CHAPTEB XII. 



OF THE LOGIC OF PRACTICE, OR ART; INCLUDING 

 MORALITY AND POLICY. 



1. IN the preceding chapters we have endeavoured to 

 characterize the present state of those among the branches of 

 knowledge called Moral, which are sciences in the only proper 

 sense of the term, that is, inquiries into the course of nature. 

 It is customary, however, to include under the term moral 

 knowledge, and even (though improperly) under that of moral 

 science, an inquiry the results of which do not express them- 

 selves in the indicative, hut in the imperative mood, or in 

 periphrases equivalent to it ; what is called the knowledge of 

 duties ; practical ethics, or morality. 



Now, the imperative mood is the characteristic of art, as 

 distinguished from science. Whatever speaks in rules, or 

 precepts, not in assertions respecting matters of fact, is art : 

 and ethics, or morality, is properly a portion of the art cor- 

 responding to the sciences of human nature and society.* 



The Method, therefore, of Ethics, can be no other than 

 that of Art, or Practice, in general : and the portion yet un- 

 completed, of the task which we proposed to ourselves in the 

 concluding Book, is to characterize the general Method of 

 Art, as distinguished from Science. 



2. In all branches of practical business, there are cases 

 in which individuals are bound to conform their practice to a 

 pre-established rule, while there are others in which it is part 

 of their task to find or construct the rule by which they are to 



* It is almost superfluous to observe, that there is another meaning of the 

 word Art, in which it may be said to denote the poetical department or aspect 

 of things in general, in contradistinction to the scientific. In the text, the word 

 is used in its older, and I hope, not yet obsolete sense. 



