Mr. Spencer's "Social Statics." 327 tations of the human nature of individuals in a state of union. For, though the individual human being, as such, is conceivable to us, and though there are certain sciences which are concerned with the laws of purely individual human nature, yet, in point of fact, the individual human being is always thought of by us as a member of society. The individual man who is the object of our studies is always imagined as already existing in social relationship with other men; so that many of the phenomena which we set down as those of individual human nature, are in reality dependent for their existence on what Mr. Spencer calls the accident of social combination. In short, instead of representing society as built up of individuals, we may reverse the mode of thought, and represent individuals as the decomposed particles of society. In this sense, of course, it is true that the properties of the mass are the combined result of the properties of the particles, seeing that we have already implied in the particles the properties which they derive from belonging to the mass. But if we conceive the particles per se, if we first take for granted about human beings only as much as it is possible for us to conceive known about them as individual objects, then it is not true that the farther knowledge of what would result from the accident of their combination would be a mere work of logical inference. Were our knowledge of individual human nature in this sense as profound and accurate as it could possibly be, we could no more deduce thence the phenomena of associated human nature without the help of empiric observation of society than we could tell beforehand, from our knowledge of oxygen and hydrogen separately, that, when combined, they would form water. Instead of saying, therefore, with Mr. Spencer, that "the characteristics of beings in an associated state cannot arise from the accident of combination," and then patching up this proposition by admitting that "the gathering together may call out these characteristics," thus landing ourselves in a metaphysical controversy between arising and calling out, between the cause of a phenomenon which inductive science has nothing to do with, and the conditions of the appearance of a phenomenon which is what inductive science professes to ascertain; the true scientific mode of expression certainly would be, to say that the accident of combination generates new phenomena, and that therefore our knowledge of society as such has to be attained by distinct induction with respect to the social state, and not merely from our knowledge of human beings individually. In other words, the laws of the action of human beings in the mass are not logically resolvable into the laws of the action of human beings as individuals; and nothing can be possibly affirmed as completely true in the Social science from any theory, however correct, of individual human nature. A committee, or a public meeting even, is something more than merely the sum total of the individuals that compose it. Wherever a few persons are gathered together for a common purpose, much more in political communities and nations, there is, we believe, the virtual creation of a new organization subject to new laws of life. The researches of Reichenbach and the animal magnetists, may yet throw some light on this subject, by investigating the phenomena of sociability; meanwhile, let the fact as we have stated it be distinctly comprehended. As far as the application of Mr. Mill's simile is fair, men when brought together are converted into another kind of substance with dif ferent properties, as water is different from hydrogen and oxygen, or as nerves, muscles, and tendons are different from hydrogen, carbon, and azote. The contrary can be maintained only by a confusion of conception equivalent to that which, first implying in hydrogen and oxygen all that we know of them in their combined form as water, should then assert that water is the same as hydrogen and oxygen, taking no account of the cardinal fact of the case, that of the chemical union; or which, first implying in hydrogen, carbon, and azote, all that is known of them in their organized form as nerves, muscles, and tendons, should then assert these nerves, muscles, and tendons to be merely the chemical substances aforesaid, omitting all consideration of the accident of organization. Or, not to avoid Mr. Spencer's challenge, we do believe that we "exist in society after the same fashion, to some extent, as those compound polyps in which a number of individuals are based upon a living trunk common to them all." Not only do men in society perform functions peculiar to them in that state, as for example, that of passing laws, condemning criminals and the like, but some of the phenomena presented by human beings in the mass are almost contradictory in appearance to those exhibited by human beings individually. We believe that there are cases in which communities and nations spontaneously do what is repugnant to the wishes of all their members, taken one by one-cases in which men maintain sternly in the gross, as by the compulsion of a social reason or conscience, principles of action which individually they deny or abandon. Vico seems to have had some such notion very clearly in his mind; and we believe it is absolutely essential to a correct conception of the Social science. Thus only, indeed, does Sociology take its place as the last independent member of the series of the inductive sciences, distant from pure biology by an equal scientific remove, as that by which biology is distant from chemistry, chemistry from physics, physics from astronomy, and astronomy from mathematics. Fully to develop the importance of the notion we have thus Mr. Spencer's "Social Statics." 329 attempted to expound, would require more space than we have left. Among its consequences, as appears to us, would be a considerable diminution of value in that method of prosecuting the Social science, which Mr. Mill describes by the name of the Direct Deductive Method, that is, the method of directly inferring probable laws of society from the previously ascertained laws of individual human nature; and an enhanced regard for that other method, chiefly favoured by Comte, which Mr. Mill describes as the Historical or Inverse Deductive Method, that is, the method of first generalizing from actual observation of social phenomena, and then verifying the generalizations backward, as it were, by shewing their harmony with the known laws of the human mind. But our concern is chiefly with the effects of the notion on Mr. Spencer's speculations. The radical fallacy of these, it appears to us, consists in this, that they proceed on the supposition that society has no life, no purpose, no destiny as such, but is a mere numerical succession of individual existences. Hence, fixing his regard on the increase of the happiness of individuals, as the highest conceivable object for which the world can have been created, and having formulized the conditions of this happiness in the principle of equal rights for all, he constructs an ideal of society, whose highest principle is the rule of universal Laissezfaire. The whole problem of the Social state is, according to his view, to secure liberty to every individual to do as he pleases, so long as he does not infringe on the liberty of others to do as they please; and the sole purpose of government is therefore the negative one of repressing crime. Now our view is, in a great degree, the reverse of this. Society, as we believe, is not merely a device for the wellbeing of individuals; it has, we believe, an organic life, an ulterior destination, of its own; and it may sometimes even happen, we think, as in the case of a general war, that what is good and splendid in the social development, may not coincide with what is immediately beneficial for the individuals concerned in effecting it. Instead, therefore, of subordinating the laws of society to the ascertained personal interests of the individual, we would subordinate the laws of individual action to the ascertained conditions of noble social existence. Instead of regarding the polypidom as a mere invention to secure the rights of the polyps, we would regard the polyps as indentured servants to the higher being of the polypidom. How far Mr. Spencer's theory of equal rights for all, might even then hold good, and whether a theory of inequality of rights, of proportionality of rights to faculties, of a hierarchy of parts, might not be more tenable, we shall not now attempt to decide. Regarding his doctrine, however, of the right of the individual to ignore the State, we will say that we cannot assent to it; and that we hold that, in case of an attempted secession of the kind, the State has a right, capable of a just definition, to pursue the discontented individual, to clutch him back to his place, and to make him, if not hold his tongue, (for toleration of speech may be an ascertained condition of advanced sociability,) at least pay his taxes. Again, with regard to the doctrine of the purely negative function of government, and its consequent evanescence in time, here also we take the other side. As society has a general will, reason, and purpose of its own, so, we believe, has it positive duties, and so ought it to have special organs of thought, expression, and activity. Institutions for social government are therefore, we believe, necessary facts in the being of the species; and the cosmopolitanism of Kant, rather than the anarchy of Proudhon, (perhaps, in part, through it,) is the historic goal. It is a consequence of the high degree of complexity which we thus attribute to the Social science, that we are not so sanguine as some in our expectations of the speedy perfection of a corresponding art of politics. But, as Mr. Mill remarks, a degree of knowledge which is very inadequate to the purposes of historic prediction, may be very useful for the purposes of political guidance. Already, we believe, Social science is in possession of a body of doctrines capable of beneficially directing the conduct of politicians. Nay, if it were but generally understood what the political art is; if it were but generally understood that politics is not a hap-hazard wrestling with a heap of loose matter, but an art, the essence of which consists in so modifying existing social phenomena by the social free-will, that desired social ends may be accomplished through the spontaneous operation of the invariable social laws already established, we believe that the benefit would be immense. Were this understood now, many of our most admired political watch-words would cease to be pronounced, and many of our most conspicuous statesmen would have a place on the shelf among other lumber. The Literature of Apologetics. 331 ART. II.-DÉMONSTRATIONS EVANGÉLIQUES ;-de Tertullien, Origène, Eusèbe, S. Augustin, Montaigne, Bacon, Grotius, Descartes, Richelieu, Arnaud, De Choiseul-du-Plessis-Praslin, Pascal, Pelisson, Nicole, Boyle, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Locke, Lami, Burnet, Malebranche, Lesley, Leibnitz, La Bruyère, Fénelon, Huet, Clarke, Duguet, Stanhope, Bayle, Le-Clerc, Du-Pin, Jacquelot, Tillotson, De Haller, Sherlock, Le Moine, Pope, Leland, Raciné, Massillon, Ditton, Derham, D'Aguesseau, De Polignac, Saurin, Buffier, Warburton, Tournemine, Bentley, Littleton, Fabricius, Addison, De Bernis, J. J. Rousseau, Para du Phanjhas, Stanislas I., Turgot, Statler, West, Beauzée, Bergier, Carraccioli, Jennings, Duhamel, Liguori, Butler, Bullet, Vauvenargues, Guénard, Blair, De Pompignan, Deluc, Porteous, Gerard, Diessbach, Jacques, Lamourette, La Harpe, Le Coz, Duvoisin, De la Luzerne, Schmitt, Poynter, Moore, Silvio Pellico, Lingard, Brunati, Manzoni, Paley, Perrone, D'Orleans, Campien, Perennes, Wiseman, Buckland, Marcelde-Serres, Keith, Chalmers, Dupin Ainé, S.S. Gregoire XVI. Traduites, pour la plupart, des diverses langues dans lesquelles elles avaient été écrites; reproduites INTÉGRALEMENT, non par extraits; annotées et publiées par M. L'ABBÉ M(IGNE,) éditeur des Cours Complets. Petit Montrouge. Paris, 1843. SUCH is the title-page of this elaborate work, and we give it in full as a brief but comprehensive table of its contents. It is recommended in the "advertisement" as the best work on the truth of Christianity in general, and of Catholicism in particular, in the whole world; and it is said to be specially distinguished by this, that the authors of the treatises included in it are not mere commentators or theologians, but writers of European reputation, (des célébrités Européennes,) who are esteemed alike by the men of the world and of the cloister, by the Protestant and the Catholic, by the Infidel and the Believer, as those who have been foremost in point of intelligence in their several ages and countries. But while it is designed for the general defence of Christianity, it is designed also for the special vindication of Catholicism; and is directed not only against Infidels, who deny or doubt the truth of the one, but also against Heretics and Schismatics, who question the authority of the other. Every objection which has been urged against Christianity, as it is professed in the Church of Rome, is here refuted; the objections of Pagan philosophy, by Origen, Eusebius, and Augustine; those of the middle age and of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, by Bacon, Montaigne, and Descartes; those |