The Method proper to the Science of Society must be, in substance, the
same as in all other sciences; the interrogation and interpretation of
experience, by the twofold process of Induction and Deduction. But its
mode of practising these operations has features of peculiarity. In
general, Induction furnishes to science the laws of the elementary
facts, from which, when known, those of the complex combinations are
thought out deductively: specific observation of complex phaenomena
yields no general laws, or only empirical ones; its scientific function
is to verify the laws obtained by deduction. This mode of philosophizing
is not adequate to the exigencies of sociological investigation. In
social phaemomena the elementary facts are feelings and actions, and the
laws of these are the laws of human nature, social facts being the
results of human acts and situations. Since, then, the phaenomena of man
in society result from his nature as an individual being, it might be
thought that the proper mode of constructing a positive Social Science
must be by deducing it from the general laws of human nature, using the
facts of history merely for verification. Such, accordingly, has been
the conception of social science by many of those who have endeavoured
to render it positive, particularly by the school of Bentham. M. Comte
considers this as an error. We may, he says, draw from the universal
laws of human nature some conclusions (though even these, we think,
rather precarious) concerning the very earliest stages of human
progress, of which there are either no, or very imperfect, historical
records. But as society proceeds in its development, its phaenomena are
determined, more and more, not by the simple tendencies of universal
human nature, but by the accumulated influence of past generations over
the present. The human beings themselves, on the laws of whose nature
the facts of history depend, are not abstract or universal but
historical human beings, already shaped, and made what they are, by
human society. This being the case, no powers of deduction could enable