THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL
The negative movement which filled the eighteenth century had for its watchword on the economic side the liberation ofindustrial effort from both feudal survivals and Governmental fetters.But in all the aspects of that movement,the economicas well as the rest,the process of demolition was historically only the necessary preliminary condition of a total renovationtowards which Western Europe was energetically tending,though with but an indistinct conception of its precise nature.Thedisorganization of the body of opinion which underlay the old system outran the progress towards the establishment of newprinciples adequate to form a guidance in the future.The critical philosophy which had wrought the disorganization couldonly repeat its formulas of absolute liberty,but was powerless for reconstruction.And hence there was seen throughout theWest,after the French explosion,the remarkable spectacle of a continuous oscillation between the tendency to recur tooutworn ideas and a vague impulse towards a new order in social thought and life,this impulse often taking an anarchicalcharacter.
From this state of oscillation,which has given to the 19th century its equivocal and transitional aspect,the only possibleissue was in the foundation of a scientific social doctrine which should supply a basis for the gradual convergence of opinionon human questions.The foundation of such a doctrine is the immortal service for which the world is indebted to AugusteComte (17981857).
The leading features of Sociology,as he conceived it,are the following:(1)it is essentially one science,in which all theelements of a social state are studied in their relations and mutual actions;(2)it includes a dynamical as well as a staticaltheory of society;(3)it thus eliminates the absolute,substituting for an imagined fixity the conception of ordered change;(4)its principal method,though others are not excluded,is that of historical comparison;(5)it is pervaded by moral ideas,bynotions of social duty,as opposed to the individual rights which were derived as corollaries from the jus naturae ;and (6)inits spirit and practical consequences it tends to the realisation of all the great ends which compose "the popular cause";yet(7)it aims at this through peaceful means,replacing revolution by evolution.(1)The several characteristics we haveenumerated are not independent;they may be shown to be vitally connected with each other.Several of these features mustnow be more fully described;the others will meet us before the close of the present survey.
In the masterly exposition of sociological method which is contained in the fourth volume of the Philosophie Positive (1839),(2)Comte marks out the broad division between social statics and social dynamicsthe former studying the laws ofsocial coexistence,the latter those of social development.The fundamental principle of the former is the general consensusbetween the several social organs and functions,which,without unduly pressing a useful analogy,we may regard asresembling that which exists between the several organs and functions of an animal body.The study of dynamical is differentfrom,and necessarily subordinated to,that of statical sociology,progress being in fact the development of order,just as thestudy of evolution in biology is different from,and subordinated to,that of the structures and functions which are exhibitedby evolution as they exist at the several points of an ascending scale.The laws of social coexistence and movement are asmuch subjects for observation as the corresponding phenomena in the life of an individual organism.For the study ofdevelopment in particular,a modification of the comparative method familiar to biologists will be the appropriate mode ofresearch.The several successive stages of society will have to be systematically compared,in order to discover their laws ofsequence,and to determine the filiation of their characteristic features.
Though we must take care that both in our statical and dynamical studies we do not ignore or contradict the fundamentalproperties of human nature,the project of deducing either species of laws from those properties independently of directobservation is one which cannot be realised.Neither the general structure of human society nor the march of its developmentcould be so predicted.This is especially evident with respect to dynamical laws,because,in the passage of society from onephase to another,the preponderating agency is the accumulated influence of past generations,which is much too complex tobe investigated deductivelya conclusion which it is important to keep steadily before us now that some of the (so-called)anthropologists are seeking to make the science of society a mere annex and derivative of biology.The principles of biologyunquestionably lie at the foundation of the social science,but the latter has,and must always have,a field of research and amethod of inquiry peculiar to itself.The field is history in the largest sense,including contemporary fact;and the principal,though not exclusive,method is,as we have said,that process of sociological comparison which is most conveniently called"the historical method."
