[21] Let me add that the conception developed in _Social Statics_, dates back to a series of letters on the “Proper Sphere of Government,” published in the _Nonconformist_ newspaper in the latter half of 1842, and republished as a pamphlet in 1843. In these letters will be found, along with many crude ideas, the same belief in the conformity of social phenomena to unvariable laws; the same belief in human progression as determined by such laws; the same belief in the moral modification of men as caused by social discipline; the same belief in the tendency of social arrangements “of themselves to assume a condition of _stable_ equilibrium;” the same repudiation of state-control over various departments of social life; the same limitation of state-action to the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens. The writing of _Social Statics_ arose from a dissatisfaction with the basis on which the doctrines set forth in those letters were placed: the second half of that work is an elaboration of these doctrines; and the first half a statement of the principles from which they are deducible. [22] Published many years since in America, this statement was republished in England eight years since. See _Athenæum_ for July 22nd, 1882. {145} ON LAWS IN GENERAL, AND THE ORDER OF THEIR DISCOVERY. [_The following was contained in the first edition of_ First Principles. _I omitted it from the re-organized second edition, because it did not form an essential part of the new structure. As it is referred to in the foregoing pages, and as its general argument is germane to the contents of those pages, I have thought well to insert it here. Moreover, though I hope eventually to incorporate it in that division of the_ Principles of Sociology _which treats of Intellectual Progress, yet as it must be long before it can thus re-appear in its permanent place, and as, should I not get so far in the execution of my undertaking, it may never thus re-appear at all, it seems proper to make it more accessible than it is at present. The first and last sections, which served to link it into the argument of the work to which it originally belonged, are omitted. The rest has been carefully revised, and in some parts considerably altered._] The recognition of Law being the recognition of uniformity of relations among phenomena, it follows that the order in which different groups of phenomena are reduced to law, must depend on the frequency with which the uniform relations they severally display are distinctly experienced. At any given stage of progress, those {146} uniformities will be best known with which men’s minds have been oftenest and most strongly impressed. In proportion partly to the number of times a relation has been presented to consciousness (not merely to the senses), and in proportion partly to the vividness with which the terms of the relation have been cognized, will be the degree in which the constancy of connexion is perceived.