Be this as it may, it is necessary, especially in an age as deeply agitated as our own, when every good citizen is in duty bound to ally himself to party, that every honest party-man should seek to secure, amid the ocean of ephemeral opinions, a firm island of scientific truth, as universally recognized as truth as are the principles of mathematical physics by physicians of the most various schools. Section XXVIII. Advantages Of The Historical Method. (Continued.) Another characteristic feature of the historical method is that it does away with the feeling of self-sufficiency, and the braggadocio which cause most men to ridicule what they do not understand, and the higher to look down with contempt on lower civilizations. Whoever is acquainted with the laws of the development of the plant, cannot fail to see in the seed the germ of its growth, and in its flower, the herald of decay. If there were inhabitants of the moon, and one of them should visit our earth, and find children and grown people side by side, while ignorant of the laws of human development, would he not look upon the most beautiful child as a mere monster, with an enormous head, with arms and legs of stunted growth, useless genitals, and destitute of reason? The folly of such a judgment would be obvious to every one; and yet we meet with thousands like it on the state and the public economy of nations when in lower stages of civilization, and this, even among the most distinguished writers.(177) We may, indeed, make a critical comparison of different forms, each of which answers perfectly to its object or contents; but such a comparison can possess historical objectivity, only when it is based on a correct view of the peculiar course of development followed by the people in question. The forms of the period of maturity may be considered the most perfect; earlier forms as the immature, and the later as those of the age of decline.(178) But it is a matter of the greatest difficulty, accurately to determine the culminating point of a people’s civilization. The old man believes, as a rule, that the times are growing worse, because he is no longer in a way to utilize them; the young man, as a rule, that they are growing better, because he hopes to turn them to account. It is, however, always a purely empirical question; and in the solution of it, the observer’s eye may acquire a singular acuteness by the comparative study of as many nations as possible, especially of those which have already passed away.(179) Could anyone contemplate the history of mankind as a a whole, of which the histories of individual nations are but the parts, the successive steps in the evolution of humanity would of course afford him a similar objective rule for all these points in which whole peoples permanently differ from one another.(180) Section XXIX. The Practical Character Of The Historical Method In Political Economy.