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CHAPTER V. 



OF ETHOLOGY, OH THE SCIENCE OF THE FORMA- 

 TION OF CHARACTER. 



1. THE Laws of Mind, as characterized in the 

 preceding chapter, constitute the universal or abstract 

 portion of the philosophy of human nature ; and all 

 the various truths of common experience, constituting 

 a practical knowledge of mankind, must, to the extent 

 to which they are truths, be results or consequences 

 of these. Such familiar maxims, when collected 

 a posteriori from observation of life, occupy among 

 the truths of the science the place of what, in our 

 analysis of Induction, have so often been spoken of 

 under the title of Empirical Laws. 



An Empirical Law (it will be remembered) is an 

 uniformity, whether of succession or of coexistence, 

 which holds true in all instances within our limits of 

 observation, but is not of a nature to afford any assur- 

 ance that it would hold beyond those limits ; either 

 because the consequent is not really the effect of the 

 antecedent, but forms part along with it of a chain of 

 effects, flowing from prior causes not yet ascertained ; 

 or because there is ground to believe that the sequence 

 (though a case of causation) is resolvable into simpler 

 sequences, and, depending therefore upon a concur- 

 rence of several natural agencies, is exposed to an 

 unknown multitude of possibilities of counteraction. 

 In other words, an empirical law is a generalization, 

 of which, not content with finding it true, we are 

 obliged to ask, why is it true ? knowing that its truth 

 is not absolute, but depends upon some more general 



