least to large bodies of them, and only in a small degree on the idiosyncrasies of organization or the peculiar history of individuals; it is evidently possible with regard to all such effects, to make predictions which will almost always be verified, and general propositions which are almost always true. And whenever it is sufficient to know how the great majority of the human race, or of some nation or class of persons, will think, feel, and act, these propositions are equivalent to universal ones. For the purposes of political and social science this is sufficient. As we formerly remarked,(269) an approximate generalization is, in social inquiries, for most practical purposes equivalent to an exact one; that which is only probable when asserted of individual human beings indiscriminately selected, being certain when affirmed of the character and collective conduct of masses.
It is no disparagement, therefore, to the science of Human Nature, that those of its general propositions which descend sufficiently into detail to serve as a foundation for predicting phenomena in the concrete, are for the most part only approximately true. But in order to give a genuinely scientific character to the study, it is indispensable that these approximate generalizations, which in themselves would amount only to the lowest kind of empirical laws, should be connected deductively with the laws of nature from which they result; should be resolved into the properties of the causes on which the phenomena depend. In other words, the science of Human Nature may be said to exist in proportion as the approximate truths, which compose a practical knowledge of mankind, can be exhibited as corollaries from the universal laws of human nature on which they rest; whereby the proper limits of those approximate truths would be shown, and we should be enabled to deduce others for any new state of circumstances, in anticipation of specific experience.
The proposition now stated is the text on which the two succeeding chapters will furnish the comment.
Chapter IV.
Of The Laws Of Mind.
§ 1. What the Mind is, as well as what Matter is, or any other question
respecting Things in themselves, as distinguished from their sensible
manifestations, it would be foreign to the purposes of this treatise to
consider. Here, as throughout our inquiry, we shall keep clear of all
speculations respecting the mind's own nature, and shall understand by the
laws of mind those of mental Phenomena; of the various feelings or states
of consciousness of sentient beings. These, according to the
classification we have uniformly followed, consist of Thoughts, Emotions,
Volitions, and Sensations; the last being as truly states of Mind as the
three former. It is usual, indeed, to speak of sensations as states of
body, not of mind. But this is the common confusion, of giving one and the
same name to a phenomenon and to the approximate cause or conditions of
the phenomenon. The immediate antecedent of a sensation is a state of
body, but the sensation itself is a state of mind. If the word Mind means
any thing, it means that which feels. Whatever opinion we hold respecting
the fundamental identity or diversity of matter and mind, in any case the
distinction between
