Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/406

Rh 390 POLITICAL ECONOMY many, and which promises to exercise a still more potent influence in the future. We mean the rise of the His torical School, which we regard as marking the third epoch in the modern development of economic science. THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL. The negative movement which filled the 18th century had for its watchword on the economic side the liberation of industrial effort from both feudal survivals and Govern mental fetters. But in all the aspects of that movement, the economic as well as the rest, the process of demolition was historically only the necessary preliminary condition of a total renovation, towards which western Europe was energetically tending, though with but an indistinct con ception of its precise nature. The disorganization of the body of opinion which underlay the old system outran the progress towards the establishment of new principles ade quate to form a guidance in the future. The critical phi losophy which had wrought the disorganization could only repeat its formulas of absolute liberty, but was powerless for reconstruction. And hence there was seen throughout the West, after the French explosion, the remarkable spec tacle of a continuous oscillation between the tendency to recur to outworn ideas and a vague impulse towards a new order in social thought and life, this impulse often taking an anarchical character. From this state of oscillation, which has given to our century its equivocal and transitional aspect, the only possible issue was in the foundation of a scientific social doctrine which should supply a basis for the gradual con vergence of opinion on human questions. The foundation of such a doctrine is the immortal service for which the world is indebted to Auguste Comte. Comte. The leading features of sociology, as he conceived it, are the following: (1) it is essentially one science, in which all the elements of a social state are studied in their relations and mutual actions ; (2) it includes a dynamical as well as a statical theory of society ; (3) it thus elimin ates the absolute, substituting for an imagined fixity the conception of ordered change; (4) its principal method, though others are not excluded, is that of historical com parison ; (5) it is pervaded by moral ideas, by notions of social duty, as opposed to the individual rights which were derived as corollaries from the jus natures, ; and (6) in its spirit and practical consequences it tends to the realiza tion of all the great ends which compose &quot; the popular cause&quot;; yet (7) it aims at this through peaceful means, replacing revolution by evolution. The several character istics we have enumerated are not independent ; they may be shown to-be vitally connected with each other. Several of these features must now be more fully described ; the others will meet us before the close of the present survey. In the masterly exposition of sociological method which is contained in the fourth volume of the Philosophic Positive (1839), 1 Comte marks out the broad division between social statics and social dynamics the former studying the laws of social coexistence, the latter those of social development. The fundamental principle of the former is the general consensus between the several social organs and functions, which, without unduly pressing a useful analogy, we may regard as resembling that which exists between the several organs and functions of an animal body. The study of dynamical is different from, and necessarily subordinated to, that of statical sociology, progress being in fact the development of order, just as the study of evolution in biology is different from, and subordinated to, that of the structures and functions 1 He had already in 1822 stated his fundamental principles in an Ie which is reproduced in the Appendix to his Politique Positive. several points of an ascending scale. The laws of social co-existence and movement are as much subjects for observation as the corresponding phenomena in the life of an individual organism. For the study of development in particular, a modification of the comparative method familiar to biologists will be the appropriate mode of research. The several successive stages of society will
 * which are exhibited by evolution as they exist at the
 * have to be systematically compared, in order to discover

I their laws of sequence, and to determine the filiation of ! their characteristic features. Though we must take care that both in our statical and dynamical studies we do not ignore or contradict the fundamental properties of human nature, the project of deducing either species of laws from thc.se properties independently of direct observation is one which cannot be realized. Neither the general structure of human society nor the march of its development could be so pre dicted. This is especially evident with respect to dynami cal laws, because, in the passage of society from one phase to another, the preponderating agency is the accumulated influence of past generations, which is much too complex to be investigated deductively a conclusion which it is important to keep steadily before us now that some of the (so-called) anthropologists are seeking to make the science of society a mere annex and derivative of biology. The principles of biology unquestionably lie at the foundation of the social science, but the latter has, and must always have, a field of research and a method of inquiry peculiar to itself. The field is history in the largest sense, includ ing contemporary fact ; and the principal, though not exclusive, method is, as we have said, that process of socio logical comparison which is most conveniently called the historical method. These general principles affect the economic no less than other branches of social speculation ; and with respect to that department of inquiry they lead to important results. They show r that the idea of forming a true theory of the economic frame and working of society apart from its other sides is illusory. Such study is indeed provisionally indispensable, but no rational theory of the economic organs and functions of society can be constructed if they are considered as isolated from the rest. In other words, a separate economic science is, strictly speaking, an im possibility, as representing only one portion of a complex organism, all whose parts and their actions are in a con stant relation of correspondence and reciprocal modifica tion. Hence, too, it will follow that, whatever useful indications may be derived from our general knowledge of individual human nature, the economic structure of society and its mode of development cannot be deductively fore seen, but must be ascertained by direct historical inves tigation. We have said &quot; its mode of development &quot;; for it is obvious that, as of every social element, so of the economic factor in human affairs, there must be a dyna mical doctrine, a theory of the successive phases of the economic condition of society ; yet in the accepted systems this was a desideratum, nothing but some partial and fragmentary notions on this whole side of the subject being yet extant. And, further, the economic structure and working of one historic stage being different from those of another, we must abandon the idea of an absolute system possessing universal validity, and substitute that of a series of such systems, in which, however, the succes sion is not at all arbitrary, but is itself regulated by law. Though Comte s enterprise was a constructive one, his aim being the foundation of a scientific theory of society, he could not avoid criticizing the labours of those who before him had treated several branches of social inquiry. Amongst them the economists were necessarily considered ;