This great body (the social body) subsists by virtue of conservative principles, as does everything which has proceeded from the hands of the Almighty... When we think we have reached the highest point of the scale we find laws as fixed as those which govern the heavenly bodies: we turn to the phenomena of physics, where the free will of man is entirely effaced, so that the work of the Creator may predominate without hindrance. The collection of these laws, which exist independently of time and of the caprices of man, form a separate science, which I have considered myself entitled to name social physics.

As quoted from his Letters, in Hankins, Frank Hamilton. 1908. "Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician." Columbia University, Longmans, Green & Company, agents, Chapter IV. p. 99

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