ETHOLOGY. 521 



the causes ; until the determination of which, we could y 

 not judge within what limits the derivative laws might 

 serve as presumptions in cases yet unknown, or even 

 be depended upon as permanent in the very cases 

 from which they were collected. The French people 

 had, or were supposed to have, a certain national 

 character: but they drive out their royal family and 

 aristocracy, alter their institutions, pass through a 

 series of extraordinary events for half a century, and 

 at the end of that time are found to be, in many 

 respects, totally altered. The labouring classes are 

 observed to be different from the higher in a long series 

 of qualities'; but it becomes customary, perhaps, to 

 give them an education more approximating to that 

 of their superiors in station, and in the next age the 

 differences, though still real, are no longer the same. 



But if the differences which you think you ob- 

 serve between French and English, or between persons 

 of station and persons of no station, can be connected 

 with more general laws; if they be such as would 

 naturally flow from the differences of government, 

 former customs, and physical peculiarities in the two 

 nations, and from the diversities of education, occu- 

 pations, and social position in the different classes of 

 society; then, indeed, the coincidence of the two 

 kinds of evidence justifies us in believing that we have 

 both reasoned rightly and observed rightly. Our 

 observation, though not sufficient as proof, is ample 

 as verification. And having ascertained not only the 

 empirical laws but the causes of the peculiarities, we 

 need be under no difficulty in judging how far they 

 may be expected to be permanent, or by what circum- 

 stances they would be modified or destroyed. 



4. Since then it is impossible to obtain really 



