ect; 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 circumstances, 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
circumstances 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 assumed circumstances.

CHAPTER VI.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE.

Political and social phenomena have been thought too complex for
scientific treatment. Practitioners hitherto 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
circumstances) proved that the phenomena do not conform to universal
laws. Social phenomena, however, being phenomena of human nature in
masses, 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 circumstances
of a given ag