s reducible to
general laws as the other phenomena of the universe, and with the hope
of exploring these laws by the same instruments of observation and
verification as had done such triumphant work in the case of the
latter. Comte separates the collective facts of society and history
from the individual phenomena of biology; then he withdraws these
collective facts from the region of external volition, and places them
in the region of law. The facts of history must be explained, not by
providential interventions, but by referring them to conditions
inherent in the successive stages of social existence. This conception
makes a science of society possible. What is the method? It comprises,
besides observation and experiment (which is, in fact, only the
observation of abnormal social states), a certain peculiarity of
verification. We begin by deducing every well-known historical
situation from the series of its antecedents. Thus we acquire a body
of empirical generalisations as to social phenomena, and then we
connect the generalisations with the positive theory of human nature.
A sociological demonstration lies in the establishment of an
accordance between the conclusions of historical analysis and the
preparatory conceptions of biological theory. As Mr. Mill puts
it:--'If a sociological theory, collected from historical evidence,
contradicts the established general laws of human nature; if (to use
M. Comte's instances) it implies, in the mass of mankind, any very
decided natural bent, either in a good or in a bad direction; if it
supposes that the reason, in average human beings, predominates over
the desires or the disinterested desires over the personal,--we may
know that history has been misinterpreted, and that the theory is
false. On the other hand, if laws of social phenomena, empirically
generalised from history, can, when once suggested, be affiliated to
the known laws of human nature; if the direction actually taken by the
developments and changes of human society can be seen to be such as
the properties of man and of his dwelling-place made antecedently
probable, the empirical generalisations are raised into positive laws,
and sociology becomes a science.' The result of this method is an
exhibition of the events of human experience in co-ordinated series
that manifest their own graduated connection.

Next, as all investigation proceeds from that which is known best to
that which is unknown or less well known,