Chapter 62

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?