Section XXVII.. Advantages of the Historical or Physiological Method.

Advantages Of The Historical Or Physiological Method.

The thorough application of this method will do away with a great number of controversies on important questions.(176) Men are as far removed from being devils as from being angels. We meet with few who are only guided by ideal motives, but with few, also, who hearken only to the voice of egotism, and care for nothing but themselves. It may, therefore, be assumed, that any view current on certain tangible interests which concern man very nearly, and which has been shared by great parties and even by whole peoples for generations, is not based only on ignorance or a perverse love of wrong. The error consists more frequently in applying measures wholesome and even absolutely necessary under certain circumstances, to circumstances entirely different. And here, a thorough insight into the conditions of the measure suffices to compose the differences between the two parties. Once the natural laws of Political Economy are sufficiently known and recognized, all that is needed, in any given instance, is more exact and reliable statistics of the fact involved, to reconcile all party controversies on questions of the politics of public economy, so far, at least, as these controversies arise from a difference of opinion. It may be that science may never attain to this, in consequence of the new problems which are ever arising and demanding a solution. It may be, too, that in the greater number of party controversies, the opposed purposes of the parties play a more important part even than the opposed views. 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.