HUMAN NATURE A SUBJECT OF SCIENCE. 529 



The phenomena with which tliis science is conversant bein"- the 

 thouglits, fcehngs, and actions of human beings, it wouhl have attained 

 the ideal perfection of a science if it enabled us to foretell how an indi- 

 vidual would think, feel, or act, throughout life, with the same certainly 

 with which astronomy enables tis to predict the jdaces and the occulla- 

 tions of the heavenly bodies. It needs scarcely be stated that nothing 

 approaching to this can be done. The actions of individuals could not 

 be predicted with scientific accuracy, were it only because we cannot 

 foresee the whole of the circumstances in which those individuals will 

 be placed. But further, even in any given combination of (present) 

 circumstances, no assertion, which is both precise and imiversally true, 

 can be made respecting the manner in which human beings will think, 

 feel, or act. This is not, however, because every person's modes of 

 thinking, feeling, and acting, do not depend upon causes ; nor can we 

 doubt that if, in the case of any individual, our data could be complete, 

 we even now know enough of the ultimate laws by which mental phe- 

 nomena are determined to enable us to predict with tolerable certainty, 

 if not ^\•ith perfect precision, what, under any given set of circumstances, 

 his conduct or sentiments would be. But the impressions and actions 

 of human beings are not solely the result of their present circumstances, 

 but the joint result of those circinnstances and of the characters of the 

 individuals : and the agencies which determine human character are so 

 numerous and diversified (nothing which has hapjiened to the person 

 throughout life being without its portion of influence), that in the ag- 

 gi-egate they are never in any two cases exactly similar. Hence, even 

 if our science of human nature were theoretically jserfect, that is, if we 

 could calculate any character as we can calculate the orbit of any 

 planet, from given data ; still as the data are never all given, nor ever 

 precisely alike in different cases, we could neither make infallible pre- 

 dictions, nor lay down universal propositions. 



Inasmuch, however, as many of those effects which it is of most im- 

 portance to render amenable to human foresight and control, are de- 

 termined, like the tides, in an incomparably greater degree by general 

 causes, than by all partial causes taken together ; depending in the main 

 on those circumstances and those qualities which are common to all 

 mankind, or common at least to large bodies of them, and only in a 

 small degree on the idiosyncracies of organization or the peculiar his- 

 tory of individuals ; it is evidently possible, with regard to all such 

 effects, to make predictions which will almost always be verified, and 

 general propositions which are almost always true. And whenever it 

 is sufficient to know how the great majority of the human race, or of 

 some nation or class of persons, will think, feel, and act, these jiroposi- 

 tions are equivalent to universal ones. For the purposes of political 

 and social science this is sufficient. As we formerly remarked,* an 

 approximate generalization is practically, in social intjuiries, equivalent 

 to an exact one ; that which is only prcibable when asserted of human 

 beings taken individually, being certain when affirmed of the character 

 and collective conduct of masses. 



It is no disparagement, therefore, to the science of Human Nature, 

 that those of its general propositions which descend sufficiently into 

 detail to serve as a foundation for predicting phenomena in the con- 



* Supra, p. 35'J. 



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