< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would still "be the reply furnished by his own interpretations of history; which make it clear that his denial must be understood as but a qualified one. Against his professed theory may he set his actual practice, which, as it seems to me, tacitly asserts that explanations of some social phenomena in terms of cause and effect are possible, if not explanations of all social phenomena. Thus, respecting the Vagrancy Act of 1547, which made a slave of a confirmed vagrant, Mr. Froude says: "In the condition of things which was now commencing .... neither this nor any other penal act against idleness could be practically enforced."[1] That is to say, the operation of an agency brought into play was neutralized by the operation of natural causes coexisting. Again, respecting the enclosure of commons and amalgamation of farms, etc., Mr. Froude writes: "Under the late reign these tendencies had, with great difficulty, been held partially in check, but on the death of Henry they acquired new force and activity."[2] Or, in other words, certain social forces previously antagonized by certain other forces produced their natural effects when the antagonism ceased. Yet again, Mr. Froude explains that "unhappily, two causes" (debased currency and an alteration of the farming system) "were operating to produce the rise of prices."[3] And throughout Mr. Froude's "History of England" there are, I need scarcely say, other cases in which he ascribes social changes to causes rooted in human nature; though, in the lecture from which I have quoted, he alleges the "impossibility of forming scientific calculations of what men will do before the fact, or scientific explanations of what they have done after the fact."

Another writer who denies the possibility of a Social Science, or who at any rate admits it only as a science that has its relations of phenomena so traversed by providential influences that it does not come within the proper definition of a science, is Canon Kingsley. In his address on the "Limits of Exact Science as applied to History" he says:

"You say that, as the laws of matter are inevitable, so probably are the laws of human life? Be it so: but in what sense are the laws of matter inevitable? Potentially or actually? Even in the seemingly most uniform and universal law, where do we find the inevitable or the irresistible? Is there not in Nature a perpetual competition of law against law, force against force, producing the most endless and unexpected variety of results? Cannot each law be interfered with at any moment by some other law, so that the first law, though it may struggle for the mastery, shall be for an indefinite time utterly defeated? The law of gravity is immutable enough: but do all stones veritably fall to the ground? Certainly not, if I choose to catch one, and keep it in my hand. It remains there by laws; and the law of gravity is there, too, making it feel heavy in my hand: but it has not fallen to the ground, and will not, till I let it. So much for the inevitable action of the laws of gravity, as of others. Potentially, it is immutable; but actually, it can be conquered by other laws."[4]
  1. ↑ "History of England," vol. v., p. 70.
  2. ↑ Ibid., vol. v., p. 108.
  3. ↑ Ibid., vol. v., p. 109
  4. ↑ Page 20.
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