LAWS OF MIND. 689 



bodies of them, and only in a small degree on the idiosyncrasies of organi- 

 zation or the peculiar history of individuals ; it is evidently possible with 

 regard to all such effects, to make predictions which will almost always 

 be verified, and general propositions which are almost always true. And 

 whenever it is sufficient to know how the great majority of the human race, 

 or of some nation or class of persons, will think, feel, and act, these propo- 

 sitions are equivalent to universal ones. For the purposes of political and 

 social science this is sufficient. As we formerly remarked,* an approximate 

 generalization is, in social inquiries, for most practical purposes equivalent 

 to an exact one; that which is only probable when asserted of individual 

 human beings indiscriminately selected, being certain when affirmed of the 

 character and collective conduct of masses. 



It is no disparagement, therefore, to the science of Human Nature, that 

 those of its general propositions which descend sufficiently into detail to 

 serve as a foundation for predicting phenomena in the concrete, are for 

 the most part only approximately true. But in order to give a genuinely 

 scientific character to the study, it is indispensable that these approximate 

 generalizations, which in themselves would amount only to the lowest kind 

 of empirical laws, should be connected deductively with the laws of nature 

 from which they result ; should be resolved into the properties of the causes 

 on which the phenomena depend. In other words, the science of Human 

 Nature may be said to exist in proportion as the approximate truths, which 

 compose a practical knowledge of mankind, can be exhibited as corollaries 

 from the universal laws of human nature on which they rest ; whereby the 

 proper limits of those approximate truths would be shown, and we should 

 be enabled to deduce others for any new state of circumstances, in antici- 

 pation of specific experience. 



The proposition now stated is the text on which the two succeeding 

 chapters will furnish the comment. 



CHAPTER IV. 



OF THE LAWS OF MIND. 



§ 1. What the Mind is, as well as what Matter is, or any other question 

 respecting Things in themselves, as distinguished from their sensible man- 

 ifestations, it would be foreign to the purposes of this treatise to consider. 

 Here, as throughout our inquiry, we shall keep clear of all speculations re- 

 specting the mind's own nature, and shall understand by the laws of mind 

 those of mental Phenomena ; of the various feelings or states of conscious- 

 ness of sentient beings. These, according to the classification we have uni- 

 formly followed, consist of Thoughts, Emotions, Volitions, and Sensations ; 

 the last being as truly states of Mind as the three former. It is usual, in- 

 deed, to speak of sensations as states of body, not of mind. But this is 

 the common confusion, of giving one and the same name to a phenomenon 

 and to the approximate cause or conditions of the phenomenon. The im- 

 mediate antecedent of a sensation is a state of body, but the sensation it- 

 self is a state of mind. If the word Mind means any thing, it means that 

 which feels. Whatever opinion we hold respecting the fundamental iden- 

 tity or diversity of matter and mind, in any case the distinctioa ^hein een 



* Supra, p. 424. 



