CHAPTER VII.
THE CHEMICAL, OR EXPERIMENTAL, METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.
The followers of this method do not recognise the laws of social phenomena as merely a composition of the laws of individual human nature. They demand specific experience in all cases; and they attempt to make effects, which depend on the greatest possible complication of causes, the subject of induction by observation and experiment. The attempt must fail; for, we can neither get by experiment appropriate artificial instances, nor, by observation, spontaneous instances (from history), with the circumstances enough varied for a true induction. Neither the direct nor the indirect Method of Difference can be applied, for we cannot find either two single instances differing in nothing but the presence or absence of a given circumstance (the direct), or two classes respectively agreeing in nothing but the presence of a circumstance on one side and its absence on the other (the indirect). Then, again, the Method of Agreement is of small value, because social phenomena admit the widest plurality of causes; and so also is that of Concomitant Variations, on account of the mutual action of the coexisting elements of society being such that what affects one affects all. The Method of Residues is better suited to social enquiries than the other three. But it is not a method of pure observation and experiment. It presupposes that we know, by previous deduction from principles of human nature, the causes of part of the effect. But if thus part of the truths are, why may not all be, ascertained by Deduction, and the experimental argument be confined to the verifying of the deductions?
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GEOMETRICAL, OR ABSTRACT, METHOD.
The Methods of Elementary Chemistry are applied to social phenomena from carelessness as to, or ignorance of, any of the higher physical sciences: the Geometrical Method, from the belief that Geometry, that is, a science of coexistent, not successive facts, where there are no conflicting forces, is, and that the now deductive physical sciences of Causation, where there are conflicting forces, are not, the type of deductive science. Thus, it seems to have been supposed by many philosophers, that each social phenomenon results from only one force, one single property of human nature. For instance, Hobbes assumed (eking out his assumption by the fiction of an original contract), that government is founded on fear. Even the scientific Bentham School based a general theory on one premiss, viz. that men's actions are always determined by their interests, meaning probably thereby, that the bulk of the conduct of any succession, or of the majority of any body of men, is determined by their private or worldly interests. They inferred thence, that those rulers alone will govern according to the interest of the governed, whose selfish interests are identified with it (forgetting that, apart from the philanthropy and sense of duty of many, the conduct of all rulers must be influenced by the habits of mind, both of the whole community, and also of their own class in it, and by the maxims of their predecessors). Lastly, they laid down that this sense of identity of interest with the governed is producible only by responsibility (whereas the personal interest of rulers often prompts them to acts, e.g. for the suppression of anarchy, which are also for the interest of the governed). In fact, this school was pleading for parliamentary reform, and saw truly, that it is against the selfish interests of rulers that constitutional checks are needed, and that, in modern Europe, a feeling in the governors of identity of interest, when not active enough, can be roused only by responsibility to the governed. Their mistake was, that they based on just these few premisses a general theory of government, in forgetfulness that such should proceed by deduction from the whole of the laws of human nature, since each effect is an aggregate result of many causes operating now through the same ones, now through different ones, of these laws.