CHAPTEE V. 



OF ETHOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF THE FORMATION 

 OF CHARACTER. 



1. THE laws of mind as characterized in the preceding 

 chapter, compose the universal or abstract portion of the 

 philosophy of human nature ; and all the truths of common 

 experience, constituting a practical knowledge of mankind, 

 must, to the extent to which they are truths, be results or 

 consequences of these. Such familiar maxims, when collected 

 a posteriori from observation of life, occupy among the truths 

 of the science the place of what, in our analysis of Induction, 

 have so often been spoken of under the title of Empirical 

 Laws. 



An Empirical Law (it will be remembered) is an unifor- 

 mity, whether of succession or of coexistence, which holds 

 true in all instances within our limits of observation, but is 

 not of a nature to afford any assurance that it would hold 

 beyond those limits ; either because the consequent is not 

 really the effect of the antecedent, but forms part along with 

 it of a chain of effects, flowing from prior causes not yet 

 ascertained ; or because there is ground to believe that the 

 sequence (though a case of causation) is resolvable into 

 simpler sequences, and, depending therefore on a concurrence 

 of several natural agencies, is exposed to an unknown multi- 

 tude of possibilities of counteraction. In other words, an 

 empirical law is a generalization, of which, not content with 

 finding it true, we are obliged to ask, why is it true ? knowing 

 that its truth is not absolute, but dependent on some more 

 general conditions, and that it can only be relied on in so 

 far as there is ground of assurance that those conditions are 

 realized. 



