BOOK VI. 



ON THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCKS. 



" Si I'homme pent predire, avec une assurance presque enti^re, les phenomenes dent il con- 

 nait les lois ; si lors meme qu'elles lui sont inconnues, il peut, d'apres I'experience, pievoir 

 avec une grande probabilite les evenemens de Tavenir ; pourquoi regarderait-on comme une 

 entreprise chimeiique, celle de tracer avec quelque vraisemblance le tableau des destinees futures 

 de I'espece humaine, d'apres les re'sultats de son histoire ? Le seul fondement de croyance 

 dans les sciences naturelles, est cette ide'e, que les lois ge'ne'rales, connues ou ignore'es, qui 

 reglent les phe'nomenes de Tunivers, sont necessaires et constantes ; et par quelle raison ce 

 principe serait-il moins vrai pour le de'veloppement des facultes intellectuelles et morales de 

 i'homme, que pour les autres operations de la nature? Enfin, puisque des opinions formees 

 d'apres I'experience sont la seule legle de la conduite des hommes les plus sages, pour- 

 quoi interdirait-on au philosophe d'appuyer ses conjectures sur cette meme base, pourvu qu'il 

 ne leur attribue pas une certitude supe'rieure a celle qui peut naitre du nombre, de la Constance, 

 de I'exactitude des observations ?" — Condorcet, Esquisse dun Tableau Historique des Pro- 

 gres de V Esprit Uumain. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



§ 1. Principles of Evidence and Theories of Method are not to be con- 

 structed a priori. The laws of our rational faculty, like those of every 

 other natural agency, are only learned by seeing the agent at work. The 

 earlier achievements of science were made without the conscious observ- 

 ance of any Scientific Method ; and we should never have known by what 

 process truth is to be ascertained, if we had not previously ascertained 

 many truths. But it was only the easier problems which could be thus 

 resolved : natural sagacity, when it tried its strength against the more dif- 

 ficult ones, either failed altogether, or, if it succeeded here and there in ob- 

 taining a solution, had no sure means of convincing others that its solution 

 was correct. In scientific investigation, as in all other works of human 

 skill, the way of obtaining the end is seen as it were instinctively by su- 

 perior minds in some comparatively simple case, and is then, by judicious 

 generalization, adapted to the variety of complex cases. We learn to do 

 a thing in difficult circumstances, by attending to the manner in which we 

 have spontaneously done the same tbing in easier ones. 



This truth is exemplified by the history of the various branches of knowl- 

 edge which have successively, in the ascending order of their complication, 

 assumed the character of sciences; and will doubtless receive fresh con- 

 firmation from those of which the final scientific constitution is yet to 

 come, and which are still abandoned to the uncertainties of vague and 

 popular discussion. Although several other sciences have emerged from 

 this state at a comparatively recent date, none now remain in it except 

 those which relate to man himself, the most complex and most difficult 

 subject of study on which the human mind can be engaged. 



