424 INDUCTION. 



carrying the hypothesis or proviso with it, may then be dealt with no longer 

 as an approximate, but as a universal proposition ; and to whatever num- 

 ber of steps the reasoning may reach, the hypothesis, being carried forward 

 to the conclusion, will exactly indicate how far that conclusion is from be- 

 ing applicable universally. If in the course of the argument other approx- 

 imate generalizations are introduced, each of them being in like manner 

 expressed as a universal proposition with a condition annexed, the sum of 

 all the conditions will appear at the end as the sum of all the errors which 

 affect the conclusion. Thus, to the proposition last cited, let us add the 

 following: All absolute monarchs have imcontrolled power, unless their po- 

 sition is such that they need the active support of their subjects (as was 

 the case with Queen Elizabeth, Frederick of Prussia, and others). Com- 

 bining these two propositions, we can deduce from them a universal con- 

 clusion, which will be subject to both the hypotheses in the premises ; All 

 absolute monarchs employ their power ill, unless their position makes them 

 need the active support of their subjects, or unless they are persons of un- 

 usual strength of judgment and rectitude of purpose. It is of no conse- 

 quence how rapidly the errors in our pi'emises accumulate, if we are able 

 in this manner to record each error, and keep an account of the aggregate 

 as it swells up. 



Secondly : there is a case in which approximate propositions, even with- 

 out our taking note of the conditions under which they are not true of indi- 

 vidual cases, are yet, for the purposes of science, universal ones ; namely, in 

 the inquiries which relate to the properties not of individuals, but of multi- 

 tudes. The principal of these is the science of politics, or of human soci- 

 ety. This science is principally concerned with the actions not of solitary 

 individuals, but of masses; with the fortunes not of single persons, but 

 of communities. For the statesman, therefore, it is generally enough to 

 know that most persons act or are acted upon in a particular way; since 

 his speculations and his practical arrangements refer almost exclusively 

 to cases in which the whole community, or some large portion of it, is 

 acted upon at once, and in which, therefore, what is done or felt by most 

 persons determines the result produced by or upon the body at large. He 

 can get on well enough with approximate generalizations on human nature, 

 since what is true approximately of all individuals is true absolutely of all 

 masses. And even when the operations of individual men have a part to 

 play in his deductions, as when he is reasoning of kings, or other single 

 rulers, still, as he is providing for indefinite duration, involving an indefinite 

 succession of such individuals, he must in general both reason and act as 

 if what is true of most persons were true of all. 



The two kinds of considerations above adduced are a suiRcient refuta- 

 tion of the popular error, that speculations on society and government, as 

 resting on^ merely probable evidence, must be infei'ior in certainty and 

 scientific accuracy to the conclusions of what are called the exact sciences, 

 and less to be relied on in practice. There are reasons enough why the 

 moral sciences must remain inferior to at least the more perfect of the phys- 

 ical; why the laws of their more complicated phenomena can not be so 

 completely deciphered, nor the phenomena predicted with the same degree 

 of assurance. But though we can not attain to so many truths, there is no 

 reason that those we can attain should deserve less reliance, or have less 

 of a scientific character. Of this topic, however, I shall treat more system- 

 atically in the concluding Book, to which place any further consideration 

 of it must be defei'red. 



