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The empirical laws, destined to verify its deductions, have been formed in abundance by every successive age of humanity; and the premises for the deductions are now sufficiently complete. A science of Ethology, founded on the laws of Psychology, is therefore possible; though little has yet been done, and that little not at all systematically, toward forming it.
These propositions, being assertive only of tendencies, are not the less universally true because the tendencies may be frustrated. While, on the one hand, Psychology is altogether, or principally, a science of observation and experiment, Ethology, as I have conceived it, is, as I have already remarked, altogether deductive.
The latest discoveries in cerebral physiology appear to have proved that any such connection which may exist is of a radically different character from that contended for by Gall and his followers, and that, whatever may hereafter be found to be the true theory of the subject, phrenology at least is untenable. Of Ethology, Or The Science Of The Formation Of Character.
For the experimental or a posteriori part of this process, the materials are continually accumulating by the observation of mankind. So far as thought is concerned, the great problem of Ethology is to deduce the requisite middle principles from the general laws of Psychology.
Of these several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt with as corollaries.
A science is thus formed, to which I would propose to give the name of Ethology, or the Science of Character, from ἦθος, a word more nearly corresponding to the term “character” as I here use it, than any other word in the same language.
The more highly the science of ethology is cultivated, and the better the diversities of individual and national character are understood, the smaller, probably, will the number of propositions become, which it will be considered safe to build on as universal principles of human nature.
Another hypothetical or abstract science, which can be carved out of Sociology, is the as yet unexplored Political Ethology, i.e. the theory of the causes which determine a people's, or age's, type of character, which collective character, besides being the most interesting phenomenon in the particular state of society, is the main cause of the social state which follows, and moulds entirely customs and laws.
Character might almost be called a name for all the mysteries of psychology, and from Mill's ethology and the old phrenologies of temperament that Wundt adopts with slight modifications, we have really made little progress. It seems to me very significant that Dr.
Like them, it is directly conversant with the causes of only one class of social facts, but a class which exercises, immediately or remotely, a paramount influence over the test. I allude to what may be termed Political Ethology, or the theory of the causes which determine the type of character belonging to a people or to an age.
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