prevision. This concentration is all the more apt for the purpose of our inquiry, because there is no other view in which the new social philosophy is so clearly distinguished from the old. Events ordered by a supernatural will may leave room for a supposition of revelation; but the very thought of prevision in that case is sacrilegious, and the case is essentially the same when the direction of events is assigned to metaphysical entities, except that it leaves the chance of revelation, the existence of which chance shows that the metaphysical conception is a mere modification of the theological. The old conceptions may evidently be applied to explain opposite facts equally well; and they can never afford the slightest indication of those which are yet future. And, if it be objected that, at all times, a great number of secondary political facts have been considered susceptible of prevision, this only proves that the old philosophy has never been strictly universal, but has always been tempered by an admixture of feeble and imperfect positivism, without more or less of which society could not have held on its course. This admixture has, however, been hitherto insufficient to allow anything worthy the name of prevision, — anything more than a sort of popular forecast of some secondary and partial matters, — never rising above an uncertain and rough empiricism, which might be of some provisional use, but could not in any degree supply the need of a true political philosophy.

Having now ascertained the fundamental position of the problems of political philosophy, and thus obtained guidance as to the scientific aim to be attained, the next step is to exhibit the general spirit of social physics, whose conditions we have been deciding.

SPIRIT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

The philosophical principle of the science being that social phenomena are subject to natural laws, admitting of rational prevision, we have to ascertain what is the precise subject and what the peculiar character of those laws. The distinction between the statical and dynamical conditions of the subject must be extended to social science; and I shall treat of the conditions of

social existence, as in biology I treated of organization under the head of anatomy; and then of the laws of social movement, as in biology of those of life under the head of physiology. This division, necessary for exploratory purposes, must not be stretched beyond that use; and as we saw in biology that the distinction. becomes weaker with the advance of science, so shall we see that when the science of social physics is fully constituted, this division will remain for analytical purposes, but not as a real separation of the science into two parts. The distinction is not between two classes of facts, but between two aspects of a theory. It corre-. sponds with the double conception of order and progress; for order consists (in a positive sense) in a permanent harmony among the conditions of social existence, and progress consists in social development; and the conditions in the one case and the laws of movement in the other constitute the statics and dynamics of social physics.1 And here we find again the constant relation between the science and the art,—the theory and the practice. A science which proposes a positive study of the laws of order and of progress cannot be regarded with speculative rashness by practical men of any intelligence, since it offers the only rational basis for the practical means of satisfying the needs of society as to order and progress; and the correspondence in this case will be found to be analogous to that which we have seen to exist between biological science and the arts which relate to it, the medical art especially. One view of the deepest interest in this connection is that the ideas of order and progress which are in perpetual conflict in existing society, occasioning infinite disturbance, are thus reconciled and made necessary to each other, becoming as truly inseparable as the ideas of organization and life in the individual being. The further we go in the study of the conditions of human society, the more clearly will the organizing and progressive spirit of the positive philosophy become manifest.

1 The present tendency among students is to question the utility of a static study of society. Sociology is coming to be a study of activities and processes, of manifestations of social energy. Therefore the distinction between statical and dynamical sociology, while logically possible, is practically of little value. ED.

STATICAL STUDY

The statical study of sociology consists in the investigation of laws of action and reaction of the different parts of the social system, apart, for the occasion, from the fundamental movement which is always gradually modifying them. In this view, sociological prevision, founded upon the exact general knowledge of those relations, acts by judging by each other the various statical indications of each mode of social existence in conformity with direct observation, just as is done daily in the case of anatomy. This view condemns the existing philosophical practice of contemplating social elements separately, as if they had an independent existence, and it leads us to regard them as in mutual relation and forming a whole, which compels us to treat them in combination. By this method not only are we furnished with the only possible basis for the study of social movement, but we are put in possession of an important aid to direct observation, since many social elements which cannot be investigated by immediate observation may be estimated by their scientific relation to others already known. When we have a scientific knowledge of the interior relation of the parts of any science or art, and again of the relation of the sciences to each other, and again of the relations of. the arts to their respective sciences, the observation of certain portions of the scheme enables us to pronounce on the state of other portions with a true philosophical security. The case is the same when, instead of studying the collective social phenomena of a single nation, we include in the study those of contemporary nations whose reciprocal influence cannot be disputed, though it is much reduced in modern times, and, as in the instance of western Europe and eastern Asia, apparently almost effaced.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

The only essential case in which this fundamental relation is misconceived or neglected is that which is the most important of all, involving, as it does, social organization, properly so called. The theory of social organization is still conceived of

as absolute and isolated, independent altogether of the general analysis of the corresponding civilization, of which it can, in fact, constitute only one of the principal elements. This vice is chargeable in an almost equal degree upon the most opposite political schools, which agree in abstract discussions of political systems, without thinking of the coexisting state of civilization, and usually conclude with making their immutable political type coincide with an infantile state of human development. If we ascend to the philosophical source of this error, we shall find it, I think, in the great theological dogma of the fall of man.1 This fundamental dogma, which reappears, in one form or another, in all religions, and which is supported in its intellectual influence by the natural propensity of men to admire the past, tends, directly and necessarily, to make the continuous deterioration of society coincide with the extension of civilization. We have noticed before how, when it passes from the theological into the metaphysical state, this dogma takes the form of the celebrated hypothesis of a chimerical state of nature superior to the social state, and the more remote, the further we advance in civilization. We cannot fail to perceive the extreme seriousness, in a political as well as a philosophical sense, of an error so completely incorporated with existing doctrines, and so deeply influencing, in an unconscious way, our collective social speculations, -the more disastrously, perhaps, for not being expressly maintained as a general principle. If it were so presented it must immediately give way before sound philosophical discussion, for it is in direct contradiction to many ideas in political philosophy which, without having attained any scientific consistency, are obtaining some intellectual ascendency through the natural course of events or the expansion of the general mind. For instance, all enlightened political writers acknowledge more or less mutual relation between political institutions; and this is the first direct step towards the rational conception of the agreement of the special system of institutions with the total system of civilization

1 This is only an attempt to explain the obvious lack of harmony between man and his environment. - ED.

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONCURRENCE

We now see the best thinkers admitting a constant mutual connection between the political and the civil power: which means, in scientific language, that preponderating social forces always end in assuming the direction of society. Such partial advances towards a right view-such fortunate feeling after the right path-must not, however, induce us to relax in our requirements of a true philosophical conception of that general social agreement which can alone constitute organization. Desultory indications, more literary than scientific, can never supply the place of a strict philosophical doctrine, as we may see from the fact that, from Aristotle downwards (and even from an earlier period), the greater number of philosophers have constantly reproduced the famous aphorism of the necessary subordination of laws to manners, without this germ of sound philosophy having had any effect on the general habit of regarding institutions as independent of the coexisting state of civilization, however strange it may seem that such a contradiction should live through twenty centuries. This is, however, the natural course with intellectual principles and philosophical opinions as well as with social manners and political institutions. When once they have obtained possession of men's minds, they live on, notwithstanding their admitted impotence and inconvenience, giving occasion to more and more serious inconsistencies, till the expansion of human reason originates new principles, of equivalent generality and superior rationality. We must not, therefore, take for more than their worth the desultory attempts that we see made in the right direction, but must insist on the principle which lies at the heart of every scheme of social organization, the necessary participation of the collective political régime in the universal consensus of the social body.

The scientific principle of the relation between the political and the social condition is simply this: that there must always be a spontaneous harmony between the whole and the parts of the social system, the elements of which must inevitably be sooner or later combined in a mode entirely conformable to their