and devotion; and these points are innumerable in daily life. In poetry the union of intellect and emotion in that equal proportion which constitutes poetical imagination has rarely been displayed by women; though fancy and the expression of emotion are frequent. It is the broad grasp of teleological and constructive reasoning which seems deficient, not acuteness or quickness of intellectual perception generally. In some modes of speculative and especially in the effective branch of practical reasoning they often excel, where the ends are known, and the question is to devise the means. The lack of interest in scientific truth for its own sake, apart from the interest of the things to be known, or the persons about whom they are known, seems to explain at once the intellectual ability and the intellectual weakness of women when compared to men. 7. It is a different question altogether, and one which has not hitherto been touched here, how far the differences observed between men and women, even those which are supposed to originate in character, are the fruit of a long course of education, of habits, institutions, and modes of life, with their hereditarily transmitted results, and how far consequently they may be altered or obliterated by a permanent change in the direction of that course of education. To reach a tabula rasa, indeed, in the character of any individual, we should have to go back in its history far beyond its birth, to the point where brain begins to be distinguished from nerve in the life of the race to which the individual belongs. In other words, there is no tabula rasa met with in the individual at all. But this leaves untouched the question of the modifiability of the character at any BOOK I. stage of its career. CH. IV. Because certain traits are re ferred by analysis to character, they are not therefore to be supposed immutable. The character, as well as the influences operative on it, is in a state of perpetual modification. But, when any trait has once been included in the character of the race, its chances of permanence may be considered as immensely great, compared to traits which are not so included. If there is a fundamental difference in the character of the two sexes, it would probably require, in order to obliterate it, a greater change in the direction of the course of education, of habits, institutions, and modes of life, than could be effected by human volition; for the tendencies of character would themselves operate against such a change. What we could do would be to set these tendencies of character free to act and react for themselves, unprotected, but also untramelled, by many customs and institutions which now exist. § 75. 1. The analysis of character which has been now attempted, imperfect as it is and erroneous as it will no doubt prove to be in too many points, nevertheless shows one thing clearly, namely, that order and system prevail in the endowments and functions of consciousness which depend on the cerebrum, as they prevail in the rest of the living and sentient organism. And it is upon an analysis, either this or such as this, that any complete and true system of rules of action, laws to guide volition in all its branches, must be based, if they are to be valid and trustworthy. But it does not follow that any such rules or laws can be deduced from the analysis alone; it follows only that the analysis supplies one of their tests. It has a negative or contributive Yet BOOK I. $ 75. Concluding remarks. Practice. value, showing what is not valid, and not declaring what is valid, among such laws of conduct. there may be a system of rules for applying such tests, deduced from the analysis itself; there may The Logic of be a Logic of Practice. And such a logic if correctly framed would be of no inconsiderable value, in guiding our judgment both of those laws and customs which already exist and of the changes which it may be proposed to introduce in them. 2. At every point of history man finds himself in presence of and surrounded by a thick growth of habits and laws, feelings and thoughts, which previous generations have bequeathed to him, and which have their roots in his own nature and modes of acting. The question is constantly recurring, What it is best to do in respect of them. Now strict and accurate observation of the course of history, of the effects of such and such habits, thoughts, and so on, supplies him with more or less general and systematic, more or less wise, rules with regard to his dealings with himself and his fellows, by dealing with these habits and thoughts. But there can be no science of these dealings (to use one word to include all its possible cases) in the strict sense of the term science, no "science of history" for example, until the nature and functions of man, in which these habits and thoughts have their root, have been analysed, and in this way the origin and nature of history, so to speak, laid bare. The science of history, that of law, and that of ethic, remain imperfect until their several systems of phenomena, known to us by observation or by experiment, are connected with their physiological basis, and with the system of states of consciousness dependent on physical structure and function. VOL. I. 00 Book I. $75. Concluding remarks. Practice. There are three things to be done; history to be studied, character to be analysed, and the two connected together by referring history to character in The Logic of the first place, and character to history, by its reaction on it, in the second. There would then arise a complete and deductive science, since we should know the agent thoroughly, together with the modes of his reaction upon a large proportion of the influences which can be operative on him; and without knowing all these influences we may have a deductive science, but not so without knowing thoroughly the nature of the agent. 3. We have now before us an attempt at the analysis of the nature of the agent, man. History in all its branches, such as law, politic, ethic, art, government, education of the young, religion, has been by others often systematically, though of course not yet exhaustively, studied. But the two have not yet been connected together. Until this shall be done, not only there is no deductive science of the history of man, but there is no deductive science of command or of practice; that is, there is no science from which can be deduced practical rules deciding what changes ought to be made in existing habits and thoughts, in particular subjects and particular cases. Yet this, it seems to many, is what Ethic specially proposes to herself to do; an expectation surely which springs from not having considered the position of ethic in all its bearings. It is now clear that an immense work has still to be performed before ethic can deduce authoritatively any practical laws of conduct whatever, namely, the work of connecting history with character. For the present, and perhaps for a long time to come, the empirical wis BOOK I. $75. Concluding remarks. Practice. dom founded on experience, that is, on history alone with only empirical observation of differences of character, is all that can be legitimately attempted. And thus it is upon the practical wisdom of practical men, The Logic of in the popular sense of the term practical, and not upon the results of speculative analysis, that we must still place our reliance. The remainder of this work, therefore, will contain no attempt to lay down any particular rules of either social or political practice. The following Book will be merely a Logic of Practice as an Organon for testing actions, together with such illustrations of its application to history as I may be enabled to furnish. it may 4. Yet even such a logic, furnishing as it must at least do, the method and the framework for studying practical questions and solving practical problems, will not be without its use in their study and solution. They will assume a new shape in being brought distinctly before the mind and in having the logic applied to them, a shape which it may be hoped will render them more tractable. For in the first place be expected, that we shall be able to deduce from the foregoing analysis a solution of the great overshadowing question of principle debated between the Utilitarian and the Moral Law schools of ethic, the question whether the perception of duty as distinct from pleasure or happiness is or ought to be a motive in determining practical judgments. And the settlement of this preliminary and general question will almost by itself constitute the Logic of Practice, since there is no other question which is not a case falling under it; the difficulty in these subordinate cases consisting in the doubt under which head to group them, how to apply the logic to them. |