680 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



Concerning the physical nature of man, as an organized being — though 

 there is still much uncertainty and much controversy, which can only be 

 terminated by the general acknowledgment and employment of stricter 

 rules of induction than are commonly recognized — there is, however, a 

 considerable body of truths which all who have attended to the subject 

 consider to be fully established ; nor is there now any radical imperfection 

 in the method observed in the department of science by its most distin- 

 guished modern teachers. But the laws of Mind, and, in even a greater 

 degree, those of Society, are so far from having attained a similar state 

 of even partial recognition, that it is still a controversy whether they are 

 capable of becoming subjects of science in the strict sense of the term : 

 and among those who are agreed on this point, there reigns the most ir- 

 reconcilable diversity on almost every other. Here, therefore, if anywhere, 

 the principles laid down in the preceding Books may be expected to be 

 useful. 



If on matters so much the most important with which human intellect 

 can occupy itself a more general agreement is ever to exist among think- 

 ers ; if what has been pronounced " the proper study of mankind " is not 

 destined to remain the only Subject which Philosophy can not succeed in 

 rescuing from Empiricism ; the same process through which the laws of 

 many simpler phenomena have by general acknowledgment been placed 

 beyond dispute, must be consciously and deliberately applied to those 

 more difficult inquiries. If there are some subjects on which the results 

 obtained have finally received the unanimous assent of all who have attend- 

 ed to the proof, and others on which mankind have not yet been equally 

 successful; on which the most sagacious minds have occupied themselves 

 from the earliest date, and have never succeeded in establishing any con- 

 siderable body of truths, so as to be beyond denial or doubt ; it is by gen- 

 eralizing the methods successfully followed in the former inquiries, and 

 adapting them to the latter, that we may hope to remove this blot on the 

 face of science. The remaining chapters are an endeavor to facilitate this 

 most desirable object, 



§ 2. In attempting this, I am not unmindful how little can be done to- 

 ward it in a mere treatise on Logic, or how vague and unsatisfactory all 

 precepts of Method must necessarily appear when not practically exempli- 

 fied in the establishment of a body of doctrine. Doubtless, the most effect- 

 ual mode of showing how the sciences of Ethics and Politics may be con- 

 structed would be to construct them : a task which, it needs scarcely be 

 said, I am not about to undertake. But even if there were no other ex- 

 amples, the memorable one of Bacon would be sufficient to demonstrate, 

 that it is sometimes both possible and useful to point out the way, though 

 without being one's self prepared to adventure far into it. And if more 

 were to be attempted, this at least is not a proper place for the attempt. 



In substance, whatever can be done in a work like this for the Logic of 

 the Moral Sciences, has been or ought to have been accomplished in the 

 five preceding Books ; to which the present can be only a kind of supple- 

 ment or appendix, since the methods of investigation applicable to moral 

 and social science must have been already described, if I have succeeded 

 in enumerating and characterizing those of science in general. It remains, 

 however, to examine which of those methods are more especially suited 

 to the various branches of moral inquiry ; under what peculiar facilities 

 or difficulties they are there employed; how far the unsatisfactory state 



