ETHOLOGY. 523 



the widest sense of the term, including the formation 

 of national character as well as individual. It 

 would indeed be vain to expect (however completely 

 the laws of the formation of character might be ascer- 

 tained) that we could know so accurately the circum- 

 stances of any given case as to be able positively to 

 predict the character that would be produced in that 

 case. But we must remember that a degree of know- 

 ledge far short of the power of actual prediction, is often 

 of great practical value. There may be great power of 

 influencing phenomena, with a very imperfect know- 

 ledge of the causes by which they are in any given 

 instance determined. It is enough that we know that 

 certain means have a tendency to produce a given 

 effect, and that others have a tendency to frustrate it. 

 When the circumstances of an individual or of a 

 nation are in any considerable degree under our con- 

 trol, we may, by our knowledge of tendencies, be 

 enabled to shape those circumstances in a manner 

 much more favourable to the ends we desire than the 

 shape which they would of themselves assume. This 

 is the limit of our power; but within this limit the 

 power is a most important one. 



The science of Ethology may be called the Exact 

 Science of Human Nature ; for its truths are not, like 

 the empirical laws which depend upon them, approxi- 

 mate generalizations, but real laws. It is, however, 

 (as in all cases of complex phenomena,) necessary to 

 the exactness of the propositions, that they should be 

 hypothetical only, and affirm tendencies, not facts. 

 They must not assert that something will always, or 

 certainly, happen; but only that such and such will 

 be the effect of a given cause, so far as it operates 

 uncounteracted. jit is a scientific proposition, that 

 cowardice tends to make men cruel; not that it 



