414 LOGIC OF THE MORAL, SCIENCES. 



the most complex and most difficult subject of study on which 

 the human mind can he engaged. 



Concerning the physical nature of man, as an organized 

 being, though there is still much uncertainty and much con- 

 troversy, which can only be terminated by the general acknow- 

 ledgment and employment of stricter rules of induction than 

 are commonly recognised, there is, however, a considerable 

 body of truths which all who have attended to the subject 

 consider to be fully established ; nor is there now any radical 

 imperfection in the method observed in this department of 

 science by its most distinguished modern teachers. But the 

 laws of Mind, and, in even a greater degree, those of Society, 

 are so far from having attained a similar state of even partial 

 recognition, that it is still a controversy whether they are 

 capable of becoming subjects of science in the strict sense of 

 the term : and among those who are agreed on this point, 

 there reigns the most irreconcileable diversity on almost 

 every other. Here, therefore, if anywhere, the principles 

 laid down in the preceding Books may be expected to be 

 useful. 



If, on matters so much the most important with which 

 human intellect can occupy itself, a more general agreement 

 is ever to exist among thinkers ; if what has been pronounced 

 " the proper study of mankind" is not destined to remain the 

 only subject which Philosophy cannot succeed in rescuing from 

 Empiricism ; the same process through which the laws of 

 many simpler phenomena have by general acknowledgment 

 been placed beyond dispute, must be consciously and delibe- 

 rately applied to those more difficult inquiries. If there are 

 some subjects on which the results obtained have finally 

 received the unanimous assent of all who have attended to the 

 proof, and others on which mankind have not yet been equally 

 successful ; on which the most sagacious minds have occupied 

 themselves from the earliest date, and have never succeeded in 

 establishing any considerable body of truths, so as to be beyond 

 denial or doubt ; it is by generalizing the methods successfully 

 followed in the former inquiries, and adapting them to the 

 latter, that we may hope to remove this blot on the face of 



