460 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



from the general laws of Psychology. The subject to be 

 studied is, the origin and sources of all those qualities in 

 human beings which are interesting to us, either as facts to be 

 produced, to be avoided, or merely to be understood : and the 

 object is, to determine, from the general laws of mind, com- 

 bined with the general position of our species in the universe, 

 what actual or possible combinations of circumstances are 

 capable of promoting or of preventing the production of those 

 qualities. A science which possesses middle principles of this 

 kind, arranged in the order, not of causes, but of the effects 

 which it is desirable to produce or to prevent, is duly prepared 

 to be the foundation of the corresponding Art. And when 

 Ethology shall be thus prepared, practical education will be 

 the mere transformation of those principles into a parallel 

 system of precepts, and the adaptation of these to the sum 

 total of the individual circumstances which exist in each par- 

 ticular case. 



It is hardly necessary again to repeat, that, as in every 

 other deductive science, verification a posteriori must proceed 

 pari passu with deduction a priori. The inferenee given by 

 theory as to the type of character which would be formed by 

 any given circumstances, must be tested by specific experience 

 of those circumstances whenever obtainable ; and the conclu- 

 sions of the science as a whole, must undergo a perpetual 

 verification and correction from the general remarks afforded 

 by common experience respecting human nature in our own 

 age, and by history respecting times gone by. The conclu- 

 sions of theory cannot be trusted, unless confirmed by 

 observation ; nor those of observation, unless they can be 

 affiliated to theory, by deducing them from the laws of human 

 nature, and from a close analysis of the circumstances of the 

 particular situation. It is the accordance of these two kinds 

 of evidence separately taken the consilience of a priori 

 reasoning and specific experience which forms the only suffi- 

 cient ground for the principles of any science so " immersed 

 in matter," dealing with such complex and concrete phe- 

 nomena, as Ethology. 



