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 480 AAfERJCAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1859

lution. Perhaps the most potent sources of such fallacies are the use of figures for comparatively short periods of time which do not admit of the elimination of transient causes, and the prone- ness of men to look at causes in the interest of parties, sects, and social classes, and to impute false causes to such social conditions as they may lament or admire. This brief discussion will per- haps suffice to set forth the elements of statistics, which must be considered as integral parts of the science. To understand statistics it is necessary to understand the science of kind, the science of measurement, the science of enumeration, the science of comparison, and the science of verification, as they are repre- sented in the science of statistics.

Causes are multitudinous. Much of demotic invention is exercised for the purpose of discovering the particular cause most easily modifiable in the interest of human purposes. In the multitude of such devices the causes are examined in a multitude of ways by a multitude of people who naturally seek verification for their inferences as to the best methods of modifying causes. In sociology this verification is by statistics, and any arrange- ment of figures which appears to verify an hypothesis may easily be believed as the true or modifiable cause of the effects considered.

In all the field of human thought there is no region in which verification is more important than in sociology, nor is there any field in which pseudo-verification entails more misery on man- kind. Men may claim to verify their speculations about motors, and arrive at conclusions in which perpetual motions are supposed to be involved in mechanical constructions ; but only the deluded persons themselves who are engaged in such enter- prises as inventors, promoters, or capitalists, are deceived. But when social inventions which are supposed to accomplish " per- petual justice " are adopted by men as bodies politic, calamity for the multitude is the result.

Statistics are collected by governments in all their units as

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