478 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



this, for the Logic of the Moral Sciences, has been or 

 ought to have been accomplished inUhe five preceding 

 Books ; to which the present can be only a kind 

 of supplement or appendix, since the methods of 

 investigation applicable to moral and social science 

 must have been described by implication, if I have 

 succeeded in enumerating and characterizing those of 

 science in general. It only remains to examine which 

 of those methods are more especially suited to the 

 various branches of moral inquiry; under what pecu- 

 liar facilities or difficulties they are there employed; 

 how far the unsatisfactory state of those inquiries is 

 owing to a wrong choice of methods, how far to want 

 of skill in the application of right ones; and what 

 degree of ultimate success may be attained or hoped 

 for, by a better choice or more careful employment of 

 logical processes appropriate to the case. In other 

 words, whether moral sciences exist, or can exist; to 

 what degree of perfection they are susceptible of being 

 carried; and by what selection or adaptation of the 

 methods brought to view in the previous part of this 

 work, that degree of perfection is attainable. 



At the threshold of this inquiry we are met by an 

 objection, which, if not removed, would be fatal to the 

 attempt to treat human conduct as a subject of 

 science. Are the actions of man, like all other 

 natural events, subject to invariable laws ? Does 

 that constancy of causation, which is the foundation 

 of every scientific theory of successive phenomena, 

 really obtain among them? This is often denied; 

 and for the sake of systematic completeness, if not 

 from any very urgent practical necessity, the question 

 should receive a deliberate answer in this place. We 

 shall devote to the subject a chapter apart. 



