strongest sense; the means which one has discovered for creating this scuse are almost equivalent to the history of culture.
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The proof for a prescription.—Generally speaking, the merit or demerit of a prescription, as, for instance, that for baking bread, is proved through the anticipated result being verified or not, provided it be conscientiously carried out. It is different when we come to moral prescriptions, for here we cannot either foretell or interpret or define the results. These, indeed, rest on hypotheses of a very slight scientific value, which in reality it is equally impossible either to prove or disprove from the results; but formerly, when all science was in its primitive crude condition, and people, on the slightest pretence, were ready to take a thing for granted formerly the merit and demerit of a moral prescription was decided in the same way as is now that of any other rule: by reference to the result. If among the natives of Russian-America the principle obtains, You shall not throw a bone into the fire or give it to the dogs, it is proved as follows: "If you do, you will have no luck in luting." Yet in some sense or other one nearly always has "no luck in hunting"; it is not easy to refute the merit of a prescription in this manner, especially if a community and not an individual is looked upon as the one who suffers punishment; much
