cientific results, does not force us to renounce the application of
scientific method. The difficulty applies in some degree even to
physiology as compared with physics, as the vital phenomena are
incomparably more complex than those with which we have to deal in the
simpler sciences; and yet nobody doubts that a scientific physiology is
a possibility, and, to some extent, a reality. Now, in sociology,
however imperfect it may be, we may still apply the same methods which
have been so fruitful in other departments of thought. We may undertake
it in the scientific spirit which depends upon patient appeal to
observation, and be guided by the constant recollection that we are
dealing with an organism, the various relations of whose constituent
parts are determined by certain laws to which we may, perhaps, make
some approximation. We may do so, although their mutual actions and
reactions are so complex and subtle that we can never hope to
disentangle them with any approach to completeness. And one test of the
legitimacy of our methods will be, that although we do not hope to
reach any precise and definitely assignable law, we yet reach, or aim
at reaching, results which, while wanting in precision, want precision
alone to be capable of incorporation in an ideal science such as might
actually exist for a supernatural observer of incomparably superior
powers. A man who knows, though he knows nothing more, that the moon is
kept in its orbit by forces similar to or identical with those which
cause the fall of an apple, knows something which only requires more
definite treatment to be made into a genuine theory of gravitation. If,
on the contrary, he merely pays himself with words, with vague guesses
about occult properties, or a supposed angel who directs the moon's
course, he is still in the unscientific stage. His theory is not
science still in the vague, but something which stops the way to
science. Now, if we can never hope to get further than the step which
in the problem of gravitation represents the first step towards
science, yet that step may be a highly important one. It represents a
diversion of the current of thought from such channels as end in mere
shifting sands of speculation, into the channel which leads towards
some definite conclusion, verifiable by experience, and leading to
conclusions, not very precise, but yet often pointing to important
practical results. It may, perhaps, be said that, as the change which