INTRODUCTORY

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strained,  intolerably  efficient  spectre  called
the  economic  man,”  “  the  standard  popinjay
of  science,”  who  had,  he  imagined,  “  been
so  little  injured  by  the  criticism  of  half  a
century,”  he  was  addressing  an  audience  in
bulk  as  spectral  as  the  spectre  that  he  abjured.
There  is  another  difficulty  of  which  much
has  occasionally  been  made,  namely,  that
we  are  dealing  not  merely  with  living  creatures
but  with  living  creatures  who  seemingly  direct
their  own  lives.  The  fact  that  human  beings
have  volition—“  free  will,”  broadly  understood—is ­
  supposed  to  militate  against  any
attempt  to  frame  laws  relating  to  their  actions.
They  could  always  choose,  if  they  liked,  to
break  the  supposed  laws.  A  complete  examination ­
  of  this  difficulty  would  carry  us  too
deeply  into  psychology,  but  it  may  be
remarked  here  (1)  that  much  human  experience, ­
  at  any  rate,  is  not  a  matter  of  choice—
for  instance,  that  connected  with  our  bodily
needs—and  (2)  that  reason  governs  us  and
that  as  reasonable  we  act  in  a  uniform  way.
Side  by  side  with  this  defence  of  deduction
from  the  results  of  minute  analysis,  something
must  be  said  of  the  method  which  has  sometimes ­
  been  opposed  to  it,  namely,  induction
from  historical  facts  or  every-day  happenings.
Of  the  fecundity  of  this  induction,  that  is,