ETHOLOGY. 529 



duced, to be avoided, or merely to be understood : and 

 the object is, to determine, from the general laws of 

 mind, combined with the general position of our 

 species in the universe, what actual or possible combi- 

 nations of circumstances are capable of promoting or 

 of preventing the production of those qualities. A 

 science which possesses middle principles of this kind, 

 arranged in the order, not of causes, but of the effects 

 which it is desirable to produce or to prevent, is duly 

 prepared to be the foundation of the corresponding 

 Art. And when Ethology shall be thus prepared, prac- 

 tical education will be the mere transformation of 

 those principles into a parallel system of precepts, 

 and the adaptation of these to the sum total of the 

 individual circumstances which exist in each parti- 

 cular case. 



It is hardly necessary again to repeat, that, as in 

 every other deductive science, the work of verification 

 a posteriori must proceed pari passu with that of de- 

 duction a priori. The inference given by theory as 

 to the type of character which would be formed by 

 any given circumstances, must be tested by specific 

 experience of those circumstances whenever obtain- 

 able ; and the whole conclusions of the science must 

 undergo a perpetual verification and correction from 

 the general remarks afforded by common experience 

 respecting human nature in our own age, and by his- 

 tory respecting times gone by. The conclusions of 

 theory cannot be trusted, unless confirmed by obser- 

 vation; nor those of observation, unless they can be 

 affiliated to the theory, by deducing them from the 

 laws of human nature and from a close analysis of 

 the circumstances of the particular situation/^ It is 

 the accordance of these two kinds of evidence, sepa- 



VOL. II. 2 M 



