588 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



CHAPTER XI. 



OP THE LOGIC OF PRACTICE, OR ART ; INCLUDING MORALITY AND POLICY. 



§ 1. In the preceding chapters we have endeavored to characterize 

 the present state of those among the branches of knowledge called 

 Moral, which are sciences in the only proper sense of the term, that 

 is, inquiries into the course of natui-e. It is customary, however, to 

 include under the term moral knowledge, and even (though improper- 

 ly) under that of moral science, an inquiry the results of which do not 

 express themselves in the indicative, but in the imperative mood, or in 

 periphrases equivalent to it ; what is called the knowledge of duties j 

 practical ethics, or morality. 



Now, the imperative mood is the characteristic of Art, as distin- 

 guished from Science. Whatever speaks in rules or precepts, not in 

 assertions resjjecting matters of fact, is art ; and ethics, or morality, is 

 properly a portion of the art corresponding to the sciences of human 

 nature and society : the remainder consisting of prudence or policy, and 

 the art of education. 



The Method, therefore, of Ethics, can be no other than that of Art, 

 or Practice, in general : and the portion yet uncompleted, of the task 

 which we proposed to ourselves in the concluding Book, is to charac- 

 terize the general Method of Art, as distinguished from Science. 



§ 2. In all branches of practical business, there are cases in which 

 an individual is bound to conform his practice to a pre-established rule, 

 while there are others in which it is part of his task to find or construct 

 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 legislator has commanded to be done in the kind 

 of case, and must therefore be presumed to have intended in the in- 

 dividual case. The method must here be wholly and exclusively one 

 of ratiocination or syllogism ; and the process is obviously, what in our 

 analysis of the syllogism we showed that all ratiocination 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 manifest error to suppose that the legis- 

 lator 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 legis- 

 lator 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 



