614 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



his practice to a pre-established rule, while there are 

 others in which it is part of his task to find or con- 

 struct the rule by which he is to govern his conduct. 

 The first, for example, is the case of a judge, under a 

 definite written code. The judge is not called upon 

 to determine what course would be intrinsically the 

 most advisable in the particular case in hand, but 

 only within what rule of law it falls ; what the legis- 

 lator has commanded to be done in the kind of 

 case, and must therefore be presumed to have intended 

 in the individual case. The method must here be 

 wholly and exclusively one of ratiocination or syllo- 

 gism; and the process is obviously, what in our 

 analysis of the syllogism we showed that all ratiocina- 

 tion is, namely the interpretation of a formula.^ 



In order that an illustration *of the opposite case 

 may be taken from the same class of subjects as the 

 former, we will suppose, in contrast with the situation 

 of the judge, the position of a legislator. As the 

 judge has laws for his guidance, so the legislator has 

 rules, and maxims of policy; but it would be a ma- 

 nifest error to suppose that the legislator is bound by 

 these maxims, in the same manner as the judge is 

 bound by the laws, and that all he has to do is to 

 argue down from them to the particular case, as the 

 judge does from the laws. The legislator is bound to 

 take into consideration the reason or grounds of the 

 maxim; the judge has nothing to do with those of the 

 law, except so far as a consideration of them may 

 throw light upon the intention of the law-maker, 

 where his words have left it doubtful. To the judge, 

 the rule, once positively ascertained, is final; but the 

 legislator, or other practitioner, who goes by rules 

 rather than by their reasons, like the old-fashioned 

 German tacticians who were vanquished by Napoleon, 



