Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic Part 10

CHAPTER V.

ETHOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER.

Till the Empirical laws of Mind, i.e. the truths of common experience, are _explained_ by being resolved into the causal laws (the subject of the last chapter), they are mere approximate generalisations which cannot be safely applied beyond the limits in which they were collected by observation. But this does not prove aught against the universality and simplicity of the ultimate mental laws; for the same is the case with the empirical laws even in astronomy, where each effect results from but few causes; _a fortiori_, therefore, will it be so in regard to man's character, which is influenced by each of his circ.u.mstances, which differ in the case of each nation, generation, and individual. But though mankind have not one universal character, yet there exist universal laws of the formation of character. These universal laws cannot be discovered experimentally, i.e. either by artificial experiment, since we can seldom vary the experiment sufficiently, and exclude all but known circ.u.mstances, or by observation, since, even in the most favourable instances for the latter, viz. National acts, only the Method of Agreement can be applied. Observation has its uses in relation to this subject; but only as verification of the results arrived at by the Deductive Method. The Deductive Method must be employed to obtain the laws of the formation of character. They are got by supposing any given circ.u.mstances, and then considering how these will, according to the general laws of mind, influence the formation of character. So, contrary to Bacon's rule, laid down wrongly as universal, for the discovery of principles, the highest generalisations must be first ascertained by the experimental science of Psychology; and then will come what is in fact a system of corollaries from the latter science, viz. Ethology, i.e. (as dealing only with tendencies) the _exact_ science of human character, or of education both national and individual, and which has for its principles the middle principles (_axiomata media_) of mental science. It does not yet, but it will soon, exist as a science. Its object must be to determine, from the general laws of mind, combined with man's general position in the universe, what circ.u.mstances will aid or check the growth of good or bad qualities, so that the Art of Education will be merely the transformation of these middle principles into precepts and their adaptation to the special cases. But at every step these middle principles, got by deduction, must be verified _a posteriori_ by empirical laws, and by specific experience respecting the a.s.sumed circ.u.mstances.

CHAPTER VI.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.

Political and social phenomena have been thought too complex for scientific treatment. Pract.i.tioners. .h.i.therto have been the only students; and so, as in medicine, before the rise of Physiology and Natural History, _experimenta fructifera_, and not _lucifera_, have been sought. The scheme of such a science has even been thought quackery, through the vain attempts of some theorists to frame universal precepts, as though their failure (arising from the variety of human circ.u.mstances) proved that the phenomena do not conform to universal laws. Social phenomena, however, being phenomena of human nature in ma.s.ses, must, as human nature is itself subject to fixed laws, obey fixed laws resulting from the fixed laws of human nature. The number and changefulness of the data (unlike those of Astronomy) will prevent our ever predicting the far future of society. But, when general laws have been ascertained, an application of them to the individual circ.u.mstances of a given age and country will show us the causes and tendencies of, and the means of modifying, its actual condition. A consideration of two methods, erroneously used for this science, viz. the Experimental or Chemical, and the Abstract or Geometrical, will introduce us to the true one.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHEMICAL, OR EXPERIMENTAL, METHOD IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.

The followers of this method do not recognise the laws of social phenomena as merely a composition of the laws of individual human nature. They demand specific experience in all cases; and they attempt to make effects, which depend on the greatest possible complication of causes, the subject of induction by observation and experiment. The attempt must fail; for, we can neither get by experiment appropriate _artificial_ instances, nor, by observation, _spontaneous_ instances (from history), with the circ.u.mstances enough varied for a true induction. Neither the _direct_ nor the _indirect_ Method of Difference can be applied, for we cannot find either two single instances differing in nothing but the presence or absence of a given circ.u.mstance (the _direct_), or two cla.s.ses respectively agreeing in nothing but the presence of a circ.u.mstance on one side and its absence on the other (the _indirect_). Then, again, the Method of Agreement is of small value, because social phenomena admit the widest plurality of causes; and so also is that of Concomitant Variations, on account of the mutual action of the coexisting elements of society being such that what affects one affects all. The Method of Residues is better suited to social enquiries than the other three. But _it_ is not a method of pure observation and experiment. It presupposes that we know, by previous deduction from principles of human nature, the causes of part of the effect. But if thus part of the truths are, why may not all be, ascertained by Deduction, and the experimental argument be confined to the verifying of the deductions?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GEOMETRICAL, OR ABSTRACT, METHOD.

The Methods of Elementary Chemistry are applied to social phenomena from carelessness as to, or ignorance of, any of the higher physical sciences: the Geometrical Method, from the belief that Geometry, that is, a science of coexistent, not successive facts, where there are no conflicting forces, is, and that the now deductive physical sciences of Causation, where there are conflicting forces, are _not_, the type of deductive science. Thus, it seems to have been supposed by many philosophers, that each social phenomenon results from only one force, one single property of human nature. For instance, Hobbes a.s.sumed (eking out his a.s.sumption by the fiction of an original contract), that government is founded on fear. Even the scientific Bentham School based a general theory on one premiss, viz. that men's actions are always determined by their interests, meaning probably thereby, that the bulk of the conduct of any succession, or of the majority of any body of men, is determined by their private or worldly interests. They inferred thence, that those rulers alone will govern according to the interest of the governed, whose selfish interests are identified with it (forgetting that, apart from the philanthropy and sense of duty of many, the conduct of _all_ rulers must be influenced by the habits of mind, both of the whole community, and also of their own cla.s.s in it, and by the maxims of their predecessors). Lastly, they laid down that this sense of ident.i.ty of interest with the governed is producible only by responsibility (whereas the personal interest of rulers often prompts them to acts, e.g. for the suppression of anarchy, which are also for the interest of the governed). In fact, this school was pleading for parliamentary reform, and saw truly, that it is against the selfish interests of rulers that const.i.tutional checks are needed, and that, in modern Europe, a feeling in the governors of ident.i.ty of interest, when not active enough, can be roused only by responsibility to the governed.

Their mistake was, that they based on just these few premisses a general theory of government, in forgetfulness that such should proceed by deduction from _the whole_ of the laws of human nature, since each effect is an aggregate result of many causes operating now through the same ones, now through different ones, of these laws.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PHYSICAL, OR CONCRETE DEDUCTIVE, METHOD.

The complexity in social effects arises from the number, not of the laws, but of the data. Therefore, Sociology, i.e. Social Science, must use the Concrete Deductive Method, compounding with one another the laws of all the causes on which any one effect depends, and inferring its law from them all. As in the easiest case to which the Method of Deduction applies, so in this, the most difficult, the conclusions of ratiocination must be _verified_ by collation with the concrete phenomena, or, if possible, with their empirical laws; and then the only effect of an increase in the complication of the subject will be a tendency to a disturbance, and sometimes even to an inversion (which, indeed, M. Comte thinks inseparable from all Sociological enquiries) in the order of the two processes, obliging us, first, to conjecture the conclusions by specific experience, and then verify them by _a priori_ reasonings showing their connection with the principles of human nature.

Sociology is a system not of positive predictions, but of tendencies. Of tendencies themselves, not many can be laid down as true of all societies alike. Even in the case of any single feature of society, the _consensus_ which exists in the body politic, as in the body natural, makes it uncertain whether a cause with a special tendency in one age or country will have quite the same in another. General propositions, therefore, in this deductive science, as, to be true, they must be hypothetical, and state the operation of a given cause in _given circ.u.mstances_, so, to be of any utility, should be limited to those cla.s.ses of facts, which, though influenced by all sociological agents, are yet influenced _immediately_ by a few only, certain fixed combinations of which are likely to recur often. Thus, Political Economy, taking the one psychological law that men prefer a greater gain to a smaller, and ignoring every other motive, except what are perpetually adverse principles to this, viz. men's aversion to labour and desire of present costly pleasures, a.s.sumes, in enquiring what acts this desire of gain will produce, that, within the department of human affairs, where it is actually the main end, it is the _sole_ end. Yet its general propositions are of great practical use, even though it thus provisionally overlooks as well miscellaneous concurrent causes (with some exceptions, as e.g. the principle of population), as also the fact of the non-existence elsewhere of the conditions of any one particular country (e.g. the peculiarly British mode of distribution of the produce of industry among three cla.s.ses). Another hypothetical or abstract science, which can be carved out of Sociology, is the as yet unexplored Political Ethology, i.e. the theory of the causes which determine a people's, or age's, type of character, which collective character, besides being the most interesting phenomenon in the particular state of society, is the _main_ cause of the social state which follows, and moulds _entirely_ customs and laws. The neglect of national diversities sometimes (as e.g. the a.s.sumption by our political economists, that in commercial populations everywhere, equally as in Great Britain and America, all motives yield to the desire of gain) vitiates only the practical application of a proposition; but when the national character is mixed up at every step with the phenomena (as is the case in questions respecting the tendencies of forms of government), the phenomena cannot properly be insulated in a separate branch of Sociology.

As in Ethology and other deductive sciences, so in Statistics and History there are empirical laws. The immediate causes of social facts are often not open to direct observation; and the deductive science can determine only what causes produce a given effect, and not the frequency and quant.i.ties of them; in such cases, the empirical law of the causes (which, however, can be applied to new cases only if we know that the remoter causes, on which these latter causes depend, remain unchanged) must be found through that of the effects, the Deductive Science relying then for its data on indirect observation. But, in the separate branches of Sociology, we cannot obtain empirical laws by specific experience. It is so particularly (on account both of the number of the causes, and also the fewness of the instances to be compared with the one in point) when the effect of any one (e.g. Corn Laws) of many simultaneous social causes has to be determined. We can, however, in such cases, verify _indirectly_ a theory as to the influence of a particular cause in given circ.u.mstances, by seeing if the same theory accounts for the _existing_ state of actual social facts which that cause has a tendency to influence.

CHAPTER X.

THE INVERSE DEDUCTIVE, OR HISTORICAL, METHOD.

The _general_ Science of Society, as contrasted with the branches, shows, not what effect will follow from a given cause under given circ.u.mstances, but what are the causes and characteristic phenomena of States of Society generally. A _State of Society_ is the simultaneous state of all the chief social facts (e.g. employments, beliefs, laws).

It is a condition of the whole organism; and, when a.n.a.lysed, it exhibits uniformities of coexistence between its different elements.

But, as this correlation between the phenomena is itself a law resulting from the laws which regulate the succession between one state of society and another, the fundamental problem of Social Science is to find these latter laws. The form of this succession, by which (on account of the exceptionally constant reaction, in social facts, of the effects, i.e.

human character, on their causes, i.e. human circ.u.mstances) one social state is ever in process of changing into a different one, is now allowed to be, not, as in the solar system, a cycle, but a _progress_ (by which is not here _necessarily_ meant _improvement_, whatever the fact may be). In France it has been thought, that a law of progress, to be found by an a.n.a.lysis of the course of history, would enable us to predict the whole future. But such a law would be empirical, and not true beyond its own facts; for the succession of mental and social states cannot have an independent law. Empirical laws must indeed be found; or a _general_ Science of Society would be impossible: for, the character of any one generation is so much the result of the characters of all prior ones, that _men_ could not compute so long a series from the elementary laws producing it. But the empirical laws, when found (as they can be, since the series of the effects as a whole is ever growing in uniformity), must be shown by deductions to be, if not the only possible, or even the most probable, at least possible, consequences of the laws of human nature.

The empirical laws of society are uniformities, either of coexistence, or of succession. The former are ascertained and verified by Social Statics (which is the theory of the _consensus_, i.e. the mutual actions and reactions, of contemporaneous social elements); the latter, by Social Dynamics (the theory of Society considered as in a state of progress). As to Social Statics--there is, M. Comte thinks, a perpetual reciprocity of influence between all aspects of the same organism, and to such an extent, that the condition of any one which we cannot directly observe can be estimated by that of another which we can. There is, he considers, such an interdependence, not only between the different sciences and arts among themselves, but between the sciences in general and the arts in general, even between the condition of different nations of the same age, and between a form of government and the civilisation of the period. Social Statics will ascertain for us the requisites of stable political union: it will enquire what special circ.u.mstances have always attended on such union, increasing and decreasing in proportion to its completeness; and will then verify these facts as requisites by deducing them from general laws of human nature.

Thus, history indicates as such requisites and conditions of free political union: 1. A system of educational discipline checking man's tendency to anarchy; 2. Loyalty, i.e. a feeling of there being something, whether persons, inst.i.tutions, or individual freedom and political and social equality, which is not to be, at least in practice, called in question; 3. That which the Roman Empire, notwithstanding all its tyranny, established, viz. a strong sense of common interest among fellow-citizens (a very different feeling, by the bye, to mere antipathy to foreigners).

Social Dynamics regards sequences. But the _consensus_ in social facts prevents our tracing the leading facts in one generation to separate causes in a prior one. Therefore, we must find the law of the correspondence not only between the simultaneous states, but between the simultaneous changes of the elements of society. To find this law, which, when duly verified, will be the scientific derivative law of the development of humanity, we must combine the statical view of the phenomena with the dynamical. Fortunately, the state of mankind's speculative faculties and beliefs, being the prime agent of the social movement, furnishes a clue in the maze of social elements, since the order of human progression in all respects will mainly depend on the order of progression of this prime agent. That the other dispositions which aid in social progress (e.g. the desire for increased material comfort) owe their means of working to this (however relatively weak a propensity it may be) is a conclusion from the laws of human nature; and this conclusion is in accordance also with the course of history, in which internal social changes have ever been preceded by proportionate intellectual changes. To determine the law of the successive transformations of opinions all past time must be searched, since such changes appear definitely only at long intervals. M. Comte alone has followed out this conception of the Historical Method; and his generalisation, to the effect that speculation has, on all subjects, three successive stages, has high scientific value.

The Historical Method will trace the derivative laws of social order and progress. It will enable us both to predict the future, and (thus founding the n.o.blest part of the Political Art) partly to shape it. At present, both the Science and the Art are in the rudiments; but they are progressing.

CHAPTER XI.

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

Practical Ethics, i.e. Morality, is an art; and therefore its Method must be that of Art in general. Now, Art from the major premiss, supplied by itself, viz. that the end is desirable, and from the theorem, lent by Science, of the combinations of circ.u.mstances by which the end can be reached, concludes that to secure this combination of circ.u.mstances is desirable; if it also appear practicable, it turns the theorem into a rule. Unless Science's report as to the circ.u.mstances is a full one, the rule may fail; and as, in any case, rules of conduct cannot comprise more than the ordinary conditions of the effect (or they would be too c.u.mbrous for use), they must, at least in moral subjects, be considered, till confronted with the theorems, which are the reasons of them, provisional only. Practical maxims, therefore, till so confronted, are not universally true even for a given end, much less for conduct generally, and must not be used, as they are by the _geometrical_ school, as ultimate premisses.

Any particular art consists of its rules, _together with_ the theorems on which they depend; and Art in general consists of the truths of Science; only these must be arranged in the order most convenient, not, as in Science (which is an enquiry into the course of nature), for thought, but for practice. Intermediate scientific truths must be framed to serve as first principles of the various arts: and through them the end or purpose of an art will be connected with the means for realising the conditions of its attainment. The end itself, however, is defined by the art, not by the science. Each art has one first principle or major premiss which does not, as the propositions of Science, a.s.sert that a thing _is_ or _will be_, but recommends it as what _ought to be_. A scientific theory, however complete, of the history and tendencies of society does not show us (without Teleology, i.e. the Doctrine of Ends) what are the preferable ends. Art itself has its Philosophia Prima, for ascertaining the standard of ends. There can be but one such standard or general principle to which all rules of practice should conform; for, if there were several, a higher yet would be needed, as umpire when they disagreed. In Morality the felt need of a standard has been sometimes supplied by the hypothesis of intuitive moral principles: but a standard would still be wanted for the other two branches of the Art of Life, viz. Prudence or Policy, and Taste; and _their_ standard when found would serve for Morality as well. The true standard, or general principle, is, _the promotion of the happiness of_ ALL _sentient beings_. This is not the _sole_ end; for instance, ideal n.o.bleness of will or conduct should be pursued in preference to the _specific_ pursuit of happiness; but all ends whatsoever must be justified and should be controlled by it.