ABSTRACT
Social science and political economy are spoken of as branches or departments of the science of statistics, a science which studies social and economic phenomena in the only satisfactory way, namely, by the accumulation of facts and generalization from them. Statistical science is regarded, not as an abstract science of methods dealing with phenomena of very various kinds under a distinctive aspect, but as a concrete science with a distinctive subject-matter. A distinction is clearly drawn between statistics as a method and statistics as a science. It is recognised that the method has a very wide application; but the science is described as studying exclusively man's social life. Political economy, in particular—being concerned pre-eminently with quantities—has a special tendency to become on its inductive side statistical, just as on its deductive side it tends to become mathematical.
