Chapter 65

THE INVERSE DEDUCTIVE, OR HISTORICAL, METHOD.

The _general_ Science of Society, as contrasted with the branches, shows, not what effect will follow from a given cause under given circumstances, but what are the causes and characteristic phenomena of States of Society generally. A _State of Society_ is the simultaneous state of all the chief social facts (e.g. employments, beliefs, laws). It is a condition of the whole organism; and, when analysed, it exhibits uniformities of coexistence between its different elements. But, as this correlation between the phenomena is itself a law resulting from the laws which regulate the succession between one state of society and another, the fundamental problem of Social Science is to find these latter laws. The form of this succession, by which (on account of the exceptionally constant reaction, in social facts, of the effects, i.e. human character, on their causes, i.e. human circumstances) one social state is ever in process of changing into a different one, is now allowed to be, not, as in the solar system, a cycle, but a _progress_ (by which is not here _necessarily_ meant _improvement_, whatever the fact may be). In France it has been thought, that a law of progress, to be found by an analysis of the course of history, would enable us to predict the whole future. But such a law would be empirical, and not true beyond its own facts; for the succession of mental and social states cannot have an independent law. Empirical laws must indeed be found; or a _general_ Science of Society would be impossible: for, the character of any one generation is so much the result of the characters of all prior ones, that _men_ could not compute so long a series from the elementary laws producing it. But the empirical laws, when found (as they can be, since the series of the effects as a whole is ever growing in uniformity), must be shown by deductions to be, if not the only possible, or even the most probable, at least possible, consequences of the laws of human nature.

The empirical laws of society are uniformities, either of coexistence, or of succession. The former are ascertained and verified by Social Statics (which is the theory of the _consensus_, i.e. the mutual actions and reactions, of contemporaneous social elements); the latter, by Social Dynamics (the theory of Society considered as in a state of progress). As to Social Statics--there is, M. Comte thinks, a perpetual reciprocity of influence between all aspects of the same organism, and to such an extent, that the condition of any one which we cannot directly observe can be estimated by that of another which we can. There is, he considers, such an interdependence, not only between the different sciences and arts among themselves, but between the sciences in general and the arts in general, even between the condition of different nations of the same age, and between a form of government and the civilisation of the period. Social Statics will ascertain for us the requisites of stable political union: it will enquire what special circumstances have always attended on such union, increasing and decreasing in proportion to its completeness; and will then verify these facts as requisites by deducing them from general laws of human nature. Thus, history indicates as such requisites and conditions of free political union: 1. A system of educational discipline checking man's tendency to anarchy; 2. Loyalty, i.e. a feeling of there being something, whether persons, institutions, or individual freedom and political and social equality, which is not to be, at least in practice, called in question; 3. That which the Roman Empire, notwithstanding all its tyranny, established, viz. a strong sense of common interest among fellow-citizens (a very different feeling, by the bye, to mere antipathy to foreigners).

Social Dynamics regards sequences. But the _consensus_ in social facts prevents our tracing the leading facts in one generation to separate causes in a prior one. Therefore, we must find the law of the correspondence not only between the simultaneous states, but between the simultaneous changes of the elements of society. To find this law, which, when duly verified, will be the scientific derivative law of the development of humanity, we must combine the statical view of the phenomena with the dynamical. Fortunately, the state of mankind's speculative faculties and beliefs, being the prime agent of the social movement, furnishes a clue in the maze of social elements, since the order of human progression in all respects will mainly depend on the order of progression of this prime agent. That the other dispositions which aid in social progress (e.g. the desire for increased material comfort) owe their means of working to this (however relatively weak a propensity it may be) is a conclusion from the laws of human nature; and this conclusion is in accordance also with the course of history, in which internal social changes have ever been preceded by proportionate intellectual changes. To determine the law of the successive transformations of opinions all past time must be searched, since such changes appear definitely only at long intervals. M. Comte alone has followed out this conception of the Historical Method; and his generalisation, to the effect that speculation has, on all subjects, three successive stages, has high scientific value.

The Historical Method will trace the derivative laws of social order and progress. It will enable us both to predict the future, and (thus founding the noblest part of the Political Art) partly to shape it. At present, both the Science and the Art are in the rudiments; but they are progressing.