are the laws of
universal human nature. But the human beings, on the laws of whose
nature social facts depend, are not abstract or universal, but
historical human beings, already shaped and made what they are, not by
the simple tendencies of universal human nature, but by the accumulated
influence of past generations of human society. This being the case, the
laws of universal human nature evidently cannot serve as materials,
whence it would be possible for any powers of deduction, starting from
the bare conception of the Being Man, to predict beforehand how
successive generations of men would feel and act. Wherefore, in order to
get at social laws, we must reverse the ordinary method, seizing upon
any generalizations which the facts of history, empirically considered,
will supply, and then using the universal laws of human nature for the
verification of these generalizations.

I will not linger over the glaring inconsistency involved in the
conclusion thus arrived at, of appealing, for the verification of
empirical generalizations, to a species of deduction confessed to be
impracticable for want of the requisite materials. I prefer to show that
from Comte's own premises, as rendered by Mr. Mill, necessarily results
a separate conclusion, absolutely fatal to his sociologically creative
pretensions. According to him, as we have seen, the laws of elementary
social facts, or of human actions and feelings, are the laws of
universal human nature, which latter can, of course, be no other than
whatever habits of invariably, in given circumstances, feeling and
acting in given modes, may be common to all mankind. But it is admitted
that the particular generation of human beings at any time existing
must, by the accumulated influence of preceding generations, have been
rendered very different from every preceding generation: and nothing is
more certain than that two generations differing widely from each other
in character, would, in many given circumstances, not only not feel and
act in precisely the same, but would inevitably feel and act in widely
different, manners. Nor is this all. The circumstances by which any
generation is surrounded have been partly shaped for it by preceding
generations, partly modified by itself--so that it is not possible for
any two generations ever to find themselves in the same circumstances.
Wherefore, as there never can be a repetition of either men or of
circumstances precisely the same, it is