they are grounded. The main scientific strength of sociological demonstrations must ever lie in the accordance between the conclusions of historical analysis and the preparatory conceptions of the biological theory. And thus we find, look where we will, a confirmation of that chief intellectual character of the new science, the philosophical preponderance of the spirit of the whole over the spirit of detail.

This method ranks, in sociological science, with that of zoölogical comparison in the study of individual life; and we shall see, as we proceed, that the succession of social states exactly corresponds, in a scientific sense, with the gradation of organisms in biology; and the social series, once clearly established, must be as real and as useful as the animal series.

PROMISE OF A FOURTH METHOD

When the method has been used long enough to disclose its properties, I am disposed to think that it will be regarded as so very marked a modification of positive research as to deserve a separate place; so that, in addition to observation properly so called, experiment, and comparison, we shall have the historical method as a fourth and final mode of the art of observing. It will be derived, according to the usual course, from the mode which immediately precedes it; and it will be applied to the analysis of the most complex phenomena.

I must be allowed to point out that the new political philosophy, sanctioning the old leadings of popular reason, restores to history all its scientific rights as a basis of wise social speculation, after the metaphysical philosophy had striven to induce us to discard all large considerations of the past. In the foregoing departments of natural philosophy we have seen that the positive spirit, instead of being disturbing in its tendencies, is remarkable for confirming, in the essential parts of every science, the inestimable intuitions of popular good sense, of which indeed science is merely a systematic prolongation, and which a barren metaphysical philosophy alone could despise. In this case, so far from restricting the influence which human reason has ever attributed to history in

political combinations, the new social philosophy increases it radically and eminently. It asks from history something more than counsel and instruction to perfect conceptions which are derived from another source; it seeks its own general direction through the whole system of historical conclusions.1

1 The analysis of the familiar facts of everyday life deserves a place as a fifth method. It has probably been carried further by the Austrian school of economists in their development of the theory of value than by any other group of students in the general field of the social sciences. This method seeks to find in human nature itself the motives which produce social and economic activities, and to discover how these motives counteract and balance one another. So fruitful has been this method in economics that the student of sociology must look forward with confidence to its application to many of the wider problems of sociology and politics. No one can understand, to take a single example, the territorial expansion of the United States since the Spanish War who does not make a minute analysis of the motives and appetites of the people. Paradoxical as it may seem, this movement must be studied as a form of consumption of wealth, as the gratification of an appetite. It is therefore useless to point out that it is an expensive policy. It is also expensive to build fine houses, keep steam yachts or horses and carriages, or to own shooting boxes in the Adirondacks. If we conclude that the satisfaction derived from any of these forms of private consumption is worth the expense, that is sufficient. Similarly, if the people conclude that the satisfaction derived from such forms of public consumption as magnificent public buildings, large navies, or distant territorial possessions, is worth all the expense, they are not likely to be deterred by financial considerations. — ED.

III

RELATION OF SOCIOLOGY TO THE OTHER DEPARTMENTS OF POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY1

RELATION TO BIOLOGY

The subordination of social science to biology is so evident that nobody denies it in statement, however it may be neglected in practice. This contrariety between the statement and the practice is due to something else besides the faulty condition of social studies; it results also from the imperfection of biological science, and especially from its most conspicuous imperfection. of all, —that of its highest part, relating to intellectual and moral phenomena. It is by this portion that biology and sociology are the most closely connected; and cerebral physiology is too recent, and its scientific state too immature, to have admitted, as yet, of any proper organization of the relations of the two sciences. Whenever the time for that procèss arrives, the connection will be seen to bear two aspects. Under the first, biology will be seen to afford the starting point of all social speculation, in accordance with the analysis of the social faculties of man, and of the organic conditions which determine its character. But, moreover, as we can scarcely at all investigate the most elementary terms of the social series, we must construct them by applying the positive theory of human nature to the aggregate of corresponding circumstances, regarding the small materials that we are able to obtain as rather adapted to facilitate and improve this rational determination than to show us what society really was at so early a period. When the social condition has advanced so far as to exclude this kind of deduction, the second

1 From The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, translated by Harriet Martineau, Vol. II, chap. iv, pp. 112-117, London and New York, 1853.

aspect presents itself, and the biological theory of man is implicated with the sociological in a less direct and special manner. The whole social evolution of the race must proceed in entire accordance with biological laws; and social phenomena must always be founded on the necessary invariableness of the human organism, the characteristics of which-physical, intellectual, and moral — are always found to be essentially the same, and related in the same manner at every degree of the social scale, no development of them attendant upon the social condition ever altering their nature in the least, or, of course, creating or destroying any faculties whatever, or transposing their influence. No sociological view can therefore be admitted at any stage of the science, or under any appearance of historical induction, that is contradictory to the known laws of human nature. No view can be admitted, for instance, which supposes a very marked character of goodness or wickedness to exist in the majority of men, or which represents the sympathetic affections as prevailing over the personal ones, or the intellectual over the affective. faculties, etc. In cases like these, which are more common than the imperfection of the biological theory would lead us to expect, all sociological principles must be as carefully submitted to ulterior correction as if they supposed human life to be extravagantly long, or contravened in any other way the physical laws of humanity; because the intellectual and moral conditions of human existence are as real and as imperative as its material conditions, though more difficult to estimate, and therefore less known. Thus, in a biological view, all existing political doctrines are radically vicious, because, in their irrational estimate of political phenomena, they suppose qualities to exist among rulers and the ruled — here an habitual perverseness or imbecility, and there a spirit of concert or calculation—which are incompatible with positive ideas of human nature, and which would impute pathological monstrosity to whole classes, which is simply absurd. An example like this shows what valuable resources positive sociology must derive from its subordination to biology, and especially in regard to cerebral physiology, whenever it comes to be studied as it ought.

The students of biology have, however, the same tendency to exalt their own science at the expense of that which follows it, that physicists and chemists have shown in regard to biology. The biologists lose sight of historical observation altogether, and represent sociology as a mere corollary of the science of man, in the same way that physicists and chemists treat biology as a mere derivative from the inorganic philosophy. The injury to science is great in both cases. If we neglect historical comparison, we can understand nothing of the social evolution; and the chief phenomenon in sociology - the phenomenon which marks its scientific originality, that is, the gradual and continuous influence of generations upon each other-would be disguised or unnoticed for want of the necessary key, historical analysis. From the time that the influence of former generations becomes the cause of any modification of the social movement the mode of investigation must accord with the nature of the phenomena; and historical analysis therefore becomes preponderant, while biological considerations, which explained the earliest movements of society, cease to be more than a valuable auxiliary and means of control. It is the same thing as when, in the study of inorganic science, men quit deduction for direct observation. It is the same thing as when, in biology, observers proceed from a contemplation of the organism and its medium to an analysis of the ages of the individual being, as a principal means of investigation. The only difference is that the change in the instrument is the more necessary the more complex are the phenomena to be studied. This would have been seen at once, and political philosophy would have been admitted to depend on this condition for its advance, but for the prevalence of the vicious absolute spirit in social speculation, which, neglecting the facts of the case, forever strives to subject social considerations to the absolute conception of an immutable political type, no less adverse to the relative spirit of positive philosophy than theological and metaphysical types, though less indefinite. The consequence of this error is that social modifications proper to certain periods, and passing away with them, are too often supposed to be inherent in human nature, and therefore indestructible. Even