ETHOLOGY. 537 



cunistanroa, togothor with pliysical didiTcncps in tlio sonsatioiis jinxlu- 

 ced in (.lifll'rout individuals by the sainr external or internal cause, are 

 capable ot" accounting for a far i^reater portion of character than is 

 supposed even by the most moderate phrenologists. There are, how- 

 ever, many mental facts which do not seem to arlinit of tliis mode of 

 explanation. Such, to take the srTon<X(^st case, are the various instincts 

 of animals, the portion of human nature which corresponils to those 

 instincts. No mode h;is been suggested, even by way of hypothesis, 

 in which these can receive any satisfactory, or even plausible, expla- 

 nation from psychological causes ahme ; and they may probably be 

 found to have as positive, and even perhaps as direct and innnediate, a 

 •coimexion with physical conditions of the brain and nerves, as any of 

 our mere sensations have. 



How much further this remark might be extended, I do not pretend 

 to determine. My object is not to establish the doctrines, but to dis- 

 criminate the true Method, of mental science ; and this, so far as 

 regards the establishment of the general and elementary laws, maybe 

 considered to be sufficiently accomplished. 



CHAPTER V. 



OF ETHOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF THE FORMATION' OF CHARACTER. 



§ 1. The Laws of Mind, as characterized in the preceding chapter, 

 constitute the universal or abstract portion of the philosophy of human 

 nature ; and all the various truths of common experience, constitutinf 

 a practical knowledge of mankind, must, to tlie extent to which they 

 are truths, be results or conseipiences of these. Such familiar maxims, 

 when collected d poxtcriorl from observation of life, occupy among the 

 truths of the science the place of what, in our analysis of Induction, 

 have so often been spoken of under the title of Empirical Laws. 



An Empirical Law (it will be remembered) is an unifomiitv, whether 

 of succession or of coexistence, which holds true in all instances within 

 our limits of observation, but is not of a nature to afford any assurance 

 that it would hold beyond those limits ; eithi^r because the consiMiucnt 

 is not really the effect of the antecedt-nt, but forms part along with it 

 of a chain of effects, flowing from pri(jr causes not yet ascertained; or 

 because there is ground to believe that the .secjuence (though a case of 

 causation) is resolvable into simpler sefpiences, and, depending there- 

 fore upon a concurrence of several natural agencies, is exposed to an 

 unknown multitude of possibilities of counteraction, in (fiber words, 

 an empirical law is a generalization, of which, not content with fniding 

 it true, we are obliged to ask, why is it true % knowing that its truth is 

 not absolute, but depends upon some mtjre general conditions, and that 

 it can only be relied on in so far as there is ground of assurance that 

 those conditions are realized. 



Now, the observations concerning human affairs collected from com- 

 mon experience, are precisely of this nature. Evcjn if they were uni- 

 versally and exactly true within the bounds of cxperi«;nco, which they 

 never are, still they are not the ultimate laws of human action ; they 

 3Y 



