The mere multiplicity and complication of facts in this department of enquiry, have been generally regarded as rendering such an attempt hopeless. In any social problem of importance, we invariably feel that to embrace the whole of the circumstances, with all their results and dependencies, is really out of our power, and we are forced to content ourselves with a judgment formed on what appear to us the principal facts. Thus arise those limited truths, admitting of exceptions, of qualification, of partial application, on which we are fain to rely in the conduct of human affairs. In framing his measures, how often is the statesman, or the jurist, made aware of the utter impossibility of guarding them against every species of objection, or of so constructing them that they shall present an equal front on every side! How still more keenly is the speculative politician made to feel, when giving in his adherence to some great line of policy, that he cannot gather in under his conclusions _all_ the political truths he is master of! He reluctantly resigns to his opponent the possession, or at least the usufruct, of a certain class of truths which he is obliged to postpone to others of more extensive or more urgent application. But this multiplicity and complication of facts may merely render the task of the Sociologist extremely difficult, not impossible; and the half truths, and the perplexity of thought above alluded to, may only prove that his scientific task has not yet been accomplished. Nothing is here presented in the nature of the subject to exclude the strict application of _the method_. There is, however, one essential, distinctive attribute of human society which constitutes a difference in the nature of the subject, so as to render impossible the same scientific survey and appreciation of the social phenomena of the world that we may expect to obtain of the physical. This is the gradual and incessant _developement_ which humanity has displayed, and is still displaying. Who can tell us that that _experience_ on which a fixed and positive theory of social man is to be formed, is all before us? From age to age that experience is enlarging.