Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/635

Rh more must the eight prohibitory clauses of the decalogue be called ethical nihilism. Prof. Huxley nevertheless thought his title a fit one; and has continued to use it in the last edition of his "Critiques and Addresses." This political doctrine held by me remains unchanged, but the view taken of it by Prof. Huxley appears to have been reversed. In an emphatic manner he has recently warned me against "undertaking to preserve the health and heal the diseases of an organism vastly more complicated than the human body," having for my guides "long chains of deduction from abstract ethical assumptions." So that while represented as one who would have no administration at all, I am represented as advocating dangerous administrative methods of healing diseases of the body politic. My policy is characterized now as a policy of no action, and now as a policy of rash action. These two characterizations are applied to the same set of beliefs, and they stand in direct contradiction. Necessarily there must be extreme error in one or both; and the latter alternative is the true one: both are wrong.

The "way of thinking" which Prof. Huxley indicates as separated by a gulf from his own, and which he implies is exclusively pursued by me, is that of reaching conclusions by "long chains of deduction from abstract ethical assumptions, hardly any link of which can be tested experimentally." On the other hand the course he advocates is that of seeking guidance from "inductions based on careful observation and experience"—a course which he implies is not pursued by me, either in the political sphere or elsewhere; certainly not in the political sphere. Now let us ask what is implied by the evidence. Up to the end of the division treating of Ecclesiastical Institutions, where it has stood still for these four years, the "Principles of Sociology" contains more than five thousand facts, gathered from accounts of more than two hundred societies, savage and civilized, ancient and modern. If, then, I am rightly described as pursuing the deductive method (exclusively, as it would appear), there arises this curious question:—How have I used for deductive purposes more facts than have been used by any other writer on Sociology for inductive purposes? "This is irrelevant," will perhaps be the rejoinder—"the question concerns not the method pursued in dealing with Sociology at large, but the method pursued in dealing with governmental actions at the present time." Merely remarking that it would be strange had I pursued one method in treating the subject at large and an opposite method in treating a small division of it, I go on to reply that I have not pursued the opposite method but the same method. The views I hold respecting the sphere of governmental action are everywhere supported by inductions. The essay on "Over-Legislation," dating back to 1853, is almost