o predict the future, and (thus
founding the noblest 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 circumstances by which
the end can be reached, concludes that to secure this combination of
circumstances is desirable; if it also appear practicable, it turns the
theorem into a rule. Unless Science's report as to the circumstances 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 cumbrous 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, assert 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