LOGIC OF PRACTICE OR ART. 621 



manner the set of conditions on which that effect 

 depends ; there remains to be taken, a general survey 

 of the resources which can be commanded for realizing 

 this set of conditions; and when the result of this 

 survey has been embodied in the fewest and most 

 extensive propositions possible, those propositions 

 will express the general relation between the available 

 means and the end, and from them, therefore, the 

 practical methods of the art will follow as corollaries. 

 But the further development of this idea may be left 

 to those who have the means, and on whom the 

 special office devolves, of practically applying it for 

 the purpose of constructing, on scientific principles, 

 the general theories of the different arts*. 



6. After these observations on the Logic of 

 Practice in general, little needs here be said of that 

 department of Practice which has received the name 

 of Morality; since it forms no part of the appropriate 

 object of this work to discuss how far morality de- 

 pends, like other arts, upon the consideration of means 

 and ends, and how far,, if at all, upon anything else. 



This, however, may be said ; that questions of 

 practical morality are partly similar to those which 

 are to be decided by a judge, and partly to those 

 which have to be solved by a legislator or adminis- 

 trator. In some things our conduct ought to conform 

 itselt to a prescribed rule; in others, it is to be 

 guided by the best judgment which can be formed ot 

 the merits of the particular case. 



* A systematic treatise on the general means which man pos- 

 sesses of acting upon nature, is one of the works which M. Comte 

 holds out the hope of his producing at some future time; and no 

 subject affords a larger scope for the faculties of so original and 

 comprehensive a mind. 



