HUMAN NATURE A SUBJECT OF SCIENCE. 495 



which it is of most importance to render amenable to 

 human foresight and control, are determined, like the 

 tides, in an incomparably greater degree by general 

 causes, than by all partial causes taken together; 

 depending in the main on those circumstances and 

 those qualities which are common to all mankind, or 

 common at least to large bodies of them, and only in 

 a small degree on the idiosyncracies of organization 

 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 propositions 

 are equivalent to universal ones. For the purposes 

 of political and social science this is sufficient. As 

 we formerly remarked*, an approximate generaliza- 

 tion is practically, in social inquiries, equivalent to an 

 exact one; that which is only probable when asserted 

 of human beings taken individually, 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 proposi- 

 tions which descend sufficiently into detail to serve 

 as a foundation for predicting phenomena in the con- 

 crete, 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 con- 

 nected deductively with the laws of nature from which 



* Supra, p. 152. 



