known species (the only case in which our previous knowledge affords no other guidance than the approximate generalization), we can generally make a specific experiment, which is a surer resource.
It often happens, however, that the proposition, Most A are B, is not the ultimatum of our scientific attainments, though the knowledge we possess beyond it can not conveniently be brought to bear upon the particular instance. We may know well enough what circumstances distinguish the portion of A which has the attribute B from the portion which has it not, but may have no means, or may not have time, to examine whether those characteristic circumstances exist or not in the individual case. This is the situation we are generally in when the inquiry is of the kind called moral, that is, of the kind which has in view to predict human actions. To enable us to affirm any thing universally concerning the actions of classes of human beings, the classification must be grounded on the circumstances of their mental culture and habits, which in an individual case are seldom exactly known; and classes grounded on these distinctions would never precisely accord with those into which mankind are divided for social purposes. All propositions which can be framed respecting the actions of human beings as ordinarily classified, or as classified according to any kind of outward indications, are merely approximate. We can only say, Most persons of a particular age, profession, country, or rank in society, have such and such qualities; or, Most persons, when placed in certain circumstances, act in such and such a way. Not that we do not often know well enough on what causes the qualities depend, or what sort of persons they are who act in that particular way; but we have seldom the means of knowing whether any individual person has been under the influence of those causes, or is a person of that particular sort. We could replace the approximate generalizations by propositions universally true; but these would hardly ever be capable of being applied to practice. We should be sure of our majors, but we should not be able to get minors to fit; we are forced, therefore, to draw our conclusions from coarser and more fallible indications.
§ 4. Proceeding now to consider what is to be regarded as sufficient evidence of an approximate generalization, we can have no difficulty in at once recognizing that, when admissible at all, it is admissible only as an empirical law. Propositions of the form, Every A is B, are not necessarily laws of causation, or ultimate uniformities of co-existence; propositions like Most A are B, can not be so. Propositions hitherto found true in every observed instance may yet be no necessary consequence of laws of causation, or of ultimate uniformities, and unless they are so, may, for aught we know, be false beyond the limits of actual observation; still more evidently must this be the case with propositions which are only true in a mere majority of the observed instances.
There is some difference, however, in the degree of certainty of the proposition, Most A are B, according as that approximate generalization composes the whole of our knowledge of the subject, or not. Suppose, first, that the former is the case. We know only that most A are B, not why they are so, nor in what respect those which are differ from those which are not. How, then, did we learn that most A are B? Precisely in the manner in which we should have learned, had such happened to be the fact that all A are B. We collected a number of instances sufficient to eliminate chance, and, having done so, compared the number of instances
