Chapter 63

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.