600 LOGIC OF THE MOllAL SCIENCES. 



to bring up and educate, from infancy to mature age. And to perform any- 

 one of these experiments with scientific propriety, it would be necessary to 

 know and record every sensation or impression received by the young pu- 

 pil from a period long before it could speak ; including its own notions re- 

 specting the sources of all those sensations and impressions It is not only 

 impossible to do this completely, but even to do so much of it as should 

 constitute a tolei'able approximation. One apparently trivial circumstance 

 Avhich eluded our vigilance might let in a train of impressions and associ- 

 ations sufficient to vitiate the experiment as an authentic exhibition of the 

 effects flowing from given causes. No one who has sufficiently reflected 

 on education is ignorant of this truth ; and whoever has not, will find it 

 most instructively illustrated in the writings of Rousseau and Helvctius on 

 that great subject. 



Under this impossibility of studying the laws of the formation of char- 

 acter by experiments purposely contrived to elucidate them, there remains 

 the resource of simple observation. But if it be impossible to ascertain 

 the influencing circumstances with any approach to completeness even 

 when we have the shaping of them ourselves, much more impossible is it 

 when the cases are further removed from our observation, and altogether 

 out of our control. Consider the difficulty of the very first step — of ascer- 

 taining what actually is the character of the individual, in each particular 

 case that we examine. There is hardly any person living concerning some 

 essential part of whose character there are not differences of opinion even 

 among his intimate acquaintances ; and a single action, or conduct contin- 

 ued only for a short time, goes a very little way toward ascertaining it. 

 We can only make our observations in a rough way and en masse/ not at- 

 tempting to ascertain completely in any given instance, what character has 

 been formed, and still less by what causes ; but only observing in what 

 state of previous circumstances it is found that certain mai-ked mental 

 qualities or deficiencies oftenest exist. These conclusions, besides that they 

 are mere approximate generalizations, deserve no reliance, even as such, 

 unless the instances are sufficiently numerous to eliminate not only chance, 

 but every assignable circumstance in which a number of the cases ex- 

 amined may happen to have resembled one another. So numerous and 

 various, too, are the circumstances which form individual character, that 

 the consequence of any particular combination is hardly ever some definite 

 and strongly marked character, always found where that combination ex- 

 ists, and not otherwise. What is obtained, even after the most extensive 

 and accurate observation, is merely a comparative result; as, for example, 

 that in a given number of Frenchmen, taken indiscriminately, there will be 

 found more persons of a particular mental tendency, and fewer of the con- 

 ti'ary tendency, than among an equal number of Italians or English, simi- 

 larly taken; or thus: of a hundred Frenchmen and an equal number of 

 Englishmen, fairly selected, and arranged according to the degree in which 

 they possess a particular mental characteristic, each number, 1, 2, 3, etc., 

 of the one series, will be found to possess more of that characteristic than 

 the corresponding number of the other. Since, therefore, the comparison 

 is not one of kinds, but of ratios and degrees ; and since, in proportion as 

 the differences are slight, it requires a greater number of instances to elim- 

 inate chance, it can not often happen to any one to know a sufficient num- 

 ber of cases with the accuracy requisite for making the sort of comparison 

 last mentioned ; less than which, however, would not constitute a real in- 

 duction. Accordingly, there is hardly one current opinion respecting the 



