intelligence has been well described as a mixture of admiration and dislike.(7) There is a sense of intellectual power, combined with a belief that it is used for a dangerous purpose, and in a forbidden manner. This repugnance is, with respect to contemporaries, often strengthened by a feeling of envy; but the latter sentiment is, with respect to the great thinkers of a former age, sometimes replaced by a blind submission of the judgment. In the earlier periods of the Greek philosophy, the speculators upon nature were the main objects of popular apprehension and antipathy. As compared with modern times, physics had made less progress among the ancients, and was cultivated by them with less success, than logic, ethics, and politics.() In modern philosophy, this relation is reversed. The uncertainty and obscurity which the ancients found in physics, are now universally considered as characteristic rather of the moral and political sciences. But besides the greater certainty and solidity of the physical sciences in modern times, their subjects remove them further from the business and interests of life; and as the pursuit of them is no longer considered an impious intrusion into the secrets of nature, or an attempt to supplant the direct divine agency by mechanical causes, they neither excite the alarm, nor offend the feelings of the multitude. For these various reasons, the successful investigator of nature is, in modern times, the (7) See Grote's Hist. of Gr. vol. viii. p. 481. (8) Quoniam philosophia in tres partes est tributa, in naturæ obscuritatem, in disserendi subtilitatem, in vitam atque mores; duo illa relinquamus, atque largiamur inertiæ nostræ,' &c.-Cic. de Orat. i. 15. As to the uncertainty of physics, according to the views of the ancients, see the long passage of Cicero, Acad. ii. 39-41; also, Minucius Felix, c. 5. Compare Ritter, Gesch. der Philos. vol. iv. p. 125; Grote, ib. vol. viii. p. 569-73, 596-8. Upon the division of sciences into certain and uncertain, see Abercrombie's Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers; p. 16-20. He lays it down that we easily attain to certainty in the purely physical sciences, or those in which we have to deal only with inanimate matter. M. C. Comte (Traité de Législation, liv. i. c. 1) lays it down that the moral and political are inferior in certainty to the physical sciences, and explains the causes of the inferiority. Compare the remarks of M. Guizot, Hist. de la Civilisation en France, leçon 4, who remarks, with truth, that although the moral are inferior to the physical sciences in precision, they are not inferior in certainty. object of admiration and esteem, while the moral and political philosopher is, if his opinions depart from those of his age and country, generally regarded with disfavour and dislike. Kepler and Galileo are gratefully enumerated among the teachers of mankind. Newton is never named but with reverence; while Adam Smith and Malthus have been denounced by the popular voice as mischievous sophists, who distort truth and inculcate error. Not the least forward in promoting the aversion for political theory, and in resisting its application to practice, are statesmen and practical politicians. They often act on the maxims of the Empiric school of medicine: they profess to eschew all systematic doctrine, and to steer their course simply by the light of experience. Now those who guide themselves in practice by experience rely in general upon precedents; that is to say, they argue directly from one actual case to another, without laying down, in express terms, the principle which serves to connect them. This mode of reasoning is perfectly legitimate, if it is kept within proper bounds, and is not used to the exclusion of theory. We will, therefore, now try to ascertain what is the proper use of precedents in politics, and how they may be combined with general maxims in practical reasoning. § 3 The argument from a precedent consists in the juxtaposition of two actual cases, the case which has formerly happened constituting the precedent, and the case under consideration being that upon which the practical decision is to be made. Every precedent contains a number of circumstances which are not similar to the circumstances of the case in hand. Where a parallelism between two cases is discerned, the immaterial facts are to be rejected, and attention is to be paid merely to the material facts. Much knowledge of the subject-matter, and much sagacity, are necessary for disentangling the facts of each case-for winnowing the chaff from the corn-for separating the husk from the kernel. When this process has been performed, an analogy between the two cases is perceptible, an analogy dependent on their common relation to a general principle, which was tacitly assumed in the first case, and is tacitly applied to the other. When the selection of the previous case is happily made -when its correspondence with the case in hand is shown by pruning away from each the immaterial circumstances, and comparing together the nucleus of each which remains, then it is said that the precedent is apposite, that the case is in point, that it is relevant to the question under deliberation. The argument from precedents or examples is sometimes used to establish a general conclusion. When so used, it serves as the foundation of an inductive argument, the cases adduced being taken as specimens or samples of the entire class, which justify the inferential extension. Nothing is more common than to enforce a practical maxim by actual cases or examples, as in Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes: What gave great Villiers to th' assassin's knife, What, but their wish indulged in courts to shine, Here the last couplet contains the general lesson which the moralist teaches. In the next verses it precedes the examples: There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol. In the following passage, again, the folly of an excessive care for beauty is implied by examples, but not expressed : The teeming mother, anxious for her race, Such arguments from example as these have no immediate reference to action; they serve, indeed, to establish a maxim or rule of conduct, but they are merely a form of the inductive argument, which leads from one or more singulars to a general VOL. II. P conclusion, and there stops. The argument from precedent, however, as employed in political practice, always has an immediate reference to action, and bears upon some actual case. Its essence is, that something which some person or persons did formerly, is alleged as a reason why some person or persons should do the same at present.(") This reason rests upon a principle which forms the intermediate link between the two cases. In all valid arguments from example, as Archbishop Whately has properly remarked, (1) such a connecting principle must exist, though it is not always expressed. It is impossible to argue directly from one singular to another, without implying some general principle, which serves as their bond of union. Not unfrequently, in practical reasonings, this intermediate principle, which the precedents are adduced to establish, is formally stated and proved before it is applied to the case under discussion. Such is often done when precedents are alleged to prove the existence of a custom, a practice, a uniform or predominant habit, or a course of business or dealing. The continuous acts of wise, experienced, or successful men, whose conduct is recognised as constituting authority, may likewise be appealed to as evidencing an intelligent habit, and proving the policy of a certain practical maxim. In legal argument, precedents are adduced for the purpose of establishing the fact, that a certain rule of law, or construction of a statute, has been recognised in the administration of justice, and this proposition is stated before it is applied to the case in litigation. A similar mode of reasoning is likewise adopted in questions of international law; and, indeed, it is chiefly by precedents, constituting an accumulated usage, that rules of international law can be proved; for international law has no written statutes, and treaties between independent nations only supply imperfectly the absence of a written code. (9) Utilissimus idem ac brevissimus bonarum malarumque rerum delectus est, cogitare, quid aut volueris sub alio principe aut nolueris.'Tacit. Hist. i. 16. (10) Elements of Rhetoric, part i. ch. 2, § 6. $ 4 In ordinary political discussion, however, with respect to questions of concrete expediency, it is usual to cite precedents, without a distinct statement of the principle which they involve, and to apply them directly to the actual case in debate. The perception of this principle, which is necessary for the due combination of the two cases, but without a power of giving it an articulate form, and expressing it in distinct words, is called practical tact, or sagacity.(") The principle, however, must admit of being stated; and if the relevancy of the example is challenged, it can only be defended by enouncing the principle which it involves, and demonstrating the applicability of this principle to the case in hand. The examples of the Ninevites, and the Queen of Sheba, which are cited in the gospel as admonitions to the unrepenting Jews, are practical precedents, in which the argument is direct from one actual case to another. 'The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and behold, a greater than Jonas is here. 'The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here.'(1) On the other hand, the parables of the gospel are merely illustrations: they are fictitious or imaginary cases, rendering a doctrine perspicuous by a striking analogy, as in the parable of the Sower, where the mode of eliminating the example, and of substituting a literal and unfigurative statement of the doctrine, (11) The Greek terms for this quickness of apprehending material resemblances in matters of practice are evoroxía and ayxivota. Aristotle distinguishes between evbovλía and evoroxía. The latter, he says. is without reasoning (i. e. without conscious reasoning), and rapid; whereas deliberation is tardy.-Eth. Nic. vi. 10. In Analyt. Post. i. 34, he shows that ayxívola consists in the perception of middle terms; he there defines ἀγχίνοια to be ευστοχία τις ἐν ἀσκέπτῳ χρόνῳ τοῦ μέσου. (12) Matt. xii. 41, 42. See Luke, xi. 31, 32. |