RELATION TO INORGANIC PHILOSOPHY. 263 with the conditions of vital existence. This principle, being the necessary result of the distinction between the statical and the dynamical condition, belongs eminently to the study of living bodies, in which that distinction is especially marked, and where alone the general idea of it can properly be acquired. But, great as is its direct use in the study of individual life, it is applicable in a much more extensive and essential way in social science. It is by means of this principle that the new philosophy, uniting the two philosophical meanings of the word necessary, exhibits as inevitable that which first presents itself as indispensable; and the converse. There must be something in it peculiarly in harmony with social investigations, as we are led up to it by the most opposite methods of 'approach; one evidence of which is De Maistre's fine political aphorism, "Whatever is necessary exists." Relation to Inorganic philosophy. If sociology is thus subordinated to biology, it must be scientifically related to the whole system of inorganic philosophy, because biology is so. But it is also connected with that system by immediate relations of its own. In the first place, it is only by the inorganic philosophy that we can duly analyse the entire system of exterior conditions, chemical, physical, and astronomical, amidst which the social evolution proceeds, and by which its rate of progress is determined. Social phenomena can no more be understood apart from their environment than those of individual life. All exterior disturbances which could affect the life of individual Man must change his social existence; and, conversely, his social existence could not be seriously disturbed by any modifications of the medium which should not derange his separate condition. I need, therefore, only refer to what I have said in regard to the influence of astronomical and other conditions on vital existence; for the same considerations bear on the case of social phenomena. It is plain that society, as well as individual beings, is affected by the circumstances of the earth's daily rotation and annual movement; and by states of heat, moisture, and electricity in the surrounding medium; and by the chemical conditions of the atmosphere, the waters, the soil, etc. I need only observe that the effect of these influences is even more marked in sociology than in biology, not only because the organism is more complex, and its phenomena of a higher order, but because the social organism is regarded as susceptible of indefinite duration, so as to render sensible many gradual modifications which would be disguised from our notice by the brevity of individual life. Astronomical conditions, above all others, manifest their importance to living beings only by passing from the individual to the social case. Much smaller disturbances would visibly affect a social condition than would disturb an individual life, which requires a smaller concurrence of favourable circumstances. For instance, the dimensions of the globe are scientifically more important in sociology than in biology, because they set bounds to the ultimate extension of population; a circumstance worthy of grave consideration in any positive system of political speculation. And this is only one case of very many. If we consider, in regard to dynamical conditions, what would be the effect of any change in the degree of obliquity of the ecliptic, in the stability of the poles of rotation, and yet more in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, we shall see that vast changes in social life must be produced by causes which could not endanger individual existence. One of the first reflections that presents itself is that positive sociology was not possible till the inorganic philosophy had reached a certain degree of precision. The very conceptiom of stability in human association could not be positively established till the discovery of gravitation had assured us of the permanence of the conditions of life; and till physics and chemistry had taught us that the surface of our planet has attained a natural condition, apart from accidents too rare and too partial to affect our estimate; or, at least, that the crust of the globe admits of only variations so limited and so gradual as not to interfere with the natural course of social development, a development which could not be hoped for under any liability to violent and frequent physicochemical convulsions of any extent in the area of human life. There is thus more room to apprehend that inorganic philosophy is not advanced enough to supply the conditions of a positive polity, than to suppose that any real EFFECT F INORGANIC INFLUENCES. 265 political philosophy can be framed in independence of inorganic science. We have seen before, however, that there is a perpetual accordance between the possible and the indispensable. What we must have, we are able to obtain; and if there are, as in the case of the mutual action of different starry systems, cosmical ideas which are inaccessible to us, we know, in regard to sociology now, as to biology before, that they are of no practical importance to us. Wherever we look, over the whole field of science, we shall find that, amidst the great imperfection of inorganic philosophy, it is sufficiently advanced, in all essential respects, to contribute to the constitution of true social science, if we only have the prudence to postpone to a future time investigations which would now be premature. I observed in a former chapter that no disturbing causes, acting on social development, could do more than affect its rate of progress. This is true of the operation of influences from the inorganic world, as of all others. In our review of biology we saw that the human being cannot be modified indefinitely by exterior circumstances; that such modifications can affect only the degrees of phenomena, without at all changing their nature; and again, that when the disturbing influences exceed their general limits, the organism is no longer modified, but destroyed. All this is, if possible, more eminently true of the social than of the individual organism, on account of its higher complexity and position. The course of its development must therefore be regarded as belonging to the essence of the phenomenon itself, and therefore essentially identical in all conceivable hypotheses about the corresponding medium. It is true we can easily imagine, as I said just now, that so delicate an evolution may be prevented by external disturbances, and particularly astronomical perturbations, which would not destroy the race; but as long as the evolution does proceed, it must be supposed subject to the same essential laws, and varying only in its speed, as it traverses the stages of which it is composed, without their succession or their final tendency being ever changed. Such a change would be beyond the power of even biological causes. If, for instance, we admitted some marked alterations in the human organism, or, what comes to the same thing, conceived of the social development of another animal race, we must always suppose a common course of general development. Such is the philosophical condition imposed by the nature of the subject, which could not become positive, except in as far as it could be thus conceived of; and this is much more conspicuously true in regard to inorganic causes. As to the rest, this is only another illustration of what we have so often seen in the course of our survey of the scientific hierarchy, that if the less general phenomena occur under the necessary preponderance of the more general, this subordination cannot in any way alter their proper laws, but only the extent and duration of their real manifestations. Man's action on the external world. One consideration remains, of the more importance because it applies especially to physico-chemical knowledge, which we seem to have rather neglected in this sketch for astronomical doctrine: I mean the considerations of Man's action on the external world, the gradual development of which affords one of the chief aspects of the social evolution, and without which the evolution could not have taken place as a whole, as it would have been stopped at once by the preponderance of the material obstacles proper to the human condition. In short, all human progress, political, moral, or intelectual, is inseparable from material progression, in virtue of the close interconnection which, as we have seen, characterizes the natural course of social phenomena. Now, it is clear that the action of Man upon nature depends chiefly on his knowledge of the laws of inorganic phenomena, though biological phenomena must also find a place in it. We must bear in mind, too, that physics, and yet more chemistry, form the basis of human power, since astronomy, notwithstanding its eminent participation in it, concurs not as an instrument for modifying the medium, but by prevision. Here we have another ground on which to exhibit the impossibility of any rational study of social development otherwise than by combining sociological speculations with the whole of the doctrines of inorganic philosophy. Necessary It cannot be necessary to repeat here that which has been established as true with regard to the other sciences, and which is more NECESSARY EDUCATION FOR SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY. 267 conspicuously true as each science becomes more complex, -that an adequate general knowledge of all the preceding sciences in the hierarchy is requisite to the understanding of the one that follows. In the case of sociology the absence of this preparation is the obvious cause of the failure of all attempts to regenerate the science. We desire to recognize in it a positive science, while we leave the conditions of positivity unfulfilled. We do not even form a just idea of the attributes of positivism, of what constitutes the explanation of a phenomenon, of the conditions of genuine investigation, or of the true intention in which hypotheses should be instituted and employed. We must thoroughly understand all these conditions, and use them in the natural order of the development of the sciences, venturing neither to select nor transpose, but following up the increasing complexity of the sciences, and recognizing the increase of resources which accompanies it, from astronomy with its simplicity of phenomena and of means of research, to sociology with its prodigious complexity and abundance of resources. Such discipline as this may be difficult; but it is indispensable. It is the only preparatory education which can introduce the positive spirit into the formation of social theories. Mathematical It is clear that this education must rest on a basis of mathematical philosophy, even apart preparation. from the necessity of mathematics to the study of inorganic philosophy. It is only in the region of mathematics that sociologists, or anybody else, can obtain a true sense of scientific evidence, and form the habit of rational and decisive argumentation; can, in short, learn to fulfil the logical conditions of all positive speculations, by studying universal positivism at its source. This training, obtained and employed with the more care on account of the eminent difficulty of social science, is what sociologists have to seek in mathematics. As for any application of number and of a mathematical law to sociological problems, if such a method is inadmissible in biology, it must be yet more decisively so here, for reasons of which I have already said enough. The only error of this class which would have deserved express notice, if we had not condemned it by anticipation, is the pretension of some geometers to render social |