ETHOLOGY. 



569 



pursued by the ancients of flying to 

 the highest generalisations first, and 

 deducing the middle principles from 

 them ; since this is neither a vicious 

 nor an exploded, bat the universally 

 accredited method of modern science, 

 and that to which it owes its greatest 

 tiiumphs. The error of ancient spe- 

 culation did not consist in making 

 the largest generalisations first, but 

 in making them without the aid or 

 warrant of rigorous inductive me- 

 thods, and applying them deductively 

 without the needful use of that im- 

 portant part of the Deductive Method 

 termed Verification. 



The order in which truths of the 

 various degrees of generality should 

 be ascertained cannot, I apprehend, 

 be preserved by any unbending rule. 

 I know 01 no maxim which can be 

 laid down on the subject, but to ob- 

 tain those first in respect to which 

 the conditions of a real induction can 

 be first and most completely realised. 

 Now, wherever our means of investi- 

 gation can reach causes, without stop- 

 ping at the empirical laws of the 

 effects, the simplest cases being those 

 in which fewest causes are simul- 

 taneously concerned, will be most 

 amenable to the inductive process ; 

 and these are the cases which elicit 

 laws of the greatest comprehensive- 

 ness. In every science, therefore, 

 which has reached the stage at which 

 it becomes a science of causes, it will 

 be usual, as well as desirable, first to 

 obtain the highest generalisations, 

 and then deduce the more special 

 ones from them. Nor can I dis- 

 cover any foundation for the Baconian 

 maxim, so much extolled by subse 

 quent writers, except this : That 

 before we attempt to explain de 

 ductively from more general laws 

 any new class of phenomena, it is 

 desirable to have gone as far as is 

 practicable in ascertaining the em- 

 pirical laws of those phenomena, so as 

 to compare the results of deduction 

 not with one individual instance after 

 another, but with general propositions 

 expressive of the points of agreement 



which have been found among many 

 instances. For if Newton had been 

 obliged to verify the theory of gravi- 

 tation, not by deducing from it Kep- 

 ler's laws, but by deducing all the 

 observed planetary positions which 

 had served Kepler to establish those 

 laws, the Newtonian theory would 

 probably never have emerged from 

 the state of an hjrpothesis.* 



The applicability of these remarks 

 to the special case under considera- 

 tion cannot admit of question. The 

 science of the formation of character 

 is a science of causes. The subject 

 is one to which those among the 

 canons of induction, by which laws of 

 causation are ascertained, can be rigo- 

 rously applied. It is, therefore, both 

 natural and advisable to ascertain the 

 simplest, which are necessarily the 

 most general, laws of causation first, 

 and to deduce the middle principles 

 from them. In other words, Etho- 

 logy, the deductive science, is a sys- 

 tem of corollaries from Psychology, 

 the experimental science. 



* "To which," says Dr. Wliewell, "we 

 may add, that it is certain from the 

 history of the subject, that in that case 

 the hypothesis would never have been 

 framed at all. " 



Dr. Whewell (Philosophy of Discovery, 

 pp. 277-282) defends Bacon's rule against 

 the preceding strictiires. But his defence 

 consists only in asserting and exemplify- 

 ing a proposition which I had myself 

 stated, viz. that though the largest gene- 

 ralisations may be the earliest made, they 

 are not at first seen in their entire gene- 

 rality, but acquire it by degrees, as ihey 

 are found to explain one class after another 

 of phenomena. The laws of motion, for 

 example, were not known to extend to the 

 celestial regions until the motions of the 

 celestial bodies had been deduced from 

 them. This, however, does not in any 

 way affect the fact that the middle prin- 

 ciples of astronomy, the central force, for 

 example, and the law of the inverse 

 square, could not have been discovered if 

 the laws of motion, wiiich are so much 

 more universal, had not been known first. 

 Ou Bacon's system of step-by-siep genera- 

 lisation, it would be impossible in any 

 science to ascend higher than the empiri- 

 cal laws ; a remark which Dr. Whewell's 

 own Inductive Tables, referred to by him 

 in support of his argument, amply bear 

 out. 



