts the theorem into a rule or precept.
§ 3. It deserves particular notice, that the theorem or speculative truth
is not ripe for being turned into a precept, until the whole, and not a
part merely, of the operation which belongs to science, has been
performed. Suppose that we have completed the scientific process only up
to a certain point; have discovered that a particular cause will produce
the desired effect, but have not ascertained all the negative conditions
which are necessary, that is, all the circumstances which, if present,
would prevent its production. If, in this imperfect state of the
scientific theory, we attempt to frame a rule of art, we perform that
operation prematurely. Whenever any counteracting cause, overlooked by the
theorem, takes place, the rule will be at fault; we shall employ the means
and the end will not follow. No arguing from or about the rule itself will
then help us through the difficulty; there is nothing for it but to turn
back and finish the scientific process which should have preceded the
formation of the rule. We must re-open the investigation to inquire into
the remainder of the conditions on which the effect depends; and only
after we have ascertained the whole of these are we prepared to transform
the completed law of the effect into a precept, in which those
circumstances or combinations of circumstances which the science exhibits
as conditions are prescribed as means.
It is true that, for the sake of convenience, rules must be formed from
something less than this ideally perfect theory: in the first place,
because the theory can seldom be made ideally perfect; and next, because,
if all the counteracting contingencies, whether of frequent or of rare
occurrence, were included, the rules would be too cumbrous to be
apprehended and remembered by ordinary capacities, on the common occasions
of life. The rules of art do not attempt to comprise more conditions than
require to be attended to in ordinary cases; and are therefore always
imperfect. In the manual arts, where the requisite conditions are not
numerous, and where those which the rules do not specify are generally
either plain to common observation or speedily learned from practice,
rules may often be safely acted on by persons who know nothing more than
the rule. But in the complicated affairs of life, and still more in those
of states and societies, rules can not be relied on, without constantly
referring back to the scientific laws on which they are founded. To know
what are the practical contingencies which require a modification of the
rule, or which are altogether exceptions to it, is to know what
combinations of circumstances would interfere with, or entirely
counteract, the consequences of those laws; and this can only be learned
by a reference to the theoretic grounds of the rule.
By a wise practitioner, therefore, rules of conduct will only be
considered as provisional. Being made for the most numerous cases, or for
those of most ordinary occurrence, they point out the manner in which it
will be least perilous to act, where time or means do not exist for
analyzing the actual circumstances of the case, or where we can not trust
our judgment in estimating them. But they do not at all supersede the
propriety of going through, when circumstances permit, the scientific
process requisite for framing a rule from the data of the particular case
before us. At the same time, the common rule may very properly serve as an
admonition that a certain mode of action has been found by ourselves and
others to be well adapted to the cases of most common occurrence; so that
if it be unsuitable to the case in hand, the reason of its being so will
be likely to arise from some unusual circumstance.
§ 4. The error is therefore apparent of those who would deduce the line of
conduct proper to particular cases from supposed universal practical
maxims, overlooking the necessity of constantly referring back to the
principles of the speculative science, in order to be sure of attaining
even the specific end which the rules have in view. How much greater
still, then, must the error be, of setting up such unbending principles,
not merely as universal rules for attaining a given end, but as rules of
conduct generally, without regard to the possibility, not only that some
modifying cause may prevent the attainment of the given end by the means
which the rule prescribes, but that success itself may conflict with some
other end, which may possibly chance to be more desirable.
This is the habitual error of many of the political speculators whom I
have characterized as the geometrical school; especially in France, where
ratiocination from rules of practice forms the staple commodity of
journalism and political oratory—a misapprehension of the functions of
Deduction which has brought much discredit, in the estimation of other
countries, upon the spirit of generalization so honorably characteristic
of the French mind. The commonplaces of politics in France are large and
sweeping practical maxims, from which, as ultimate premises, men reason
downward to particular applications; and this they call being logical and
consistent. For instance, they are perpetually arguing that such and such
a measure ought to be adopted, because it is a consequence of the
principle on which the form of government is founded; of the principle of
legitimacy, or the principle of the sovereignty of the people. To which it
may be answered, that if these be really practical principles, they must
rest on speculative grounds; the sovereignty of the people, for example,
must be a right foundation for government, because a government thus
constituted tends to produce certain beneficial effects. Inasmuch,
however, as no government produces all possible beneficial effects, but
all are attended with more or fewer inconveniences, and since these can
not usually be combated by means drawn from the very causes which produce
them, it would be often a much stronger recommendation of some practical
arrangement, that it does not follow from what is called the general
principle of the government, than that it does. Under a government of
legitimacy, the presumption is far rather in favor of institutions of
popular origin; and in a democracy, in favor of arrangements tending to
check the impetus of popular will. The line of augmentation so commonly
mistaken in France for political philosophy, tends to the practical
conclusion that we should exert our utmost efforts to aggravate, instead
of alleviating, whatever are the characteristic imperfections of the
system of institutions which we prefer, or under which we happen to live.
§ 5. The grounds, then, of every rule of art, are to be found in the
theorems of science. An art, or a body of art, consists of the rules,
together with as much of the speculative propositions as comprises the
justification of those rules. The complete art of any matter includes a
selection of such a portion from the science as is necessary to show on
what conditions the effects, which the art aims at producing, depend. And
Art in general, consists of the truths of Science, arranged in the most
convenient order for practice, instead of the order which is the most
convenient for thought. Science groups and arranges its truths, so as to
enable us to take in at one view as much as possible of the general order
of the universe. Art, though it must assume the same general laws, follows
them only into such of their detailed consequences as have led to the
formation of rules of conduct; and brings together from parts of the field
of science most remote from one another, the truths relating to the
production of the different and heterogeneous conditions necessary to each
effect which the exigencies of practical life require to be produced.(288)
Science, therefore, following one cause to its various effects, while art
traces one effect to its multiplied and diversified causes and conditions,
there is need of a set of intermediate scientific truths, derived from the
higher generalities of science, and destined to serve as the generalia or
first principles of the various arts. The scientific operation of framing
these intermediate principles, M. Comte characterizes as one of those
results of philosophy which are reserved for futurity. The only complete
example which he points out as actually realized, and which can be held up
as a type to be imitated in more important matters, is the general theory
of the art of Descriptive Geometry, as conceived by M. Monge. It is not,
however, difficult to understand what the nature of these intermediate
principles must generally be. After framing the most comprehensive
possible conception of the end to be aimed at, that is, of the effect to
be produced, and determining in the same comprehensive manner the set of
conditions on which that effect depends, there remains to be taken, a
general survey of the resources which can be commanded for realizing this
set of conditions; and when the result of this survey has been embodied in
the fewest and most extensive propositions possible, those propositions
will express the general relation between the available means and the end,
and will constitute the general scientific theory of the art, from which
its practical methods will follow as corollaries.
§ 6. But though the reasonings which connect the end or purpose of every
art with its means belong to the domain of Science, the definition of the
end itself belongs exclusively to Art, and forms its peculiar province.
Every art has one first principle, or general major premise, not borrowed
from science; that which enunciates the object aimed at, and affirms it to
be a desirable object. The builder’s art assumes that it is desirable to
have buildings; architecture, as one of the fine arts, that it is
desirable to have them beautiful or imposing. The hygienic and medical
arts assume, the one that the preservation of health, the other that the
cure of disease, are fitting and desirable ends. These are not
propositions of science. Propositions of science assert a matter of fact:
an existence, a co-existence, a succession, or a resemblance. The
propositions now spoken of do not assert that any thing is, but enjoin or
recommend that something should be. They are a class by themselves. A
proposition of which the predicate is expressed by the words _ought_ or
_should be_, is generically different from one which is expressed by _is_,
or _will be_. It is true, that in the largest sense of the words, even
these propositions assert something as a matter of fact. The fact affirmed
in them is, that the conduct recommended excites in the speaker’s mind the
feeling of approbation. This, however, does not go to the bottom of the
matter; for the speaker’s approbation is no sufficient reason why other
people should approve; nor ought it to be a conclusive reason even with
himself. For the purposes of practice, every one must be required to
justify his approbation; and for this there is need of general premises,
determining what are the proper objects of approbation, and what the
proper order of precedence among those objects.
These general premises, together with the principal conclusions which may
be deduced from them, form (or rather might form) a body of doctrine,
which is properly the Art of Life, in its three departments, Morality,
Prudence or Policy, and Æsthetics; the Right, the Expedient, and the
Beautiful or Noble, in human conduct and works. To this art (which, in the
main, is unfortunately still to be created), all other arts are
subordinate; since its principles are those which must determine whether
the special aim of any particular art is worthy and desirable, and what is
its place in the scale of desirable things. Every art is thus a joint
result of laws of nature disclosed by science, and of the general
principles of what has been called Teleology, or the Doctrine of
Ends;(289) which, borrowing the language of the German metaphysicians, may
also be termed, not improperly, the principles of Practical Reason.
A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for
practice. His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from
certain causes, and that to obtain certain ends, certain means are the
most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought to be
pursued, and if so, in what cases and to how great a length, it is no part
of his business as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone
will never qualify him for the decision. In purely physical science, there
is not much temptation to assume this ulterior office; but those who treat
of human nature and society invariably claim it: they always undertake to
say, not merely what is, but what ought to be. To entitle them to do this,
a complete doctrine of Teleology is indispensable. A scientific theory,
however perfect, of the subject-matter, considered merely as part of the
order of nature, can in no degree serve as a substitute. In this respect
the various subordinate arts afford a misleading analogy. In them there is
seldom any visible necessity for justifying the end, since in general its
desirableness is denied by nobody, and it is only when the question of
precedence is to be decided between that end and some other, that the
general principles of Teleology have to be called in; but a writer on
Morals and Politics requires those principles at every step. The most
elaborate and well-digested exposition of the laws of succession and
co-existence among mental or social phenomena, and of their relation to
one another as causes and effects, will be of no avail toward the art of
Life or of Society, if the ends to be aimed at by that art are left to the
vague suggestions of the _intellectus sibi permissus_, or are taken for
granted without analysis or questioning.
§ 7. There is, then, a _philosophia prima_ peculiar to Art, as there is
one which belongs to Science. There are not only first principles of
Knowledge, but first principles of Conduct. There must be some standard by
which to determine the goodness or badness, absolute and comparative, of
ends, or objects of desire. And whatever that standard is, there can be
but one; for if there were several ultimate principles of conduct, the
same conduct might be approved by one of those principles and condemned by
another; and there would be needed some more general principle, as umpire
between them.
Accordingly, writers on Moral Philosophy have mostly felt the necessity
not only of referring all rules of conduct, and all judgments of praise
and blame, to principles, but of referring them to some one principle;
some rule, or standard, with which all other rules of conduct were
required to be consistent, and from which by ultimate consequence they
could all be deduced. Those who have dispensed with the assumption of such
a universal standard, have only been enabled to do so by supposing that a
moral sense, or instinct, inherent in our constitution, informs us, both
what principles of conduct we are bound to observe, and also in what order
these should be subordinated to one another.
The theory of the foundations of morality is a subject which it would be
out of place, in a work like this, to discuss at large, and which could
not to any useful purpose be treated incidentally. I shall content myself,
therefore, with saying, that the doctrine of intuitive moral principles,
even if true, would provide only for that portion of the field of conduct
which is properly called moral. For the remainder of the practice of life
some general principle, or standard, must still be sought; and if that
principle be rightly chosen, it will be found, I apprehend, to serve quite
as well for the ultimate principle of Morality, as for that of Prudence,
Policy, or Taste.
Without attempting in this place to justify my opinion, or even to define
the kind of justification which it admits of, I merely declare my
conviction, that the general principle to which all rules of practice
ought to conform, and the test by which they should be tried, is that of
conduciveness to the happiness of mankind, or rather, of all sentient
beings; in other words, that the promotion of happiness is the ultimate
principle of Teleology.(290)
I do not mean to assert that the promotion of happiness should be itself
the end of all actions, or even of all rules of action. It is the
justification, and ought to be the controller, of all ends, but it is not
itself the sole end. There are many virtuous actions, and even virtuous
modes of action (though the cases are, I think, less frequent than is
often supposed), by which happiness in the particular instance is
sacrificed, more pain being produced than pleasure. But conduct of which
this can be truly asserted, admits of justification only because it can be
shown that, on the whole, more happiness will exist in the world, if
feelings are cultivated which will make people, in certain cases,
regardless of happiness. I fully admit that this is true; that the
cultivation of an ideal nobleness of will and conduct should be to
individual human beings an end, to which the specific pursuit either of
their own happiness or of that of others (except so far as included in
that idea) should, in any case of conflict, give way. But I hold that the
very question, what constitutes this elevation of character, is itself to
be decided by a reference to happiness as the standard. The character
itself should be, to the individual, a paramount end, simply because the
existence of this ideal nobleness of character, or of a near approach to
it, in any abundance, would go farther than all things else toward making
human life happy, both in the comparatively humble sense of pleasure and
freedom from pain, and in the higher meaning, of rendering life, not what
it now is almost universally, puerile and insignificant, but such as human
beings with highly developed faculties can care to have.
§ 8. With these remarks we must close this summary view of the application
of the general logic of scientific inquiry to the moral and social
departments of science. Notwithstanding the extreme generality of the
principles of method which I have laid down (a generality which, I trust,
is not, in this instance, synonymous with vagueness), I have indulged the
hope that to some of those on whom the task will devolve of bringing those
most important of all sciences into a more satisfactory state, these
observations may be useful, both in removing erroneous, and in clearing up
the true, conceptions of the means by which, on subjects of so high a
degree of complication, truth can be attained. Should this hope be
realized, what is probably destined to be the great intellectual
achievement of the next two or three generations of European thinkers will
have been in some degree forwarded.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
1 In the later editions of Archbishop Whately’s “Logic,” he states his
meaning to be, not that “rules” for the ascertainment of truths by
inductive investigation can not be laid down, or that they may not
be “of eminent service,” but that they “must always be comparatively
vague and general, and incapable of being built up into a regular
demonstrative theory like that of the Syllogism.” (Book iv., ch.
iv., § 3.) And he observes, that to devise a system for this
purpose, capable of being “brought into a scientific form,” would be
an achievement which “he must be more sanguine than scientific who
expects.” (Book iv., ch. ii., § 4.) To effect this, however, being
the express object of the portion of the present work which treats
of Induction, the words in the text are no overstatement of the
difference of opinion between Archbishop Whately and me on the
subject.
2 Now forming a chapter in his volume on “The Philosophy of
Discovery.”
3 Archbishop Whately.
4 I use these terms indiscriminately, because, for the purpose in
view, there is no need for making any distinction between them. But
metaphysicians usually restrict the name Intuition to the direct
knowledge we are supposed to have of things external to our minds,
and Consciousness to our knowledge of our own mental phenomena.
5 This important theory has of late been called in question by a
writer of deserved reputation, Mr. Samuel Bailey; but I do not
conceive that the grounds on which it has been admitted as an
established doctrine for a century past, have been at all shaken by
that gentleman’s objections. I have elsewhere said what appeared to
me necessary in reply to his arguments. (_Westminster Review_ for
October, 1842; reprinted in “Dissertations and Discussions,” vol.
ii.)
6 The view taken in the text, of the definition and purpose of Logic,
stands in marked opposition to that of the school of philosophy
which, in this country, is represented by the writings of Sir
William Hamilton and of his numerous pupils. Logic, as this school
conceives it, is “the Science of the Formal Laws of Thought;” a
definition framed for the express purpose of excluding, as
irrelevant to Logic, whatever relates to Belief and Disbelief, or to
the pursuit of truth as such, and restricting the science to that
very limited portion of its total province, which has reference to
the conditions, not of Truth, but of Consistency. What I have
thought it useful to say in opposition to this limitation of the
field of Logic, has been said at some length in a separate work,
first published in 1865, and entitled “An Examination of Sir William
Hamilton’s Philosophy, and of the Principal Philosophical Questions
discussed in his Writings.” For the purposes of the present
Treatise, I am content that the justification of the larger
extension which I give to the domain of the science, should rest on
the sequel of the Treatise itself. Some remarks on the relation
which the Logic of Consistency bears to the Logic of Truth, and on
the place which that particular part occupies in the whole to which
it belongs, will be found in the present volume (Book II., chap.
iii., § 9).
_ 7 Computation or Logic_, chap. ii.
8 In the original “had, _or had not_.” These last words, as involving
a subtlety foreign to our present purpose, I have forborne to quote.
9 Vide infra, note at the end of § 3, book ii., chap. ii.
_ 10 Notare_, to mark; _con_notare, to mark _along with_; to mark one
thing _with_ or _in addition to_ another.
11 Archbishop Whately, who, in the later editions of his _Elements of
Logic_, aided in reviving the important distinction treated of in
the text, proposes the term “Attributive” as a substitute for
“Connotative” (p. 22, 9th edit.). The expression is, in itself,
appropriate; but as it has not the advantage of being connected with
any verb, of so markedly distinctive a character as “to connote,” it
is not, I think, fitted to supply the place of the word Connotative
in scientific use.
12 A writer who entitles his book _Philosophy; or, the Science of
Truth_, charges me in his very first page (referring at the foot of
it to this passage) with asserting that _general_ names have
properly no signification. And he repeats this statement many times
in the course of his volume, with comments, not at all flattering,
thereon. It is well to be now and then reminded to how great a
length perverse misquotation (for, strange as it appears, I do not
believe that the writer is dishonest) can sometimes go. It is a
warning to readers when they see an author accused, with volume and
page referred to, and the apparent guarantee of inverted commas, of
maintaining something more than commonly absurd, not to give
implicit credence to the assertion without verifying the reference.
13 “Take the familiar term Stone. It is applied to mineral and rocky
materials, to the kernels of fruit, to the accumulations in the
gall-bladder and in the kidney; while it is refused to polished
minerals (called gems), to rocks that have the cleavage suited for
roofing (slates), and to baked clay (bricks). It occurs in the
designation of the magnetic oxide of iron (loadstone), and not in
speaking of other metallic ores. Such a term is wholly unfit for
accurate reasoning, unless hedged round on every occasion by other
phrases; as building stone, precious stone, gall-stone, etc.
Moreover, the methods of definition are baffled for want of
sufficient community to ground upon. There is no quality uniformly
present in the cases where it is applied, and uniformly absent where
it is not applied; hence the definer would have to employ largely
the license of striking off existing applications, and taking in new
ones.”—BAIN, _Logic_, ii., 172.
14 Before quitting the subject of connotative names, it is proper to
observe, that the first writer who, in our times, has adopted from
the schoolmen the word _to connote_, Mr. James Mill, in his
_Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, employs it in a
signification different from that in which it is here used. He uses
the word in a sense co-extensive with its etymology, applying it to
every case in which a name, while pointing directly to one thing
(which is consequently termed its signification), includes also a
tacit reference to some other thing. In the case considered in the
text, that of concrete general names, his language and mine are the
converse of one another. Considering (very justly) the signification
of the name to lie in the attribute, he speaks of the word as
_noting_ the attribute, and _connoting_ the things possessing the
attribute. And he describes abstract names as being properly
concrete names with their connotation dropped; whereas, in my view,
it is the _de_notation which would be said to be dropped, what was
previously connoted becoming the whole signification.
In adopting a phraseology at variance with that which so high an
authority, and one which I am less likely than any other person to
undervalue, has deliberately sanctioned, I have been influenced by
the urgent necessity for a term exclusively appropriated to express
the manner in which a concrete general name serves to mark the
attributes which are involved in its signification. This necessity
can scarcely be felt in its full force by any one who has not found
by experience how vain is the attempt to communicate clear ideas on
the philosophy of language without such a word. It is hardly an
exaggeration to say, that some of the most prevalent of the errors
with which logic has been infected, and a large part of the
cloudiness and confusion of ideas which have enveloped it, would, in
all probability, have been avoided, if a term had been in common use
to express exactly what I have signified by the term to connote. And
the schoolmen, to whom we are indebted for the greater part of our
logical language, gave us this also, and in this very sense. For
though some of their general expressions countenance the use of the
word in the more extensive and vague acceptation in which it is
taken by Mr. Mill, yet when they had to define it specifically as a
technical term, and to fix its meaning as such, with that admirable
precision which always characterizes their definitions, they clearly
explained that nothing was said to be connoted except _forms_, which
word may generally, in their writings, be understood as synonymous
with _attributes_.
Now, if the word _to connote_, so well suited to the purpose to
which they applied it, be diverted from that purpose by being taken
to fulfill another, for which it does not seem to me to be at all
required; I am unable to find any expression to replace it, but such
as are commonly employed in a sense so much more general, that it
would be useless attempting to associate them peculiarly with this
precise idea. Such are the words, to involve, to imply, etc. By
employing these, I should fail of attaining the object for which
alone the name is needed, namely, to distinguish this particular
kind of involving and implying from all other kinds, and to assure
to it the degree of habitual attention which its importance demands.
15 Professor Bain (_Logic_, i., 56) thinks that negative names are not
names of all things whatever except those denoted by the correlative
positive name, but only for all things of some particular class:
_not-white_, for instance, he deems not to be a name for every thing
in nature except white things, but only for every _colored_ thing
other than white. In this case, however, as in all others, the test
of what a name denotes is what it can be predicated of: and we can
certainly predicate of a sound, or a smell, that it is not white.
The affirmation and the negation of the same attribute can not but
divide the whole field of predication between them.
16 Or rather, all objects except itself and the percipient mind; for,
as we shall see hereafter, to ascribe any attribute to an object,
necessarily implies a mind to perceive it.
The simple and clear explanation given in the text, of relation and
relative names, a subject so long the opprobrium of metaphysics, was
given (as far as I know) for the first time, by Mr. James Mill, in
his Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind.
17 On the preceding passage Professor Bain remarks (Logic, i., 265):
“The Categories do not seem to have been intended as a
classification of Namable Things, in the sense of ‘an enumeration of
all kinds of Things which are capable of being made predicates, or
of having any thing predicated of them.’ They seem to have been
rather intended as a generalization of predicates; an analysis of
the final import of predication. Viewed in this light, they are not
open to the objections offered by Mr. Mill. The proper question to
ask is not—In what Category are we to place sensations or other
feelings or states of mind? but, Under what Categories can we
predicate regarding states of mind? Take, for example, Hope. When we
say that it is a state of mind, we predicate Substance: we may also
describe how great it is (Quantity), what is the quality of it,
pleasurable or painful (Quality), what it has reference to
(Relation). Aristotle seems to have framed the Categories on the
plan—Here is an individual; what is the final analysis of all that
we can predicate about him?”