602 ' LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



respecting the formation of character from observation and experiment 

 alone, we are driven perforce to that which, even if it had not been the in- 

 dispensable, would have been the most perfect, mode of investigation, and 

 which it is one of the principal aims of philosophy to extend; namely, that 

 which tries its experiments not on the complex facts, but on the simple 

 ones of which they are compounded; and after ascertaining the laws of the 

 causes, the composition of which gives I'ise to the complex phenomena, 

 then considers whether these will not explain and account for the approx- 

 imate generalizations which have been framed empirically respecting the 

 sequences of those complex phenomena. The laws of the formation of 

 character are, in short, derivative laws, resulting from the general laws of 

 mind, and are to be obtained by deducing them from those general laws 

 by supposing any given set of circumstances, and then considering what, 

 according to the laws of mind, will be the influence of those circumstances 

 on the formation of character. 



A science is thus formed, to which I would propose to give the name of 

 Ethology, or the Science of Character, from 7idoc,a, word more nearly cor- 

 responding to the term " character " as I here use it, than any other word in 

 the same language. The name is perhaps etymologically applicable to the 

 entire science of our mental and moral nature ; but if, as is usual and con- 

 venient, we employ the name Psychology for the science of the elementary 

 laws of mind. Ethology will serve for the ulterior science which determines 

 the kind of character produced in conformity to those general laws by any 

 set of circumstances, physical ahd moral. According to this definition. 

 Ethology is the science which corresponds to the art of education in the 

 widest sense of the term, including the formation of national or collective 

 character as well as individual. It would indeed be vain to expect (how- 

 ever completely the laws of the formation of character might be ascertain- 

 ed) that we could know so accurately the circumstances of any given case 

 as to be able positively to predict the character that would be produced in 

 that case. But we must remember that a degree of knowledge far short of 

 the power of actual prediction is often of much practical value. There 

 may be great power of influencing phenomena, with a very imperfect 

 knowledge of the causes by which they are in any given instance deter- 

 mined. It is enough that we know that certain means have a tendency to 

 produce a given effect, and that others have a tendency to frustrate it. 

 When the circumstances of an individual or of a nation are in any consid- 

 erable degree under our control, we may, by our knowledge of tendencies, 

 be enabled to shape those circumstances in a manner much more favorable 

 to the ends we desire, than the shape which they would of themselves as- 

 sume. This is the limit of our power; but within this limit the power is 

 a most important one. 



This science of Ethology may be called the Exact Science of Human Na- 

 ture; for its truths are not, like the empirical laws which depend on them, 

 approximate generalizations, but real laws. It is, however (as in all cases 

 of complex phenomena), necessary to the exactness of the propositions, that 

 they should be hypothetical only, and affirm tendencies, not facts. They 

 must not assert that something will always, or certainly, happen ; but only 

 that such and such will be the effect of a given cause, so far as it operates 

 uncounteracted. It is a scientific proposition, that bodily strength tends to 

 make men courageous; not that it always makes them so: that an interest 

 on one side of a question tends to bias the judgment; not that it invaria- 

 bly does so : that experience tends to give wisdom ; not that such is al- 



