592 liOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



of these intermediate general principles must be. After framing the 

 most comprehensive possible conception of the end to be aimed at, that 

 is, of the effect to be produced, and determining in the same compre- 

 hensive 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 rela- 

 tion between the available means and the end, and from them, there- 

 fore, 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 apply- 

 ing it for the purpose of constructing, on scientific principles, the gen- 

 eral theories of the diffei'ent 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 appro- 

 priate object of this work to discuss how far morality depends, 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 itself to a pre- 

 scribed rule ; in others, it is to be guided by the best judgment which 

 can be formed of the merits of the particular case. 



Without entering into the disputed questions respecting the founda- 

 tion of morality, we may consider as a conclusion following alike from 

 all systems of ethics, that, in a certain description of cases at least, 

 morality consists in the simple observance of a rule. The cases in 

 question are those in which, although any rule Vv^hich can be formed is 

 probably (as we remarked on maxims of policy) more or less imper- 

 fectly adajDted to a portion of the cases which it comprises, there is 

 still a necessity that some rule, of a nature simple enough to be easily 

 understood and remembered, should not only be laid down for 

 guidance, but universally observed, in order that the vai'ious persons 

 concerned may know what they have to expect : the inconvenience of 

 uncertainty on their part being a gi'eater evil than that which may 

 possibly arise, in a minority of cases, from the imjjerfect adaptation of 

 the rule to those cases. 



Such, for example, is the rule of veracity ; that of not infringing the 

 legal rights of others ; and so forth : concerning which it is obvious 

 that although many cases exist in which a deviation from the rule 

 would in the particular case produce more good than evil, it is neces- 

 sary for general secimty, either that the rules should be inflexibly 

 obsei-ved, or that the license of deviating fi-om them, if such be ever 

 permitted, should be confined to definite classes of cases, and of a very 

 peculiar and extreme nature. 



♦ A systematic treatise on the general means which man possesses of acting upon na- 

 ture, 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 com- 

 prehensive a mmd. 



