498 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



may admit of being carved out of the general body of the 

 social science ; what other portions of the social phenomena 

 are in a sufficiently close and complete dependence, in the first 

 resort, on a peculiar class of causes, to make it convenient to 

 create a preliminary science of those causes ; postponing the 

 consideration of the causes which act through them, or in con- 

 currence with them, to a later period of the inqiiiry. There is 

 however among these separate departments one which cannot 

 be passed over in silence, being of a more comprehensive and 

 commanding character than any of the other branches into 

 which the social science may admit of being divided. Like 

 them, it is directly conversant with the causes of only one 

 class of social facts, but a class which exercises, immediately 

 or remotely, a paramount influence over the rest. I allude to 

 what may be termed Political Ethology, or the theory of the 

 causes which determine the type of character belonging to a 

 people or to an age. Of all the subordinate branches of the 

 social science, this is the most completely in its infancy. The 

 causes of national character are scarcely at all understood, and 

 the effect of institutions or social arrangements upon the 

 character of the people is generally that portion of their effects 

 which is least attended to, and least comprehended. Nor is 

 this wonderful, when we consider the infant state of the 

 Science of Ethology itself, from whence the laws must be 

 drawn, of which the truths of political ethology can be but 

 results and exemplifications. 



Yet to whoever well considers the matter, it must appear 

 that the laws of national (or collective) character are by far 

 the most important class of sociological laws. In the first 

 place, the character which is formed by any state of social 

 circumstances is in itself the most interesting phenomenon 

 which that state of society can possibly present. Secondly, it 

 is also a fact which enters largely into the production of all 

 the other phenomena. And above all, the character, that is, 

 the opinions, feelings, and habits, of the people, though greatly 

 the results of the state of society which precedes them, are also 

 greatly the causes of the state of society which follows them ; 

 and are the power by which all those of the circumstances of 



