HUMAN NATURE A SUBJECT OF SCIENCE. 429 



2. The science of human nature is of this description. 

 It falls far short of the standard of exactness now realized in 

 Astronomy ; but there is no reason that it should not be as 

 much a science as Tidology is, or as Astronomy was when its 

 calculations had only mastered the main phenomena, but not 

 the perturbations. 



The phenomena with which this science is conversant 

 being the thoughts, feelings, and actions of human beings, it 

 would have attained the ideal perfection of a science if it 

 enabled us to foretell how an individual would think, feel, or 

 act, throughout life, with the same certainty with which 

 astronomy enables us to predict the places and the occulta- 

 tions of the heavenly bodies. It needs scarcely be stated 

 that nothing approaching to this can be done. The actions 

 of individuals could not be predicted with scientific accuracy, 

 were it only because we cannot foresee the whole of the cir- 

 cumstances in which those individuals will be placed. But 

 further, even in any given combination of (present) circum- 

 stances, no assertion, which is both precise and universally 

 true, can be made respecting the manner in which human 

 beings will think, feel, or act. This is not, however, because 

 every person's modes of thinking, feeling, and acting, do not 

 depend on causes ; nor can we doubt that if, in the case of 

 any individual, our data could be complete, we even now know 

 enough of the ultimate laws by which mental phenomena are 

 determined, to enable us in many cases to predict, with 

 tolerable certainty, what, in the greater number of supposable 

 combinations of circumstances, his conduct or sentiments 

 would be. But the impressions and actions of human beings 

 are not solely the result of their present circumstances, but 

 the joint result of those circumstances and of the characters 

 of the individuals : and the agencies which determine human 

 character are so numerous and diversified, (nothing which 

 has happened to the person throughout life being without its 

 portion of influence,) that in the aggregate they are never in 

 any two cases exactly similar. Hence, even if our science 

 of human nature were theoretically perfect, that is, if we 

 could calculate any character as we can calculate the orbit of 



