ETHOLOGY. 515 



their conduct or feelings,, which will be true of all 

 mankind. 



Now, without deciding whether the ultimate laws 

 of our mental nature are few or many, it is at least cer- 

 tain that they are of the above description. It is cer- 

 tain that our mental states, and our mental capacities 

 and susceptibilities, are modified, either for a time or 

 permanently, by everything which happens to us in 

 life. Considering therefore how much these modify- 

 ing causes differ in the case of any two individuals, it 

 would be unreasonable to expect that the empirical 

 laws of the human mind, the generalizations we make 

 respecting the feelings or actions of mankind without 

 reference to the causes that determine them, should be 

 anything but approximate generalizations. They are 

 the common wisdom of common life,, and as such are 

 invaluable ; especially as they are mostly to be applied 

 to cases not very dissimilar to those from which they 

 were collected. But if maxims of this sort, collected 

 from Englishmen, come to be applied to Frenchmen, 

 or collected from the present day, are applied to past 

 or future generations, they are apt to be very much at 

 fault. Unless we have resolved the empirical law into 

 the laws of the causes upon which it depends, and 

 ascertained that those causes extend to the case^ 

 which we have in view, there can be no reliance placed 

 in our inferences. For every individual is surrounded 

 by circumstances different from those of every other 

 individual ; every nation or generation of mankind from 

 every other nation or generation : and none of these 

 differences are without their influence in forming a 

 different type of character. There is, indeed, also a 

 certain general resemblance ; but peculiarities of cir- 

 cumstances are continually constituting exceptions 



2 L 2 



