454 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



4. Since, then, it is impossible to obtain really accu- 

 rate propositions respecting the formation of character from 

 observation and experiment alone, we are driven perforce 

 to that which, even if it had not been the indispensable, 

 would have been the most perfect, mode of investigation, 

 and which it is one of the principal aims of philosophy to 

 extend ; namely, that which tries its experiments not on the 

 complex facts, but on the simple ones of which they are 

 compounded ; and after ascertaining the laws of the causes, 

 the composition of which gives rise to the complex pheno- 

 mena, then considers whether these will not explain and 

 account for the approximate generalizations which have been 

 framed empirically respecting the sequences of those complex 

 phenomena. The laws of the formation of character are, 

 in short, derivative laws, resulting from the general laws of 

 mind ; and are to be obtained by deducing them from those 

 general laws ; by supposing any given set of circumstances, 

 and then considering what, according to the laws of mind, will 

 be the influence of those circumstances on the formation of 

 character. 



A science is thus formed, to which I would propose to give 

 the name of Ethology, or the Science of Character ; from ^/0oe, 

 a word more nearly corresponding to the term " character " as 

 I here use it, than any other word in the same language. 

 The name is perhaps etymologically applicable to the entire 

 science of our mental and moral nature ; but if, as is usual and 

 convenient, we employ the name Psychology for the science of 

 the elementary laws of mind, Ethology will serve for the 

 ulterior science which determines the kind of character pro- 

 duced, in conformity to those general laws, by any set of cir- 

 cumstances, physical and moral. According to this definition,. 

 Ethology is the science which corresponds to the art of educa- 

 tion ; in the widest sense of the term, including the formation 

 of national or collective character as well as individual. It 

 would indeed be vain to expect (however completely the laws 

 of the formation of character might be ascertained) that we 

 could know so accurately the circumstances of any given case 

 as to be able positively to predict the character that would be 



