C. Ethology
“In other words, mankind have not one universal character, but there exist universal laws of the formation of character. And since it is by those laws, combined with the facts of each particular case, that the whole of the phenomena of human action and feeling are produced, it is on these that every rational attempt to construct the science of human nature in the concrete and for practical purposes must proceed.”
“This science of ethology may be called the ‘exact science of human nature’ . . . . It is, however (as in all cases of complex phenomena), necessary to the exactness of propositions that they should be hypothetical only and affirm tendencies, not facts. They must not assert that something will always, or certainly happen, but only that such and such will be the effect of a given cause, so far as it operates uncounteracted. It is a scientific proposition that bodily strength tends to make man courageous, not that it always makes them so, that an interest on one side of a question tends to bias the judgment, not that it invariably does so; that experience tends to give wisdom, not that such is always its effect. These propositions, being assertive only of tendencies, are not the less universally true because the tendencies may be frustrated.”
“The laws of the phenomena of society are and can be nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings united together in this social state. Men, however, in a state of society are still men; their actions and passions are obedient to the laws of individual human nature. Men are not, when brought together, converted into Another kind of substance with different properties, as hydrogen and oxygen are different from water . . . Human beings in society have no properties but those which are derived from and may be resolved into the laws of nature of individual man. In social phenomena, the composition of causes is the universal law.”
Although the ways human beings act in society varies with circumstances, individual human nature is unchangeable and is determined by the universal laws of mind and the formation of character.
With respect to social dynamics, i.e. the progression from one state of society to another, “we are justified in concluding that the order of human progression in al respects will mainly depend on the order of progression in the intellectual convictions of mankind, that is, on the law of the successive transformations of human opinions.” IN other words, the idea of human beings is the primary cause of social change.
