138 



INDUCTION. 



For the statesman, therefore, it is generally enough to know 

 that most persons act or are acted upon in a particular way ; 

 since his speculations and his practical arrangements refer 

 almost exclusively to cases in which the whole community, 

 or some large portion of it, is acted upon at once, and in 

 which, therefore, what is done or felt hy most persons deter- 

 mines the result produced by or upon the body at large. He 

 can get on well enough with approximate generalizations on 

 human nature, since what is true approximately of all indivi- 

 duals is true absolutely of all masses. And even when the 

 operations of individual men have a part to play in his deduc- 

 tions, as when he is reasoning of kings, or other single rulers, 

 still, as he is providing for indefinite duration, involving an 

 indefinite succession of such individuals, he must in general 

 both reason and act as if what is true of most persons were 

 true of all. 



The two kinds of considerations above adduced are a 

 sufficient refutation of the popular error, that speculations 

 on society and government, as resting on merely probable 

 evidence, must be inferior in certainty and scientific accuracy 

 to the conclusions of what are called the exact sciences, and 

 less to be relied on in practice. There are reasons enough 

 why the moral sciences must remain inferior to at least the 

 more perfect of the physical : why the laws of their more com- 

 plicated phenomena cannot be so completely deciphered, nor 

 the phenomena predicted with the same degree of assurance. 

 But though we cannot attain to so many truths, there is no 

 reason that those we can attain should deserve less reliance, or 

 have less of a scientific character. Of this topic, however, I 

 shall treat more systematically in the concluding Book, to 

 which place any further consideration of it must be deferred. 



