motive, while in others they may be permitted to operate upon the will, and to lead to action. It may be true, universally, that an unmerited slight tends to produce the feeling of anger; but this feeling would, by many persons, be checked as soon as it arose, whereas others would be impelled by it to vindictive measures. Descriptive or positive ethics so far resembles metaphysics, that the one science represents the intellectual, while the other represents the moral or emotional principles of our nature. The descriptions of both, if true, are universal, and are as applicable to the future as to the past. The means by which our knowledge is acquired, and the emotions which accompany our sense of pain and pleasure, are as unchangeable in their nature as the functions of our bodily organs. The general propositions of metaphysics, positive ethics, and physiology, stand precisely on the same footing as respects their applicability to the future. In all human affairs, however, where the will is concerned, there is an alternative of action, and an occasion for doubt as to the choice. This is the case as much with domestic and private, as with public and political life. Hence, there is an uncertainty as to the future in all that concerns moral action. Each person has a free choice of different courses at each successive step; and knowing that others are similarly situated, he is uncertain what their course will be. It is in making this choice correctly, with reference to the agent's own circumstances, and the probable conduct of others, that prudence, foresight, sagacity, or practical wisdom, consists. Much of the future is necessarily veiled from our sight, but it can be anticipated to a considerable extent; and it is by the comparative power of anticipating it, that the degrees of the qualities just named are to be measured. Of some men we say, that they are imprudent, improvident, shortsighted; that they take no thought for the morrow; that they make no provision for future contingencies. When they fall into difficulties, we apply to them the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, and we say that those who have not sown cannot expect to reap. On the other hand, we recognise success and prosperity as being the result of foresight and thrift, and we perceive in a man's life the fruits of a provident and sagacious principle of action. When this quality is marked in a higher degree, it may be compared, metaphorically, with a spirit of divination. Hence Horace, speaking of the sententious morality of the tragic chorus, says: Utiliumque sagax rerum et divina futuri, Sortilegis non discrepuit sententia Delphis. It is the business of the preceptive department of ethics to assist the mind in making this choice, and to furnish maxims for the guidance of moral conduct. All treatises on propriety of demeanour, upon moral duties, upon the art of life-all collections of moral maxims, proverbs, apophthegms, have this object in view. § 13 Having passed in review, first the physical, and next the mental sciences and ethics, with respect to their powers of prediction, we have now arrived at politics; and when we have traced the relation in which each of its branches stands to the future, it may easily be compared in this respect with the other departments of science and practice already examined. According to the division previously adopted, we will treat the subject under its four heads, of positive, historical, speculative, and practical. Positive politics and general jurisprudence do not, as we have already seen, (19) involve any question of time. The propositions relative to the nature of government and laws are abstract and universal; they lay down the invariable characteristics of the subject-matter, and they neither describe the past nor anticipate the future. Nevertheless, if they are properly generalized from a sufficient induction of facts, they have the truly scientific character, and are as applicable to future as to past time. For example: if it be said that a sovereign government is free from any legal restraint, or that international law is not administered by any supreme tribunal common to two states, propositions such as these are just as true of future as of past (18) Above, ch. iii. § 3; v. § 7. governments, since they describe a state of things which must exist, supposing the meaning of words and the nature of man to remain unchanged. Propositions such as these are analogous to the propositions of anatomy and physiology. The descriptions of the body politic have the same scientific generality as the descriptions of the body natural, and, when once ascertained by a correct induction, their truth remains unshaken. Whatever are the general properties of a former law will continue to be the properties of other laws hereafter, just as the properties of the nerves, the blood, or the muscles, in any former men, will continue to be their properties in other men hereafter. Positive politics, therefore, like anatomy or physiology, does not, properly speaking, predict anything, though it furnishes general truths by which the determination of future facts may be facilitated. Thus, a politician, in seeking to determine the future operation of a given law, may be assisted by a knowledge of the general nature and properties of a law, just as a physician, in seeking to determine the future course of a disease in a given patient, may be assisted by a knowledge of the general nature and properties of the several organs of the human body. But neither positive politics nor physiology undertakes, in form, to predict any future event; each science generalizes the results of experience in a certain subject-matter, and if those generalizations are correct, their truth will be unimpaired by the lapse of time, so long as the structure of civil society and the structure of the human body remain in their existing form. § 14 While positive politics has a scientific generality, and (inasmuch as it furnishes the results of observation without reference to any determinate period of time) is as applicable to the future as to the past, political history describes the past in connexion with a fixed chronological series, and has no direct reference to anything which has not already happened. (1) It is employed exclusively in narration, and (except in reporting the words of others) uses only the preterite, never the future, tenses of the verb. Like an epic or dramatic poem, it is con (19) See above, ch. v. § 4. (THE PAST), cerned with a succession of human actions, and only differs from these in narrating real, not fictitious events. But, as we shall see presently, political history, though it does not itself predict the future, furnishes the materials out of which political predictions are constructed. From our experience of the past we are enabled to anticipate the future, and the results of this experience are embodied in history. Positive politics, it is true, does not concern itself with history. The description of the necessary and essential properties of a state and a law does not imply a reference to any particular political events, just as the determination of the laws of equilibrium does not imply a reference to any particular set of solid or fluid bodies. But for political speculation and practice, for all anticipation of definite consequences of a given political measure, political history is an indispensable substratum-as a knowledge of the rate at which the sea had encroached upon a certain coast, or a river deposited silt in a certain estuary, would be a necessary element in predicting the future progress of these respective agencies. It is in this spirit that Thucydides writes his history he records past events as they occur, in order that his readers may judge how future events will occur, under similar conditions of causation.(20) § 15 We have seen that positive politics, though expressive of general truth, does not profess to predict any future event or state of society, and that political history has for its proper object merely a registration of past events. We now come to a department of politics which is more directly concerned with the future, viz. the speculative branch. Speculative politics (as we have already explained) is occupied with the influence and operation of political institutions, and with the comparative advan (20) ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπειον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι, wpéλiμa kpívei avтà åpкovvτws ëžet, i. 22. See also, ii. 48; and upon the latter passage, compare the remarks of Mr. Grote, vol. vi. p. 210. Respecting the utility of historical composition, as compared with the active life of a Roman statesman, see the remarks of Sallust, Bell. Jug. c. 4. The ends of history are-1, instruction; 2, delight, according to Vossius, Ars Hist. c. 5. (21) Above, ch. iii. § 4; v. § 8. tages and disadvantages of different systems of government.(") In judging upon these matters, it supposes a certain simple and abstract state of things, and leaves out of consideration all disturbing influences-it therefore only affirms the tendency of an institution to produce certain effects, but in its theoretic capacity does not undertake to say that the institution will produce those effects. : "1 We have already shown that political theory deals only with truth; that it merely affirms certain constant or predominant relations of phenomena, and laws of causation; that it lays down no rules or maxims of conduct, and therefore that, as theory, it prescribes nothing. (2) We will now add, that it predicts nothing absolutely it does not declare, formally and directly, that any event will happen. Virtually, indeed, and in substance, it may be said to predict, inasmuch as it lays down certain general affirmations and laws of causation, which are as applicable to the future as to the past or the present. These propositions, like similar propositions in physics, merely assert the tendency of a cause, supposing it to operate unchecked; they are general and hypothetical-they neither refer to any single case, nor to any absolute set of data. Hence, if they are viewed in the light of predictions, they predict only in a qualified and conditional manner. They affirm only, that if all the data which they assume are present, and all disturbing forces are absent, a certain consequence will follow; but this is not a positive prediction that a certain event will happen in an actual concrete case. For example: it may be affirmed that the tendency of severe punishments is to prevent offences; which may be regarded as a general prediction, that severe punishments will actually prevent offences. But this proposition must be understood as involving the hypothetical datum, that the punishments are regularly inflicted-it is qualified by this condition. Hence, in any case where a severe punishment is not regularly inflicted, and the crime is not repressed (on account, for instance, of its re (22) Above, ch. xix. § 2. |