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S
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ON THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF
DISCOVERY.
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M. A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
5-104
ON THE

PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY,
CHAPTERS HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ;
BY
WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D.
BLASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
INCLUDING THE COMPLETION OF. TAE THIRD EDITION
OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES.

el
pedir
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W
SV
X.
lu
ΛΑΜΠΑΔΙΑ ΕΧΟΝΤΕΣ ΔΙΑΔΩΣΟΥΣΙΝ ΑΛΛΗΔΟΙΣ.
LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND.
1860.
THE following are the latest editions of the series of works
which has been published connected with the present subject:
History of the Inductive Sciences, 3 Vols. 1857.
History of Scientific Ideas, 2 Vols. 1858.
Novum Organon Renovatum, I Vol. 1858.
On the Philosophy of Discovery, 1 Vol. 1860.
To the History of the Inductive Sciences are appended two
Indexes (in Vol. I.), an Index of Proper Names, and an Index
of Technical Terms. These Indexes, and the Tables of Contents
of the other works, will enable the reader to refer to any person
or event included in this series.
ᏢᎡ E F A CE .
MHE two works which I entitled The History of
the Inductive Sciences, and The Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences, were intended to present to the
reader a view of the steps by which those portions
of human knowledge which are held to be most
certain and stable have been acquired, and of the
philosophical principles which are involved in those
steps. Each of these steps was a scientific Discovery,
in which a new conception was applied in order to
bind together observed facts. And though the con-
junction of the observed facts was in each case an
example of logical Induction, it was not the induc-
tive process merely, but the novelty of the result in
each case which gave its peculiar character to the
History; and the Philosophy at which I aimed was
not the Philosophy of Induction, but the Philosophy
of Discovery. In the present edition I have de-
scribed this as my object in my Title.
PREFACE.
A great part of the present volume consists of
chapters which composed the twelfth Book of the
Philosophy in former editions, which Book was then
described as a Review of Opinions on the nature of
Knowledge and the Method of seeking it.' I have
added to this part several new chapters, on Plato,
Aristotle, the Arabian Philosophers, Francis Bacon,
Mr. Mill, Mr. Mansel, the late Sir William Hamil-
ton, and the German philosophers Kant, Fichte,
Schelling and Hegel. I might, if time had allowed,
have added a new chapter on Roger Bacon, founded
on his Opus Minus and other works, recently published
for the first time under the direction of the Master of
the Rolls; a valuable contribution to the history of
philosophy. But the review of this work would not
materially alter the estimate of Roger Bacon which I
had derived from the Opus Majus.
But besides these historical and critical surveys of
the philosophy of others, I have ventured to intro-
duce some new views of my own; namely, views
which bear upon the philosophy of religion. I have
done so under the conviction that no philosophy of
the universe can satisfy the minds of thoughtful men
which does not deal with such questions as inevi-
tably force themselves on our notice, respecting the
Author and the Object of the universe ; and also
PREFACE.
vii
universe which has any consistency must sug-
gest answers, at least conjectural, to such ques-
tions. No Cosmos is complete from which the ques-
tion of Deity is excluded; and all Cosmology has
a side turned towards Theology. Though I am aware
therefore how easy it is, on this subject, to give
offence and to incur obloquy, I have not thought it
right to abstain from following out my philosophical
principles to their results in this department of specu-
lation. The results do not differ materially from
those at which many pious and thoughtful speculators
have arrived in previous ages of the world; though
they have here, as seems to me, something of novelty
in their connection with the philosophy of science.
But this point I willingly leave to the calm de-
cision of competent judges.
I have added in an Appendix various Essays,
previously published at different times, which may
serve perhaps to illustrate some points of the history
and philosophy of science,
Se
TRINITY LODGE,
February 8, 1856.
ON
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
CONTENTS
The chapters marked thus * appear now for the first time.
The chapters marked thus † have appeared in other works.
CHAP. I. INTRODUOTION.
CHAP. II. PLATO.
CHAP. III. * ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON PLATO.
1. The Doctrine of Ideas.
2. The Doctrine of the One and Many.
3. The notion of the nature and aim of Science.
4. The Survey of existing Sciences,
5. The Constitution of the human Mind.
CHAP. IV. ARISTOTLE.
CHAP. V. * ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON ARISTOTLE.
1. Induction.
2. Invention.
3. The One in the Many.
The “Five Words.”
5. Aristotle's contribution to the Physical Sciences.
6. Aristotle's Astronomy.
7. Aristotle on Classification.
8. F. Bacon on Aristotle.
9. Discovery of Causes.
10. Plato and Aristotle.
11. Aristotle against Plato's Ideas.
CONTENTS.
CHÁP. VI. THE LATER GREEKS.
CHAP. VII. THE ROMANS.
CHAP. VIII. *ARABIAN PHILOSOPHERS.
CHAP. IX. THE SCHOOLMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
CHAP. X. THE INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Raymond Lully.
CHAP. XI. THE INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES-
continued.
Roger Bacon.
CHAP. XII. THE REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
1. Causes of Delay in the Advance of Knowledge.
2. Causes of Progress.
3. Hermolaus Barbarus, &c.
4. Nicolaus Cusanus.
5. Manilius Ficinus.
6. Francis Patricius.
7. Picus, Agrippa, &c.
8. Paracelsus, Fludd, &c.
CHAP. XIII. THE THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE.
I. Bernardinus Telesius.
2. Thomas Campanella.
3. Andrew Cæsalpinus.
4. Giordano Bruno.
5. Peter Ramus.
6. The Reformers in General.
7. Melancthon.
I.
Charo
CHAP. XIV. THE PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE.
Character of the Practical Reformers,
Leonardo da Vinci.
3. Copernicus.
4. Fabricius.
5. Maurolycus.
6. Benedetti.
7. Gilbert.
CONTENTS,
si
8. Galileo.
9. Kepler.
10. Tycho.
CHAP. XV. FRANCIS BACON.
1. (I.) General Remarks.
2. Common estimate of bim.
3. We consider only Physical Science.
4. He is placed at the head of the change:
5. And justly.
6. (II.) He proclaims a New Era
7. (III.) By a Change of Method; 130
8. Including successive Steps;
9. Gradually ascending.
(IV.) He contrasts the Old and the New Method.
II. (V.) Has he neglected Ideas?
12. No.
13. Examples of Ideas treated by him.
He has failed in applying his Method
15. (VI.) To the Cause of Heat.
16. He seeks Causes before Laws. 137
17. (VII.) His Technical Form worthless.
18. He is confused by words.
19. His “Instances."
20. Contain some good Suggestions.
21. (VIII.) His "Idols.”
22. (IX.) His view of Utility.
23. (X.) His Hopefulness.
24. (XI.) His Piety.
14.
CHAP. XVI. * ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON FRANCIS BACON.
1. Mr. Ellis's views.
2. Mr. Spedding's views.
CHAP. XVII. FROM BAQON TO NEWTON.
I. Harvey.
2. Descartes.
3. Gassendi.
4. Actual Progress in Science.
CONTENTS.
5. Otto Guericke, &c.
6. Hooke.
7. Royal Society.
8. Bacon's New Atalantis.
9. Cowley.
10. Barrow.
CHAP. XVIII. NEWTON.
1. Animating effect of his Discoveries.
2. They confirm Bacon's views.
3. Newton shuns Hypotheses.
4. His views of Inductive Philosophy.
5. His “Rules of Philosophizing."
6. The First Rule.
7. What is a “True Cause”?
8. Such as are real?
9. Or those which are proved?
10. Use of the Rule.
Rule otherwise expressed.
The Second Rule.
What are Events “of the same kind" ?
The Third Rule:
Not safe.
16. The Fourth Rule.
17. Occult Qualities.
18. Ridiculed.
19. Distinction of Laws and Causes.
CHAP. XIX. LOOKE AND HIS FRENOH FOLLOWERS.
1. Cause of Locke's popularity.
2. Sensational School.
3. His inconsistencies.
4. Condillac, &c.
Importance of Language.
Ground of this.
7. The Encyclopedists.
8. Helvetius.
9. Value of Arts.
10. Tendency to Reaction.
CONTENTS.
xili
CHAP. XX. THE REACTION AGAINST THE SENSATIONAL
SCHOOL.
“Nisi intellectus ipse.”
2. Price's “Review."
3. Stewart defends Price.
4. Archbishop Whately.
5. Laromiguière.
6. M. Cousin.
7. M. Ampère.
8. His Classification of Sciences.
9. Kant's Reform of Philosophy.
10. Its Effect in Germany.
CHAP. XXI. FURTHER ADVANCE OF THE SENSATIONAL
SCHOOL.
M. Auguste Comte.
M. Comte on three States of Science.
2. M. Comte rejects the Search of Causes. I
3. Causes in Physics.
4. Causes in other Sciences.
5. M. Comte's Practical Philosophy.
6. M. Comte on Hypotheses.
*
7. M. Comte's Classification of Sciences. ,
CHAP. XXII. *MR. MILL'S LOGIO.
(I.) What is Induction ? SS 1-14.
(II.) Induction or Description, SS 15-23..
(III.) In Discovery a new Conception is introduced,
SS 24–37.
(IV.) Mr. Mill's Four Methods of Inquiry, $S 38
-40.
(V.) His Examples, SS 414-48.
(VI.) Mr. Mill against Hypotheses, SS 49, 50.
(VII.) Against prediction of Facts, SS 51–53.
(VIII.) Newton's Vera Causa, SS 54, 55.
(IX.) Successive Generalizations, SS 56-62.
(X.) Mr. Mill's Hope from Deductions, SS 63-67.
(XI.) Fundamental opposition of our Doctrines, S8 68
71.
(XII.) Absurdities in Mr. Mill's Logic, $$ 72-74.
xiv
CONTENTS.
CHAP. XXIII. * POLITICAL ECONOMY AS AN INDUCTIVE
SOIENCE.
1. Moral Sciences.
2. Political Economy.
3. Wages, Profits, and Rents.
4. Premature Generalizations.
5. Correction of these by Induction-Rent.
, Wages.
7. „ Population.
CHAP. XXIV. *MODERN GERMAN PAILOSOPHY.
(I.) Science is the Idealization of Facts, SS 1~-8.
(II.) Successive German Philosophies.
Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, SS 9–16.
CBAP. XXV. *THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS AS IT EXISTS
· IN THE MORAL WORLD.
Moral Progress is the Realization of Ideas.
CHAP. XXVI. *OF THE “PHILOSOPHY OF THE INFINITE."
God is Eternal.
CHAP. XXVII. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON ON INERTIA AND
WEIGHT.
1. Primary and Secondary Qualities.
2. Meaning of the Distinction.
3. Sir W. Hamilton adds “Secundo-Primary."
4. Inertia.
5. Sir W. Hamilton's arguments and reply.
6. Gravity.
Sir W. Hamilton's arguments and reply.
CHAP. XXVIII. + INFLUENCE OF GERMAN SYSTEMS OF PHI-
LOSOPHY IN BRITAIN.
1. Stewart on Kant.
2. Mr. G. H. Lewes on Kant.
4-6. Mr. Mansel on Kant.
His objection to our Fundamental Ideas, and
Reply.
7-10. New Axioms are possible.
II–13. Mr. Mansel's Kantianism.
14-16. Axioms are not from experience.
CONTENTS.
XV
CHAP. XXIX. *NECESSARY TRUTH IS PROGRESSIVE.
Objections considered.
CHAP. XXX. *THE THEOLOGICAL BEARING OF THE PHILO-
SOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
1-4. How can necessary truths be actual ?
5, 6. Small extent of necessary truth.
7. How did things come to be as they are ?
8. View of the Theist.
9-12. Is this Platonism?
13. Idea of Time.
15. Ideas of Force and Matter.
16. Creation of Matter.
17. Platonic Ideas.
18–21. Idea of Kind.
Idea of Substance.
23. Idea of Final Cause.
24, 25. Human immeasurably inferior to Divine.
26. Science advances towards the Divine Ideas.
27. Recapitulation.
CHAP. XXXI. *Man's KNOWLEDGE OF God.
1, 2. Opinions.
3. From Nature we learn something of God.
4-6. Though but little.
7, 8. From ourselves we learn something concerning
God.
9-11. Objections answered.
12. Creation.
13. End of the World.
14. Moral and Theological views enter.
CHAP. XXXII. *ANALOGIES OF PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS
PHILOSOPHY.
1, 2. Idealization of Facts and Realization of Ideas;
3, 4. Both imperfect.
5, 6. Divine Ideas perfect.
7-9. Realization of Divine Love.
10-13. Realization of Divine Justice.
14. Analogy of Physical and Moral Philosophy.
xvi
CONTENTS
15, 16. Supernatural Beginning, Middle, and End indi-
cated.
17. Suggestion of a Future State.
18–20. Confirmation from the Intellect of Man.
21. From the Moral Nature of Man.
APPENDIX.
PAGE
APPEND. A. OF THE PLATONIC THEORY OF IDEAS . 403
B. ON PLATO'S SURVEY OF THE SCIENCES · 417
BB. ON Plato's NOTION OF DIALECTIO . . 429
C. OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS ACOORDING
TO PLATO . . . . . . 440
D. CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLE'S ACCOUNT OF
INDUCTION . . . . . . 449
E. ON THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF
PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . 462
F. REMARKS ON A REVIEW OF THE PHILO-
SOPHY OF THE INDUCTIVE SOIENCES . 482
G. ON THE TRANSFORMATION OF HYPOTHESES
IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE . . . 492
H. ON HEGEL'S CRITICISM OF NEWTON'S
PRINCIPIA. . . . . . . 504
Appendix to the Memoir on Hegel's Criti-
cism of Newton's Principia . . . 513
K. DEMONSTRATION THAT ALL MATTER 18
HEAVY . . . . . . . 522
TOIT
VIII
ON THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF
DISCOVERY.
Wär' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft
Wie könnten wir das Licht erblicken ?
Lebt nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft
Wie könnte uns das Göttliche entzücken?
GOETAE.
Were nothing sunlike in the Eye
How could we Light itself descry?
Were nothing godlike in the Mind
How could we God in Nature find?
CHAPTER 1.
INTRODUCTION.
DY the examination of the elements of human
D thought in which I have been engaged, and by
a consideration of the history of the most clear and
certain parts of our knowledge, I have been led to
doctrines respecting the progress of that exact and
systematic knowledge which we call Science; and
these doctrines I have endeavoured to lay before the
reader in the History of the Sciences and of Scientific
Ideas. The questions on which I have thus ventured
to pronounce have had a strong interest for man from
the earliest period of his intellectual progress, and
have been the subjects of lively discussion and bold
speculation in every age. I conceive that in the doc-
trines to which these researches have conducted us,
we have a far better hope that we possess a body of
permanent truths than the earlier essays on the same
subjects could furnish. For we have not taken our
examples of knowledge at hazard, as earlier specula-
tors did, and were almost compelled to do; but have
drawn our materials from the vast store of unques-
tioned truths which modern science offers to us : and
we have formed our judgment concerning the nature
and progress of knowledge by considering what such
science is, and how it has reached its present condition.
But though we have thus pursued our speculations
concerning knowledge with advantages which earlier
writers did not possess, it is still both interesting and
instructive for us to regard the opinions upon this
subject which have been delivered by the philosophers
of past times. It is especially interesting to see some
of the truths which we have endeavoured to expound,
gradually dawning in men's minds, and assuming the
B 2
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
clear and permanent form in which we can now con-
template them. I shall therefore, in the ensuing
chapters, pass in review many of the opinions of the
writers of various ages concerning the mode by which
man best acquires the truest knowledge; and I shall
endeavour, as we proceed, to appreciate the real value
of such judgments, and their place in the progress of
sound philosophy.
In this estimate of the opinions of others, I shall
be guided by those general doctrines which I have, as
I trust, established in the histories already published.
And without attempting here to give any summary
of these doctrines, I may remark that there are two
main principles by which speculations on such sub-
jects in all ages are connected and related to each
1 other; namely, the opposition of Ideas and Sensations,
i and the distinction of practical and speculative know-
✓ ledge. The opposition of Ideas and Sensations is ex-
-hibited to us in the antithesis of Theory and Fact,
which are necessarily considered as distinct and of
i opposite natures, and yet necessarily identical, and
constituting Science by their identity. In like man-
ner, although practical knowledge is in substance
identical with speculative, (for all knowledge is specu-
lation, there is a distinction between the two in their
history, and in the subjects by which they are exem-
plified, which distinction is quite essential in judging
of the philosophical views of the ancients. The
alternatives of identity and diversity, in these two
antitheses,—the successive separation, opposition, and
reunion of principles which thus arise, --have pro-
duced, as they may easily be imagined capable of
doing,) a long and varied series of systems concerning
the nature of knowledge; among which we shall have
to guide our course by the aid of the views already
presented.
I am far from undertaking, or wishing, to review
the whole series of opinions which thus come under
our notice; and I do not even attempt to examine all
the principal authors who have written on such sub-
jects. I merely wish to select some of the most con-
INTRODUCTION.
5
siderable forms which such opinions have assumed,
and to point out in some measure the progress of truth
from age to age. In doing this, I can only endeavour
to seize some of the most prominent features of each
time and of each step, and I must pass rapidly from
classical antiquity to those which we have called the
dark ages, and from them to modern times. At each
of these periods the modifications of opinion, and the
speculations with which they were connected, formed
a vast and tangled maze, the byways of which our
plan does not allow us to enter. We shall esteem
ourselves but too fortunate, if we can discover the
single track by which ancient led to modern philo-
sophy.
I must also repeat that my survey of philosophical
writers is here confined to this one point,--their opi-
nions on the nature of knowledge and the method of
science. I with some effort avoid entering upon other
parts of the philosophy of those authors of whom I
speak; I knowingly pass by those portions of their
speculations which are in many cases the most inter-
esting and celebrated ;—their opinions concerning the
human soul, the Divine Governor of the world, the
foundations or leading doctrines of politics, religion,
and general philosophy. I am desirous that my
reader should bear this in mind, since he must other-
wise be offended with the scanty and partial view
which I give in this place of the philosophers whom
I enumerate.
CHAPTER II.
PLATO.
THERE would be small advantage in beginning our
I examination earlier than the period of the Socratic
School at Athens; for although the spirit of inquiry
on such subjects had awakened in Greece at an earlier
period, and although the peculiar aptitude of the
Grecian mind for such researches had shown itself
repeatedly in subtle distinctions and acute reasonings,
all the positive results of these early efforts were con-
tained in a more definite form in the reasonings of the
Platonic age. Before that time, the Greeks did not
possess plain and familiar examples of exact know-
ledge, such as the truths of Arithmetic, Geometry,
Astronomy and Optics became in the school of Plato;
nor were the antitheses of which we spoke above, so
distinctly and fully unfolded as we find them in Plato's
works.
The question which hinges upon one of these anti-
theses, occupies a prominent place in several of the
Platonic dialogues ; namely, whether our knowledge
be obtained by means of Sensation or of Ideas. One
of the doctrines which Plato most earnestly inculcated
upon his countrymen was, that we do not know con-
cerning sensible objects, but concerning ideas. The
first attempts of the Greeks at metaphysical analysis
had given rise to a school which maintained that
material objects are the only realities. In opposition
to this, arose another school, which taught that ma-
terial objects have no permanent reality, but are ever
waxing and waning, constantly changing their sub-
stance. “And hence," as Aristotle says", "arose the
doctrine of ideas which the Platonists held. For they
1 Mctaph. xii. 4
PLATO.
assented to the opinion of Heraclitus, that all sensible
objects are in a constant state of flux. So that if
there is to be any knowledge and science, it must
be concerning some permanent natures, different from
the sensible natures of objects; for there can be no
permanent science respecting that which is perpetu-
ally changing. It happened that. Socrates turned his
speculations to the moral virtues, and was the first
philosopher who endeavoured to give universal defi-
nitions of such matters. He wished to reason sys-
tematically, and therefore he tried to establish defi-
nitions, for definitions are the basis of systematic
reasoning. There are two things which may justly
be looked upon as steps in philosophy due to Socrates;
inductive reasonings, and universal definitions ;—both
of them steps which belong to the foundations of
science. Socrates, however, did not make universals,
or definitions separable from the objects; but his fol-
lowers separated them, and these essences they termed
Ideas." And the same account is given by other
writers”. “Some existences are sensible, some intel-
ligible: and according to Plato, if we wish to under-
stand the principles of things, we must first separate
the ideas from the things, such as the ideas of Simi-
larity, Unity, Number, Magnitude, Position, Motion :
second, that we must assume an absolute Fair, Good,
Just, and the like: third, that we must consider the
ideas of relation, as Knowledge, Power: recollecting
that the Things which we perceive have this or that
appellation applied to them because they partake of
this or that Idea; those things being just which par-
ticipate in the idea of The Just, those being beautiful,
which contain the idea of The Beautiful.” And many
of the arguments by which this doctrine was main-
tained are to be found in the Platonic dialogues. Thus
the opinion that true knowledge consists in sensation,
which had been asserted by Protagoras and others, is
refuted in the Thecetetus: and, we may add, so vic-
toriously refuted, that the arguments there put forth
2 Diog. Laert. Vit. Plat.
8
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
have ever since exercised a strong influence upon the
speculative world. It may be remarked that in the
minds of Plato and of those who have since pursued
the same paths of speculation, the interest of such dis-
cussions as those we are now referring to, was by no
means limited to their bearing upon mere theory; but
was closely connected with those great questions of
morals which have always a practical import. Those
who asserted that the only foundation of knowledge
was sensation, asserted also that the only foundation of
virtue was the desire of pleasure. And in Plato, the
metaphysical part of the disquisitions concerning know-
ledge in general, though independent in its principles,
always seems to be subordinate in its purpose to the
questions concerning the knowledge of our duty.
Since Plato thus looked upon the Ideas which were
involved in each department of knowledge as forming
its only essential part, it was natural that he should
look upon the study of Ideas as the true mode of pur-
suing knowledge. This he himself describes in the
Philebus. “The best way of arriving at truth is not
very difficult to point out, but most hard to pursue.
All the arts which have ever been discovered, were
revealed in this manner. It is a gift of the gods to
man, which, as I conceive, they sent down by some
Prometheus, as by Prometheus they gave us the light
of fire; and the ancients, more clear-sighted than we,
and less removed from the gods, handed down this
traditionary doctrine: that whatever is said to be,
comes of One and of Many, and comprehends in it-
itself the Finite and the Infinite in coalition (being
One Kind, and consisting of Infinite Individuals).
And this being the state of things, we must, in each
case, endeavour to seize the One Idea (the idea of the
Kind) as the chief point; for we shall find that it is
there. And when we have seized this one thing, we
may then consider how it comprehends in itself two,
or three, or any other number; and, again, examine
each of these ramifications separately; till at last we
3 T. ii. p. 16, c, d. ed. Bekker, t. V. p. 437.
PLATO.
perceive, not only that One is at the same time One
and Many, but also how many. And when we have
thus filled up the interval between the Infinite and
the One, we may consider that we have done with
each one. The gods then, as I have said, taught us
by tradition thus to contemplate, and to learn, and to
teach one another. But the philosophers of the pre-
sent day seize upon the One, at hazard, too soon or too
late, and then immediately snatch at the Infinite; but
the intermediate steps escape them, in which resides
the distinction between a truly logical and a mere
disputatious discussion.”
It would seem that what the author here describes
as the most perfect form of exposition, is that which
refers each object to its place in a classification con-
taining a complete series of subordinations, and which
gives a definition of each class. We have repeatedly
remarked that, in sciences of classification, each new
definition which gives a tenable and distinct separation
of classes is an important advance in our knowledge;
but that such definitions are rather the last than the
first step in each advance. In the progress of real
knowledge, these definitions are always the results of
a laborious study of individual cases, and are never
arrived at by a pure effort of thought, which is what
Plato appears to have imagined as the true mode of
philosophizing. And still less do the advances of other
sciences consist in seizing at once upon the highest
generality, and filling in afterwards all the interme-
diate steps between that and the special instances. On
the contrary, as we have seen, the ascents from par-
ticular to general are all successive; and each step of
this ascent requires time, and labour, and a patient
examination of actual facts and objects.
It would, of course, be absurd to blame Plato for
having inadequate views of the nature of progressive
knowledge, at the time when knowledge could hardly
be said to have begun its progress. But we already
find in his speculations, as appears in the passages
just quoted from his writings, several points brought
into view which will require our continued attention
IO
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
as we proceed. In overlooking the necessity of a
gradual and successive advance from the less general
to the more general truths, Plato shared in a dimness
of vision* which prevailed among philosophers to the
time of Francis Bacon. In thinking too slightly
of the study of actual nature, he manifested a bias
from which the human intellect freed itself in the
vigorous struggles which terminated the dark ages.
In pointing out that all knowledge implies a unity of
what we observe as manifold, which unity is given by
the mind, Plato taught a lesson which has of late
been too obscurely acknowledged, the recoil by which
men repaired their long neglect of facts having car-
ried them for a while so far as to think that facts
were the whole of our knowledge. And in analysing
this principle of Unity, by which we thus connect
sensible things, into various Ideas, such as Number,
Magnitude, Position, Motion, he made a highly im-
portant step, which it has been the business of philo-
sophers in succeeding times to complete and to follow
out.
But the efficacy of Plato's speculations in their
bearing upon physical science, and upon theory in
general, was much weakened by the confusion of
practical with theoretical knowledge, which arose from
the ethical propensities of the Socratic school. In
the Platonic Dialogues, Art and Science are constantly
spoken of indiscriminately. The skill possessed by
the Painter, the Architect, the Shoemaker, is consi-
dered as a just example of human science, no less
than the knowledge which the geometer or the astro-
nomer possesses of the theoretical truths with which
he is conversant. Not only so; but traditionary and
mythological tales, mystical imaginations and fantasti-
cal etymologies, are mixed up, as no less choice in-
gredients, with the most acute logical analyses, and
the most exact conduct of metaphysical controversies.
There is no distinction made between the knowledge
possessed by the theoretical psychologist and the
4 See the remarks on this phrase in the next chapter.
PLATO.
II
physician, the philosophical teacher of morals and the
legislator or the administrator of law. This, indeed,
is the less to be wondered at, since even in our own
time the same confusion is very commonly made by
persons not otherwise ignorant or uncultured.
On the other hand, we may remark finally, that
Plato's admiration of Ideas was not a barren imagina-
tion, even so far as regarded physical science. For,
as we have seen", he had a very important share in
the introduction of the theory of epicycles, having
been the first to propose to astronomers in a distinct
form, the problem of which that theory was the solu-
tion; namely, “to explain the celestial phenomena by
the combination of equable circular motions.” This
demand of an ideal hypothesis which should exactly
express the phenomena (as well as they could then be
observed), and from which, by the interposition of
suitable steps, all special cases might be deduced, falls
in well with those views respecting the proper mode
of seeking knowledge which we have quoted from the
Philebus. And the Idea which could thus represent
and replace all the particular Facts, being not only
sought but found, we may readily suppose that the
philosopher was, by this event, strongly confirmed in
his persuasion that such an Idea was indeed what the
inquirer ought to seek. In this conviction all his
genuine followers up to modern times have partici-
pated; and thus, though they have avoided the error
of those who hold that facts alone are valuable as the
elements of our knowledge, they have frequently run
into the opposite error of too much despising and
neglecting facts, and of thinking that the business of
the inquirer after truth was only a profound and con-
stant contemplation of the conceptions of his own
mind. But of this hereafter.
5 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. ii. c.ü.
CHAPTER III.
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON Plato.
THE leading points in Plato's writings which bear
I upon the philosophy of discovery are these :
I. The Doctrine of Ideas.
2. The Doctrine of the One and the Many.
3. The notion of the nature and aim of Science.
4. The survey of existing Sciences.
1. The Doctrine of Ideas is an attempt to solve a
problem which in all ages forces itself upon the 'notice
of thoughtful men; namely, How can certain and
permanent knowledge be possible for man, since all
his knowledge must be derived from transient and
fluctuating sensations? And the answer given by this
doctrine is, that certain and permanent knowledge is
not derived from Sensations, but from Ideas. There
are in the mind certain elements of knowledge which
are not derived from sensation, and are only imper-
fectly exemplified in sensible objects; and when we
reason concerning sensible things so as to obtain real
knowledge, we do so by considering such things as
partaking of the qualities of the Ideas concerning
which there can be truth. The sciences of Geometry
and Arithmetic show that there are truths which
man can know; and the Doctrine of Ideas explains
how this is possible.
So far the Doctrine of Ideas answers its primary
purpose, and is a reply (by no means the least intel-
ligible and satisfactory reply) to a question still agi-
tated among philosophers: What is the ground of
geometrical (and other necessary) truth?
But Plato seems, in many of his writings, to extend
this doctrine much further; and to assume, not only
Ideas of Space and its properties, from which geome-
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON PLATO.
13
trical truths are derived; but of Relations, as the
Relations of Like and Unlike, Greater and Less; and
of mere material objects, as Tables and Chairs. Now
to assume Ideas of such things as these solves no dif-
ficulty and is supported by no argument. In this
respect the Ideal theory is of no value in Science.
It is curious that we have a very acute refutation
of the Ideal theory in this sense, not only in Aristotle,
the open opponent of Plato on this subject, but in the
Platonic writings themselves : namely, in the Dialogue
entitled Parmenides; which, on this and on other ac-
counts, I consider to be the work not of Plato, but of
an opponent of Plato?
2. I have spoken, in the preceding chapter, of
Plato's doctrine that truth is to be obtained by dis-
cerning the One in the Many. This expression is
used, it would seem, in a somewhat large and fluctuat-
ing way, to mean several things; as for instance,
finding the one kind in many individuals (for in-
stance, the one idea of dog in many dogs); or the
one law in many phenomena (for instance, the eccen-
trics and epicycles in many planets). In any inter-
pretation, it is too loose and indefinite a rule to be of
much value in the formation of sciences, though it
has been recently again propounded as important in
modern times.
3. I have said, in the preceding chapter, that
Plato, though he saw that scientific truths of great
generality might be obtained and were to be arrived
at by philosophers, overlooked the necessity of a gra-
dual and successive advance from the less general to
the more general; and I have described this as a
dimness of vision.' I must now acknowledge that this
is not a very appropriate phrase; for not only no
acuteness of vision could have enabled Plato to see
that gradual generalization in science of which, as yet,
no example had appeared; but it was very fortunate
for the progress of truth, at that time, that Plato had
imagined to himself the object of science to be general
1 This matter is further discussed in the Appendix, Essay A.
14
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
and sublime truths which prove themselves to be true
by the light of their own generality and symmetry.
It is worth while to illustrate this notice of Plato by
some references to his writings.
In the Sixth Book of the Republic, Plato treats of
the then existing sciences as the instruments of a
philosophical education. Among the most conspicu-
ous of these is astronomy. He there ridicules the
notion that astronomy is a sublime science because it
makes men look upward. He asserts that the really
sublime science is that which makes men look at the
realities, which are suggested by the appearances seen
in the heavens : namely, the spheres which revolve and
carry the luminaries in their revolutions. Now it was
no doubt the determined search for such “realities”
as these which gave birth to the Greek Astronomy,
that first and critical step in the progress of science.
Plato, by his exhortations, if not by his suggestions,
contributed effectually, as I conceive, to this step in
science. In the same manner he requires a science of
Harmonics which shall be free from the defects and
inaccuracies which occur in actual instruments. This
belief that the universe was full of mathematical rela-
tions, and that these were the true objects of scientific
research, gave a vigour, largeness of mind, and con-
fidence to the Greek speculators which no more cau-
tious view of the problem of scientific discovery could
have supplied. It was well that this advanced guard
in the army of discoverers was filled with indomitable
courage, boundless hopes, and creative minds.
But we must not forget that this disposition to
what Bacon calls anticipation was full of danger as
well as of hope. It led Plato into error, as it led
Kepler afterwards, and many others in all ages of
scientific activity. It led Plato into error, for in-
stance, when it led him to assert (in the Timceus) that
the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, have,
for the forms of their particles respectively, the Cube,
the Icosahedron, the Pyramid, and the Octabedron;
and again, when it led him to despise the practical
controversies of the musicians of his time; which con-
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON PLATO.
15
troversies were, in fact, the proof of the truth of the
mathematical theory of Harmonics. And in like man-
ner it led Kepler into error when it led him to believe
that he had found the reason of the number, size and
motion of the planetary orbits in the application of
the five regular solids to the frame of the universe
How far the caution in forming hypotheses which
Bacon's writings urge upon us is more severe than
suits the present prospects of science, we may hereafter
consider; but it is plainly very conceivable that a
boldness in the invention and application of hypo-
theses which was propitious to science in its infancy,
may be one of the greatest dangers of its more mature
period: and further, that the happy effect of such a
temper depended entirely upon the candour, skill and
labour with which the hypotheses were compared with
the observed phenomena.
4. Plato has given a survey of the sciences of his
time as Francis Bacon has of his. Indeed Plato has
given two such surveys: one, in the Republic, in
reviewing, as I have said, the elements of a philoso-
phical education; the other in the Timæus, as the
portions of a theological view of the universe-such
as has been called a Theodiccea, a justification of God.
In the former passage of Plato, the sciences enume-
rated are Arithmetic, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry,
Astronomy and Harmonics. In the Timaeus we have
a further notice of many other subjects, in a way
which is intended, I conceive, to include such know-
ledge as Plato bad then arrived at on the various parts
of the universe. The subjects there referred to are,
as I have elsewhere stated", these: light and heat,
water, ice, gold, gems, rust and other natural objects:
--odours, taste, hearing, lights, colour, and the powers
of sense in general :—the parts and organs of the body,
as the bones, the marrow, the brain, flesh, muscles,
tendons, ligaments and nerves; the skin, the hair, the
2 These matters are further discussed in the Appendix, Essay B.
3 Sce Appendix, Essay B.
4 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. ii. Additions to 3rd Ed.
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
nails; the veins and arteries; respiration; genera-
tion; and in short, every obvious point of physiology.
But the opinions thus delivered in the Timcus on the
latter subject have little to do with the progress of
real knowledge. The doctrines, on the other hand,
which depend upon geometrical and arithmetical rela-
tions are portions or preludes of the sciences which
the fulness of time brought forth.
5. I may, as further bearing upon the Platonic
notion of science, notice Plato's view of the constitu-
tion of the human mind. According to him the Ideas
which are the constituents of science form an Intel-
ligible World, while the visible and tangible things
which we perceive by our senses form the Visible
World. In the visible world we have shadows and
reflections of actual objects, and by these shadows and
reflections we may judge of the objects, even when we
cannot do so directly; as when men in a dark cavern
judge of external objects by the shadows which they
cast into the cavern. In like manner in the Intelli-
gible World there are conceptions which are the usual
objects of human thought, and about which we reason;
but these are only shadows and reflections of the Ideas
which are the real sources of truth. And the Reason-
ing Faculty, the Discursive Reason, the Logos, which
thus deals with conceptions, is subordinate to the In-
tuitive Faculty, the Intuitive Reason, the Nous, which
apprehends Ideas. This recognition of a Faculty in
man which contemplates the foundations—the Funda-
mental Ideas—of science, and by apprehending such
Ideas, makes science possible, is consentaneous to the
philosophy which I have all along presented, as the
view taught us by a careful study of the history and
nature of science. That new Fundamental Ideas are
unfolded, and the Intuitive Faculty developed and
enlarged by the progress of science and by an intimate
acquaintance with its reasonings, Plato appears to have
discerned in some measure, though dimly. And this
is the less wonderful, inasmuch as this gradual and

5 See these views further discussed in the Appendix, Essay C.
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON PLATO.
17
successive extension of the field of Intuitive Truth, in
proportion as we become familiar with a larger amount
of derived truth, is even now accepted by few, though
proved by the reasonings of the greatest scientific dis-
coverers in every age.
The leading defect in Plato's view of the nature of
real science is his not seeing fully the extent to which
experience and observation are the basis of all our
knowledge of the universe. He considers the lumina-
ries which appear in the heavens to be not the true
objects of astronomy, but only some imperfect adum-
bration of them;--mere diagrams which may assist us
in the study of a higher truth, as beautiful diagrams
might illustrate the truths of geometry, but would not
prove them. This notion of an astronomy which is an
astronomy of Theories and not of Facts, is not tenable,
for Theories are Facts. Theories and Facts are equally
real; true Theories are Facts, and Facts are familiar
Theories. But when Plato says that astronomy is a
series of problems suggested by visible things, he uses
expressions quite conformable to the true philosophy
of science; and the like is true of all other sciences.
CHAPTER IV.
ARISTOTLE.
THE views of Aristotle with regard to the founda-
I tions of human knowledge are very different from
those of his tutor Plato, and are even by himself put
in opposition to them. He dissents altogether from
the Platonic doctrine that Ideas are the true materials
of our knowledge; and after giving, respecting the
origin of this doctrine, the account which we quoted
in the last chapter, he goes on to reason against it.
6 Thus," he says, “they devised Ideas of all things
which are spoken of as universals : much as if any
one having to count a number of objects, should think
that he could not do it while they were few, and
should expect to count them by making them more
numerous. For the kinds of things are almost more
numerous than the special sensible objects, by seeking
the causes of which they were led to their Ideas.” He
then goes on to urge several other reasons against the
assumption of Ideas and the use of them in philoso-
phical researches.
Aristotle himself establishes his doctrines by trains
of reasoning. But reasoning must proceed from cer-
tain First Principles; and the question then arises,
Whence are these First Principles obtained? To this
he replies, that they are the result of Experience, and
he even employs the same technical expression by
which we at this day describe the process of collecting
these principles from observed facts ;—that they are
obtained by Induction. I have already quoted pas-
sages in which this statement is made. “The way
of reasoning,” he says, “is the same in philosophy,
1 Metaph. xii. 4.
2 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. i. c. iii. sect. 2
3 Analyt. Prior. i. 30.
ARISTOTLE.
19
and in any art or science: we must collect the facts
(Tà unápxovta), and the things to which the facts hap-
pen, and must have as large a supply of these as
possible, and then we must examine them according
to the terms of our syllogisms.”...“There are peculiar
principles in each science; and in each case these
principles must be obtained from experience. Thus
astronomical observation supplies the principles of
astronomical science. For the phenomena being
rightly taken, the demonstrations of astronomy were
discovered; and the same is the case with any other
Art or Science. So that if the facts in each case be
taken, it is our business to construct the demonstra-
tions. For if in our natural history (kara try foto-
plav) we have omitted none of the facts and properties
which belong to the subject, we shall learu what we
can demonstrate and what we cannot." And again',
there must be some knowledge wanting, which we are
thus prevented from having. For we acquire know-
ledge either by Induction (étaywyên) or by Demonstra-
tion : and Demonstration is from universals, but In-
duction from particulars. It is impossible to have
universal theoretical propositions except by Induction :
and we cannot make inductions without having sen-
sation; for sensation has to do with particulars.”
It is easy to show that Aristotle uses the term
Induction, as we use it, to express the process of
collecting a general proposition from particular cases
in which it is exemplified. Thus in a passage which
we have already quoted', he says, “Induction, and
Syllogism from Induction, is when we attribute one
extreme term to the middle by means of the other.”
The import of this technical phraseology will further
appear by the example which he gives : “We find
that several animals which are deficient in bile are
.
infer that all animals which are deficient in bile are
long-lived.”
4 Analyt. Post. i. 18.
5 Analyt. Prior. ii. 23, trepi mis enaywyns.
C2
20
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
We may observe, however, that both Aristotle's
notion of induction, and many other parts of his
philosophy, are obscure and imperfect, in consequence
of his refusing to contemplate ideas as something
distinct from sensation. It thus happens that he
always assumes the ideas which enter into his proposi-
tion as given ; and considers it as the philosopher's
business to determine whether such propositions are
true or not: whereas the most important feature in
induction is, as we have said, the introduction of a
new idea, and not its employment when once intro-
duced. That the mind in this manner gives unity to
that which is manifold,--that we are thus led to specu-
lative principles which have an evidence higher than
any others,—and that a peculiar sagacity in some men
seizes upon the conceptions by which the facts may be
bound into true propositions,—are doctrines which
form no essential part of the philosophy of the Stagirite,
although such views are sometimes recognized, more
or less clearly, in his expressions. Thus he says,
“ There can be no knowledge when the sensation does
not continue in the mind. For this purpose, it is
necessary both to perceive, and to have some unity in
the mind (alodavouévous čxelv év te? ¿v Tŷ yuxôn); and
many such perceptions having taken place, some
difference is then perceived : and from the remem-
brance of these arises Reason. Thus from Sensation
comes Memory, and from Memory of the same thing
often repeated comes Experience: for many acts of
Memory make up one Experience. And from Expe-
rience, or from any Universal Notion which takes a
permanent place in the mind, from the unity in the
manifold, the same some one thing being found in
many facts,—springs the first principle of Art and of
Science; of Art, if it be employed about production;
of Science, if about existence.”
6 Analyt. Post. ii. 19.
7 But the best reading seems to be
not ev ti butēri: and the clause must
be rendered “both to perceive and to
retain the perception in the mind.”
This correction does not disturb the
general sense of the passage, that
the first principles of science are
obtained by finding the one in the
Many.
ARISTOTLE.
21
I will add to this, Aristotle's notice of Sagacity;
since, although little or no further reference is made
to this quality in his philosophy, the passage fixes our
attention upon an important step in the formation of
knowledge. “Sagacity” (áyxívola), he says', “is a
hitting by guess (evotoxía tis) upon the middle term
(the conception common to two cases) in an inapprecia-
ble time. As for example, if any one seeing that the
bright side of the moon is always towards the sun,
suddenly perceives why this is; namely, because the
moon shines by the light of the sun :-or if he sees
a person talking with a rich man, be guesses that he
is borrowing money ;-or conjectures that two persons
are friends, because they are enemies of the same
person."--To consider only the first of these exam-
ples;—the conception here introduced, that of a body
shining by the light which another casts upon it, is
not contained in the observed facts, but introduced
by the mind. It is, in short, that conception which,
in the act of induction, the mind superadds to the phe-
nomena as they are presented by the senses : and to
invent such appropriate conceptions, such "eustochies,”
is, indeed, the precise office of inductive sagacity.
At the end of this work (the Later Analytics)
Aristotle ascribes our knowledge of principles to In-
tellect (vous), or, as it appears necessary to translate
the word, Intuition. “Since, of our intellectual habits
by which we aim at truth, some are always true, but
some admit of being false, as Opinion and Reasoning, but
Science and Intuition are always true; and since there
is nothing which is more certain than Science except
Intuition; and since Principles are better known to
us than the Deductions from them; and since all
Science is connected by reasoning, we cannot have
Science respecting Principles. Considering this then,
and that the beginning of Demonstration cannot be
Demonstration, nor the beginning of Science, Science;
and since, as we have said, there is no other kind of
truth, Intuition must be the beginning of Science."
8 Analyt. Post. i. 34
9 Ibid. ii, 19.
22
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
What is here said, is, no doubt, in accordance with
the doctrines which we have endeavoured to establish
respecting the nature of Science, if by this Intuition
we understand that contemplation of certain Funda-
mental Ideas, which is the basis of all rigorous know-
ledge. But notwithstanding this apparent approxi-
mation, Aristotle was far from having an habitual
and practical possession of the principles which he
thus touches upon. He did not, in reality, construct
his philosophy by giving Unity to that which was
manifold, or by seeking in Intuition principles which
might be the basis of Demonstration; nor did he col-
lect, in each subject, fundamental propositions by an
induction of particulars. He rather endeavoured to
divide than to unite; he employed himself, not in
combining facts, but in analysing notions; and the
criterion to which he referred his analysis was, not
the facts of our experience, but our habits of lan-
guage. Thus his opinions rested, not upon sound
inductions, gathered in each case from the phenomena
by means of appropriate Ideas; but upon the loose
and vague generalizations which are implied in the
common use of speech.
Yet Aristotle was so far consistent with his own
doctrine of the derivation of knowledge from expe-
rience, that he made in almost every province of human
knowledge, a vast collection of such special facts as
the experience of his time supplied. These collections
are almost unrivalled, even to the present day, espe-
cially in Natural History; in other departments, when
to the facts we must add the right Inductive Idea, in
order to obtain truth, we find little of value in the
Aristotelic works. But in those parts which refer to
Natural History, we find not only an immense and
varied collection of facts and observations, but a saga-
city and acuteness in classification which it is impos-
sible not to admire. This indeed appears to have been
the most eminent faculty in Aristotle's mind.
The influence of Aristotle in succeeding ages will
come under our notice shortly.
CHAPTER V.
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON ARISTOTLE.
1. ONE of the most conspicuous points in Aris-
U totle's doctrines as bearing upon the philosophy
of Science is his account of that mode of attaining
truth which is called Induction; for we are accustomed
to consider Induction as the process by which our
Sciences have been formed; and we call them collect-
ively the Inductive Sciences. Aristotle often speaks of
Induction, as for instance, when he says that Socrates
introduced the frequent use of it. But the cardinal
passage on this subject is in his Analytics, in which he
compares Syllogism and Induction as two modes of
drawing conclusions?. . He there says that all belief
arises either from Syllogism or from Induction: and
adds that Induction is, when by means of one extreme
term we infer the other extreme to be true of the
middle term. The example which he gives is this :
knowing that particular animals are long-lived, as
elephant, horse, mule; and finding that these animals
agree in having no gall-bladder; we infer, by In-
duction, that all animals which have no gall-bladder
are long-lived. This may be done, he says, if the
middle and the second extreme are convertible : as
the following formal statement may show.
· Elephant, horse, mule, &c. are long-lived.
Elephant, horse, mule, &c. are all gall-less.
If we might convert this proposition, and say
All gall-less animals are as elephant, horse, mule,
&c. :
1 Analyt. Prior. ii. 25.
24
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
we might infer syllogistically that
All gall-less animals are long-lived.
And though we cannot infer this syllogistically, we
infer it by Induction, when we have a sufficient
amount of instances.
I have already elsewhere given this account of In-
duction, as a process employed in the formation of our
knowledge. What I have now to remark concerning
Aristotle is, that it does not appear to have occurred
to him, that in establishing such a proposition as that
which he gives as his instance, the main difficulty is
the discovery of a middle term which will allow us to
frame such a proposition as we need. The zoologist
who wanted to know what kind of animals are long-
lived, might guess long before he guessed that the
absence of the gall-bladder supplied the requisite
middle term; (if the proposition were true; which it
is not.) And in like manner in other cases, it is diffi-
cult to find a middle term, which enables us to collect
a proposition by Induction. And herein consists the
imperfection of his view of the subject; which con-
siders the main point to be the proof of the proposition
when the conceptions are given; whereas the main
point really is, the discovery of conceptions which will
make a true proposition possible.
2. Since the main characteristic of the steps
which have occurred in the formation of the physical
sciences, is not merely that they are propositions col-
lected by Induction, but by the introduction of a new
conception; it has been suggested that it is not a
characteristic designation of these Sciences to call them
Inductive Sciences. Almost every discovery involves
in it the introduction of a new conception, as the ele-
ment of a new proposition; and the novelty of the
conception is more characteristic of the stages of disco-
very than the inductive application of it. Hence as
2 See on this subject Appendix, Essay D.
3 See the chapter on Certain Characteristics of Scientific Induction in
the Phil. Ind. Sc. or in the Nov. Org. Renov.
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON ARISTOTLE. 25
bearing upon the Philosophy of Discovery, the state-
ments of Aristotle concerning Induction, though acute
and valuable, are not so valuable as they might seem.
Even Francis Bacon, it has been asserted, erred in the
same way (and of course with less excuse) in asserting
Induction, of a certain kind, to be the great instrument
for the promotion of knowledge, and in overlooking
the necessity of the Invention which gives Induction
its value.
3. The invention or discovery of a conception by
which many facts of observation are conjoined so
as to make them the materials of a proposition, is
called in Plato, as we have seen, finding the one in the
Many.
In the passage quoted from the Later Analytics,
Aristotle uses the same expression, and speaks very
justly respecting the formation of knowledge. Indeed
the Titles of the chapters of this and many parts of
Aristotle's works would lead us to expect just such a
Philosophy of Discovery as is the object of our study
at present. Thus we have, Anal. Post. B. II. chap. 13:
“How we are to hunt (Onpeúelv) the predications of a
Definition." Chap. 14: “Precepts for the invention
of Problems and of a Middle Term :" and the like.
But when we come to read these chapters, they con-
tain little that is of value, and resolve themselves
mostly into permutations of Aristotle's logical phraseo-
logy.
4. The part of the Aristotelian philosophy which
has most permanently retained its place in modern
Sciences is a part of which a use has been made quite
different from that which was originally contemplated.
The “Five words” which are explained in the Intro-
duction to Aristotle's Categories: namely, the words
Genus, Species, Difference, Property, Accident, were in-
troduced mainly that they might be used in the propo-
sitions of which Syllogisms consist, and might thus be
the elements of reasoning. But it has so happened
that these words are rarely used in Sciences of
Reasoning, but are abundantly and commonly used in
26
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
the Sciences of Classification, as I have explained in
speaking of the Classificatory Sciences.
5. Of Aristotle's actual contributions to the Physi-
cal Sciences I have spoken in the History of those
Sciences". I have stated that he conceived the globu-
lar form of the earth so clearly and gave so forcibly
the arguments for that doctrine, that we may look
upon him as the most effective teacher of it. Also in
the Appendix to that History, published in the third
edition, I bave given Aristotle's account of the Rain-
bow, as a further example of his industrious accumula-
tion of facts, and of his liability to error in his facts.
6. We do not find Aristotle so much impressed
as we might have expected by that great monument
of Grecian ingenuity, the theory of epicycles and ex-
centrics which his predecessor Plato urged so strong-
ly upon the attention of his contemporaries. Aris-
totle proves, as I have said, the globular form of the
earth by good and sufficient arguments. He also
proves by arguments which seem to him quite con-
clusive”, that the earth is in the center of the universe,
and immoveable. As to the motions of the rest of
the planets, he says little. The questions of their
order, and their distances, and the like, belong, he says,
to Astrology'. He remarks only that the revolution
of the heaven itself, the outermost revolution, is simple
and the quickest of all: that the revolutions of the
others are slower, each moving in a direction opposite
to the heaven in its own circle : and that it is reason-
able that those which are nearest to the first revolu-
tion should take the longest time in describing their
own circle, and those that are furthest off, the least
time, and the intermediate ones in the order of their
distances, “as also the mathematicians show."
In the Metaphysics" he enumerates the circular
movements which had been introduced by the astro-
4 Phil. Ind. Sc. b. viii. c. i. art. 11, or Hist. Sc. Id. b. viii.
5 B. i. c. xi. sect. 2.
O B. iii. c. i. sect. 2.
7 De Cælo, ü. 13.
8 Ivid. ii. 1o.
9 xii. 8.
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON ARISTOTLE. 27
nomers Eudoxus and Calippus for the explanation of
the phenomena presented by the sun, moon and pla-
nets. These, he says, amount to fifty-five; and this, he
says, must be the number of essences and principles
which exist in the universe.
7. In the Sciences of Classification, and especially
in the classification of animals, higher claims have
been made for Aristotle, which I have discussed in
the History. I have there attempted to show that
Aristotle's classification, inasmuch as it enumerates all
the parts of animals, may be said to contain the mate-
rials of every subsequent classification: but that it can-
not be said to anticipate any modern system, because
the different grades of classification are not made sub-
ordinate to one another as a system of classification
requires. I have the satisfaction of finding Mr. Owen
agreeing with me in these views
8. Francis Bacon's criticism on Aristotle which I
have quoted in the Appendix to the History 12, is
severe, and I think evidently the result of prejudice.
He disparages Aristotle in comparison with the other
philosophers of Greece. Their systems,' he says, 'had
some savour of experience, and nature, and bodily
things; while the Physics of Aristotle, in general,
sound only of Logical Terms.
'Nor let any one be moved by this: that in his
books Of Animals, and in his Problems, and in others
of his tracts, there is often a quoting of experiments.
For he had made up his mind beforehand; and did not
consult experience in order to make right propositions
and axioms, but when be had settled his system to his
will, he twisted experience round and made her bend
to his system.'
I do not think that this can be said with any truth.
I know no instances in which Aristotle has twisted ex-
perience round, and made her bend to his system. In
10 B. xvi. c. vi.
11 On the Classification of Mammalia, &c.: a Lecture delivered at Cam-
bridge, May 10, 1859, p. 3.
12 B. i. c. xi.
28
PIIILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
his Problems, he is so far from giving dogmatical solu-
tions of the questions proposed, that in most cases, he
propounds two or three solutions as mere suggestions
and conjectures. And both in his History of Animals,
as I have said, and in others of his works, the want of
system gives them an incoherent and tumultuary cha-
racter, which even a false system would have advan-
tageously removed; for, as I have said elsewhere, it is
easier to translate a false system into a true one, than
to introduce system into a mass of confusion.
9. It is curious that a fundamental error into
which Aristotle fell in his view of the conditions
which determine the formation of Science is very
nearly the same as one of Francis Bacon's leading
mistakes. Aristotle says, that Science consists in
knowing the causes of things, as Bacon aims at ac-
quiring a knowledge of the fornis or essences of things
and their qualities. But the history of all the sciences
teaches us that sciences do not begin with such know-
ledge, and that in few cases only do they ever attain to
it. Sciences begin by a knowledge of the laws of phe-
nomena, and proceed by the discovery of the scientific
ideas by which the phenomena are colligated, as I
have shown in other works 13. The discovery of causes
is not beyond the human powers, as some have
taught. Those who thus speak disregard the lessons
taught by the history of Physical Astronomy, of
Geology, of Physical Optics, Thermotics and other
sciences. But the discovery of causes, and of the
essential forms of qualities, is a triumph reserved for
the later stages of each Science, when the knowledge
of the laws of phenomena has already made great
progress. It was not to be expected that Aristotle
would discern this truth, when, as yet, there was no
Science extant in which it had been exemplified. Yet
in Astronomy, the theory of epicycles and excentrics
had immense value, and even has still, as representing
the laws of phenomena; while the attempt to find in
13 History of Scientific Ideas, and Novrum Organum Renovatum,
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON ARISTOTLE. 29
it, as Aristotle wished to do, the ultimate causes of
the motions of the universe, could only mislead. The
Aristotelian maxim, which sounds so plausible, and
has been so generally accepted, that “to know truly is
to know the causes of things,” is a bad guide in
scientific research. Instead of it we might substitute
this : that “though we may aspire to know at last
why things are, we must be content for a long time
with knowing how they are."
10. Hence if we are asked whether Plato or
Aristotle had the truer views of the nature and pro-
perty of Science, we must give the preference to Plato;
for though his notion of a real Intelligible World, of
which the Visible world was a fleeting and changeable
shadow, was extravagant, yet it led him to seek to
determine the forms of the Intelligible Things, which
are really the laws of visible phenomena; while Aris-
totle was led to pass lightly over such laws, because
they did not at once reveal the causes which produced
the phenomena.
11. Aristotle, throughout his works, takes numerous
occasions to argue against Plato's doctrine of Ideas.
Yet these Ideas, so far as they were the Intelligible
Forms of Visible Things, were really fit objects of
philosophical research; and the search after them had
à powerful influence in promoting the progress of
Science. And we may see in the effect of this search
the answer to many of Aristotle's strongest argu-
ments. For instance, Aristotle says that Plato, by
way of explaining things, adds to them as many
Ideas, and that this is just as if a man having to
reckon a large number, were to begin by adding to it
another large number. It is plain that to this we
may reply, that the adopting the Ideas of Cycles, along
with the motions of the Planets, does really explain
the motions; and that the Cycles are not simply added
to the phenomena, but include and supersede the phe-
nomena: a finite number of Cycles include and repre-
sent an infinite number of separate phenomena.
To Aristotle's argument that Ideas cannot be the
Causes or Principles of Things, we should reply, that
30
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
though they cannot be this, they may nevertheless be,
and must be, the Conditions and Principles of our
Knowledge, which is what we want them to be.
I have given an account of the main features of
Aristotle's philosophy, so far as it concerns the Physi-
cal Sciences, in the History of the Inductive Sciences,
Book I.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LATER GREEKS.
M HUS while Plato was disposed to seek the essence
1 of our knowledge in Ideas alone, Aristotle, slight-
ing this source of truth, looked to Experience as the
beginning of Science; and he attempted to obtain, by
division and deduction, all that Experience did not
immediately supply. And thus, with these two great
names, began that struggle of opposite opinions which
has ever since that time agitated the speculative world,
as men have urged the claims of Ideas or of Expe-
rience to our respect, and as alternately each of these
elements of knowledge has been elevated above its due
place, while the other has been unduly depressed. We
shall see the successive turns of this balanced struggle
in the remaining portions of this review.
But we may observe that practically the influence
of Plato predominated rather than that of Aristotle,
in the remaining part of the history of ancient philo-
sophy. It was, indeed, an habitual subject of dispute
among men of letters, whether the sources of true
knowledge are to be found in the Senses or in the
Mind; the Epicureans taking one side of this alterna-
tive, and the Academics another, while the Stoics in
a certain manner included both elements in their view.
But none of these sects showed their persuasion that
the materials of knowledge were to be found in the
domain of Sense, by seeking them there. No one
appears to have thought of following the example of
Aristotle, and gathering together a store of observed
facts. We may except, perhaps, assertions belonging
to some provinces of Natural History, which were
collected by various writers : but in these, the mixed
32
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
character of the statements, the want of discrimination
in the estimate of evidence, the credulity and love of
the marvellous which the authors for the most part
displayed, showed that instead of improving upon the
example of Aristotle, they were wandering further
and further from the path of real knowledge. And
while they thus collected, with so little judgment,
such statements as offered themselves, it hardly ap-
pears to have occurred to any one to enlarge the stores
of observation by the aid of experiment; and to learn
what the laws of nature were, by trying what were
their results in particular cases. They used no instru-
ments for obtaining an insight into the constitution of
the universe, except logical distinctions and discussions;
and proceeded as if the phenomena familiar to their
predecessors must contain all that was needed as a
basis for natural philosophy. By thus contenting
themselves with the facts which the earlier philoso-
phers had contemplated, they were led also to confine
themselves to the ideas which those philosophers had
put forth. For all the most remarkable alternatives
of hypothesis, so far as they could be constructed with
a slight and common knowledge of phenomena, had
been promulgated by the acute and profound thinkers
who gave the first impulse to philosophy: and it was
not given to man to add much to the original inven-
tions of their minds till he had undergone anew a long
discipline of observation, and of thought employed
upon observation. Thus the later authors of the Greek
Schools became little better than commentators on
the earlier; and the common-places with which the
different schools carried on their debates,—the con-
stantly recurring argument, with its known attendant
answer,--the distinctions drawn finer and finer and
leading to nothivg-render the speculations of those
times a scholastic philosophy, in the same sense in
which we employ the term when we speak of the
labours of the middle ages. It will be understood
that I now refer to that which is here my subject, the
opinions concerning our knowledge of nature, and the
methods in use for the purpose of obtaining such
THE LATER GREEKS.
33
knowledge. Whether the moral speculations of the
ancient world were of the same stationary kind, going
their round in a limited circle, like their metaphysics
and physics, must be considered on some other occa-
sion.
Mr. Grote, in his very interesting discussion of
Socrates's teaching, notices also the teaching of Hip-
pocrates, which he conceives to have in one respect
the same tendency as the philosophy of Socrates;
namely, to turn away from the vague aggregate of
doctrines and guesses which constituted the Physical
Philosophy of that time, and to pursue instead a spe-
cial and more practical course of inquiry: Hippocrates
selecting Medicine and Socrates selecting Ethics. By
this limitation of their subject, they avoided some of
the errors of their predecessors. For, as Mr. Grote
has also remarked, the earlier speculators, Anaxa-
goras, Empedocles, Democritus, the Pythagoreans, all
had still present to their minds the vast and undivided
problems which have been transmitted down from the
old poets; bending their minds to the invention of
some system which would explain them all at once, or
assist the imagination in conceiving both how the
Kosmos first began and how it continued to move on."
There could be no better remedy for this ambitious
error of the human mind than to have a definite sub-
ject of study, such as the diseases and the health of
the human body. Accordingly, we see that the study
of medicine did draw its cultivators away from this
ancient but unprofitable field. Hippocrates condemns
those who, as Empedocles, set themselves to make out
what man was from the beginning, how he began first
to exist, and in what manner he was constructed.
This is, he says, no part of medicine. In like manner
he blames and refutes those who make some simple
element, Hot, or Cold, or Moist, or Dry, the cause of
1 The remainder of this chapter is new in the present edition.
2 Hist. of Greece, Part i chap. 68.
3 De Antiqua Medicina, C. 20.
34
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
diseases, and give medical precepts professing to be
founded on this hypothesis.
These passages are marked by the prudence which
practical study suggests to a calm and clear-sighted
man. They can hardly be said to have opened the
way to a Science of Medicine; for in the sense in
which we here use the word Science, namely, a collec-
tion of general truths inferred from facts by successive
discoverers, we have even yet no Science of Medicine.
The question with regard to the number and nature
of the Elements of which bodies are composed began
to be agitated, as we have seen, at a very early period
of Greek philosophy, and continued long to be regarded
as a chief point of physiological doctrine. In Galen's
work we have a treatise entitled, On the Elements
according to Hippocrates, and the writer explains *
that though Hippocrates has not written any work
with the title on the Elements, yet that he has in his
Treatise on the Nature of Man shown his opinion on
that subject. That the doctrine of the Four Elements,
Hot, Cold, Moist, Dry, subsisted long in the schools,
we have evidence in Galen. He tells us that when
he was a student of nineteen years old a teacher urged
this lore upon him, and regarded him as very conten-
tious and perverse, because he offered objections to
it. His account of the Dialogue between him and the
teacher is curious. But in Hippocrates the doctrine
of these four elements is replaced, in a great measure,
by the doctrine of the Four Humours of which the
human body is constituted; namely, Blood, Phlegm,
Yellow Bile and Black Bile. Galen dwells with em-
phasis upon Hippocrates's proof that there must be
more than one such elemente.
" What,” he asks, “is the method of finding the
Elements of bodies ? There can, in my opinion, be
no other than that which was introduced by Hippo-
crates; namely, we must inquire whether there be only
one element, everywhere the same in kind, or whether
4 Lib. i. c. 9.
5 De Elem. i. 6.
6 In former editious I have not done justice to this passage.
THE LATER GREEKS.
35
there are more than one, various and unlike each
other. And if the Element be not one only, but
several, various and dissimilar, we must inquire in
the second place, how many elements there are, and
what, and of what kind they are, and how related in
their association.
" Now that the First Element is not one only of
which both our bodies and those of all other creatures
were produced, Hippocrates shows from these consi-
derations. And it is better first to put down his own
expressions and then to expound them. 'I assert that
if man consisted of one element only he could not fall
sick; for there would be nothing which could derange
his health, if he were all of one Element.'”
The doctrine of One Element did not prevail much
after the time of Hippocrates : the doctrine of Four
Elements continued, as I have said, long to hold pos-
session of the Schools, but does not appear as an
important part of the doctrine of Hippocrates. The
doctrine of the Four Humours (Blood, Phlegm, Yel-
low Bile and Black Bile) is more peculiarly his, and
long retained its place as a principle of physiological
But we are here not so much concerned with his
discoveries in medicine as with his views respecting
the method of acquiring sound knowledge, and in this
respect, as has been said, he recommends by his prac-
tice a prudent limitation of the field of inquiry, a
rejection of wide, ambitious, general assertions, and a
practical study of his proper field.
In ascribing these merits to Hippocrates's medical
speculations as to the ethical speculations of his con-
temporary Socrates, we assign considerable philosophi-
cal value to Hippocrates, no less than to Socrates.
These merits were at that time the great virtues of
physieal as well as of ethical philosophy. But, as
which then subsisted between the physical and ethical
speculations prevailing at that time, ceased to ob-
tain in later times. Indeed, it ceased to exist just
at that time, in consequence of the establishment of
D 2
36
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
scientific astronomy by the exertions of Plato and his
contemporaries. From that time the Common Sense
(as we call it) of a man like Socrates, though it might
be a good guide in ethics, was not a good guide in phy-
sics. I have shown elsewhere? how the Common Sense
of Socrates was worthless in matters of astronomy.
From that time one of the great intellectual lessons
was, that in order to understand the external world, we
must indeed observe carefully, but we must also guess
boldly. Discovery here required an inventive mind
like Plato's to deal with and arrange new and varied
facts. But in ethics all the facts were old and fami-
liar, and the generalizations of language by which
they were grouped as Virtues and Vices, and the like,
were common and well-known words. Here was no
room for invention; and thus in the ethical specula-
tions of Socrates or of any other moral teacher, we
are not to look for any contributions to the Philosophy
of Discovery.
Nor do I find anything on this subject among later
Greek writers, beyond the commendation of such in-
tellectual virtues as Hippocrates and Galen, and other
medical writers, schooled by the practice of their art,
enjoined and praised. But before we quit the ancients
I will point out some peculiarities which may be noticed
in the Roman disciples of the Greek philosophy.
? Hist. Ind. Sc. Addition to Introduction in Third Edition.
CHAPTER VII.
THE ROMANS.
THE Romans had no philosophy but that which
I they borrowed from the Greeks; and what they
thus received, they hardly made entirely their own.
The vast and profound question of which we have
been speaking, the relation between Existence and
our Knowledge of what exists, they never appear to
have fathomed, even so far as to discern how wide
and deep it is. In the development of the ideas by
which nature is to be understood, they went no fur-
ther than their Greek masters had gone, nor indeed
was more to be looked for. And in the practical
habit of accumulating observed facts as materials for
knowledge, they were much less discriminating and
more credulous than their Greek predecessors. The
descent from Aristotle to Pliny, in the judiciousness
of the authors and the value of their collections of
facts, is immense.
Since the Romans were thus servile followers of
their Greek teachers, and little acquainted with any
example of new truths collected from the world around
them, it was not to be expected that they could have
any just conception of that long and magnificent ascent
from one set of truths to others of higher order and
wider compass, which the history of science began to
exhibit when the human mind recovered its progres-
sive habits. Yet some dim presentiment of the splendid
career thus destined for the intellect of man appears
from time to time to have arisen in their minds. Per-
haps the circumstance which most powerfully contri-
buted to suggest this vision, was the vast intellectual
progress which they were themselves conscious of
having made, through the introduction of the Greek
38
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY. .
philosophy; and to this may be added, perhaps, some
other features of national character. Their temper
was too stubborn to acquiesce in the absolute authority
of the Greek philosophy, although their minds were
not inventive enough to establish a rival by its side.
And the wonderful progress of their political power
had given them a hope in the progress of man which
the Greeks never possessed. The Roman, as he be-
lieved the fortune of his State to be destined for
eternity, believed also in the immortal destiny and
endless advance of that Intellectual Republic of which
he had been admitted a denizen.
It is easy to find examples of such feelings as I have
endeavoured to describe. The enthusiasm with which
Lucretius and Virgil speak of physical knowledge,
manifestly arises in a great measure from the delight
which they had felt in becoming acquainted with the
Greek theories.
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musa
Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore
Accipiant, cælique vias et sidera monstrent,
Defectus Solis varios, Lunæque labores!..
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas !
Yė sacred Muses, with whose beauty fir'd,
My soul is ravisht and my brain inspir'd:
Whose Priest I am, whose holy fillets wear,
Would you your Poet's first petition hear,
Give me the ways of wand'ring stars to know,
The depth of Heaven above and Earth below;
Teach me the various labours of the Moon,
And whence proceed th' eclipses of the Sun;
Why flowing Tides prevail upon the main,
And in what dark abyss they shrink again;
What shakes the solid Earth; what cause delays
The Summer Nights; and shortens Winter Days. .
Happy the man who, studying Nature's Laws,
Through known effects can trace the secret cause !
Ovid expresses a similar feeling.
Felices animos quibus hæc cognoscere primis
Inque domos superas scandere cura fuit!..
1 Lib. i. Fast.
THE ROMANS.
39
Admovere oculis distantia sidera nostris
Ætheraque ingenio supposuere suo.
Sic petitur colum: non ut ferat Ossam Olympus
Summaque Peliacus sidera tanget apex.
Thrice happy souls ! to whom 'twas given to rise
To truths like these, and scale the spangled skies !
Far distant stars to clearest view they brought,
And girdled ether with their chain of thought.
So heaven is reached :—not as of old they tried
By mountains piled on mountains in their pride.
And from the whole tenour of these and similar
passages, it is evident that the intellectual pleasure
which arises from our first introduction to a beautiful
physical theory had a main share in producing this
enthusiasm at the contemplation of the victories of
science; although undoubtedly the moral philosophy,
which was never separated from the natural philosophy,
and the triumph over superstitious fears, which a know-
ledge of nature was supposed to furnish, added warmth
to the feeling of exultation.
We may trace a similar impression in the ardent
expressions which Plinymakes use of in speaking of
the early astronomers, and which we have quoted in
the History. “Great men ! elevated above the com-
mon standard of human nature, by discovering the
laws which celestial occurrences obey, and by freeing
the wretched mind of man from the fears which
eclipses inspired.”
This exulting contemplation of what science had
done, naturally led the mind to an anticipation of
further achievements still to be performed. Expres-
sions of this feeling occur in Seneca, and are of the
most remarkable kind, as the following example will
show :
“Why do we wonder that comets, so rare a pheno-
menon, have not yet had their laws assigned !--that we
should know so little of their beginning and their end,
when their recurrence is at wide intervals? It is not
yet fifteen hundred years since Greece,
Stellis numeros et nomina fecit,
2 Hist. Nat. i. 75.
3 Quæst. Nat. vii. 25.
40
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
reckoned the stars, and gave them names.' There
are still many nations which are acquainted with the
heavens by sight only; which do not yet know why the
moon disappears, why she is eclipsed. It is but lately
that among us philosophy has reduced these matters
to a certainty. The day shall come when the course
of time and the labour of a maturer age shall bring
to light what is yet concealed. One generation, even
if it devoted itself to the skies, is not enough for re-
searches so extensive. How then can it be so, when
we divide this scanty allowance of years into no equal
shares between our studies and our vices? These
things then must be explained by a long succession of
inquiries. We have but just begun to know how
arise the morning and evening appearances, the sta-
tions, the progressions, and the retrogradations of the
fixed stars which put themselves in our way;-which
appearing perpetually in another and another place
compel us to be curious. Some one will hereafter
demonstrate in what region the comets wander; why
they move so far asunder from the rest; of what size
and nature they are. Let us be content with what we
have discovered : let posterity contribute its share to
truth.” Again he adds4 in the same strain : “Let
us not wonder that what lies so deep is brought out
so slowly. How many animals have become known
for the first time in this age! And the members of
future generations shall know many of which we are
ignorant. Many things are reserved for ages to come,
when our memory shall have passed away. The world
would be a small thing indeed, if it did not contain
matter of inquiry for all the world. Eleusis reserves
something for the second visit of the worshipper. So
too Nature does not at once disclose all HER mysteries.
We think ourselves initiated; we are but in the ves-
tibule. The arcana are not thrown open without
distinction and without reserve. This age will see
some things; that which comes after us, others.”
Quæst. Nat. vii. 30, 31,
THE ROMANS.
41
While we admire the happy coincidence of these
conjectures with the soundest views which the history
of science teaches us, we must not forget that they
are merely conjectures, suggested by very vague im-
pressions, and associated with very scanty conceptions
from which the above extract is taken, contains a series
of dissertations on various subjects of Natural Philo-
Rivers, Snow, Hail, Rain, Wind, Earthquakes and
Comets. In the whole of these dissertations, the
statements are loose, and the explanations of little or
no value. Perhaps it may be worth our while to
notice a case in which he refers to an observation of
his own, although his conclusion from it be erroneous.
He is arguings against the opinion that Springs arise
from the water which falls in rain. “In the first
place,” he says, “I, a very diligent digger in my vine-
yard, affirm that no rain is so heavy as to moisten the
earth to the depth of more than ten feet. All the
moisture is consumed in this outer crust, and descends
not to the lower part.” We have here something of
the nature of an experiment; and indeed, as we may
readily conceive, the instinct which impels man to
seek truth by experiment can never be altogether ex-
tinguished. Seneca's experiment was deprived of its
value by the in distinctness of his ideas, which led him
to rest in the crude conception of the water being
“consumed ” in the superficial crust of the earth.
It is unnecessary to pursue further the reasonings
of the Romans on such subjects, and we now proceed
to the ages which succeeded the fall of their empire.
5 Ibid. iii. 7.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHERS.
T HAVE noticed certain additions to Physical Science
I made by the Arabians ; namely, in Astronomy?
The discovery of the motion of the Sun's Apogee by
Albategnius, and the discovery of the Moon's Variation
by Aboul-Wefa; and in Optics: the assertion of Alhazen.
that the angle of refraction is not proportional to the
angle of incidence, as Ptolemy had supposed : and cer-
tain steps in the philosophy of vision. We must also
suppose, as the Arabic word alkali reminds us, that
the Arabians contributed to lay the foundations of che-
mistry. The question which we have here to ask is,
whether the Arabians made any steps beyond their
predecessors in the philosophy of discovery. And to
this question, I conceive the answer must be this:
that among them as among the Greeks, those who
practically observed nature, and especially those who
made discoveries in Science, must have had a practical
acquaintance with some of the maxims which are
exemplified in the formation of Science. To discover
that the Apogee of the Sun was 17 degrees distant
from the point where Ptolemy had placed it, Alba-
tegnius made careful observations, and referred them
to the theory of the eccentric, so as to verify or correct
that theory. And when, in the eleventh century,
Arzachel found the Apogee to be less advanced than
Albategnius had found it, he proceeded again to cor-
rect the theory by introducing a new movement of the
equinoctial points, which was called the Trepidation.
1 Fist. Ind. Sc. b. ii. c. iv. sect. 8.
2 Ibid. b. ix. c. ii.
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHERS.
43
It appeared afterwards, however, that, in doing this,
he had had too much confidence in the observations of
his predecessors, and that no such movement as the
Trepidation really existed. In like manner to correct
Ptolemy's law of refraction, Alhazen had recourse to
experiment: but he did not put his experiments in
the form of a Table, as Ptolemy had done. If he
had done this, he might possibly have discovered the
law of sines, which Snell afterwards discovered.
But though the Arabian philosophers thus, in some
cases, observed facts, and referred those facts to
general mathematical laws, it does not appear that
they were led to put in any new or striking general
form such maxims as this : That the progress of Sci-
ence consists in the exact observation of facts and in
colligating them by ideas. Those of them who were
dissatisfied with the existing philosophy as barren and
useless (for instance Algazel), were led to point at
the faults and contradictions of that philosophy, but
did not attempt, so far as I know, to substitute for it
anything better. If they rejected Aristotle's Organon,
they did not attempt to construct a new Organon for
themselves.
Indeed they do not appear even to have had suffi-
cient confidence in the real truth of the astronomical
theories which they had adopted from the Greeks,
always to correct and extend those where their obser-
vations showed that they required correction and ex-
tension. Sometimes they did this, but not generally
enough. When Arzachel found by observation the
Apogee of the Sun to be situated too far back, he ven-
tured to correct Ptolemy's statement of its motion.
But when Aboul-Wefa had really discovered the Vari-
ation of the Moon's motion, he did not express it
by means of an epicycle. If he had done so, he would
have made it unnecessary for Tycho Brahe at a later
period to make the same discovery.
8 See Hist. Ind. Sc. b. iv. c. i.
44
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
The moral of this incident is the same moral which we
have perpetually to note as taught us at every step by
the history of Science :-namely, the necessity of con-
stant, careful and exact observation of Facts; and the
advantage of devising a Theory, (even if it have to be
afterwards rejected, by which the Facts shall be
bound together into a coherent whole.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SCHOOLMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
TN the History of the Sciences I have devoted a Book
I to the state of Science in the middle ages, and have
endeavoured to analyse the intellectual defects of that
period. Among the characteristic features of the hu-
man mind during those times, I have noticed Indis-
tinctness of Ideas, a Commentatorial Spirit, Mysticism,
and Dogmatism. The account there given of this
portion of the history of man belongs, in reality,
rather to the History of Ideas than to the History of
Progressive Science. For, as we have there remarked,
theoretical Science was, during the period of which we
speak, almost entirely stationary; and the investiga-
tion of the causes of such a state of things may be
considered as a part of that review in which we are
now engaged, of the vicissitudes of man's acquaintance
with the methods of discovery. But when we offered
to the world a history of science, to leave so large a
chasm unexplained, would have made the series of
events seem defective and broken; and the survey of
the Middle Ages was therefore inserted. I would beg
to refer to that portion of the former work the reader
who wishes for information in addition to what is here
given.
The Indistinctness of Ideas and the Commenta-
torial Disposition of those ages have already been here
brought under our notice. Viewed with reference to
the opposition between Experience and Ideas, on
which point, as we have said, the succession of opinions
in a great measure turns, it is clear that the commen-
tatorial method belongs to the ideal side of the ques-
tion: for the commentator seeks for such knowledge
40
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
as he values, by analysing and illustrating what his
author has said; and, content with this material of
speculation, does not desire to add to it new stores of
experience and observation. And with regard to the
two other features in the character which we gave to
those ages, we may observe that Dogmatism demands
for philosophical theories the submission of mind, due
to those revealed religious doctrines which are to guide
our conduct and direct our hopes : while Mysticism
elevates ideas into realities, and offers them to us as
the objects of our religious regard. Thus the Mysti-
cism of the middle ages and their Dogmatism alike
arose from not discriminating the offices of theoretical
and practical philosophy. Mysticism claimed for ideas
the dignity and reality of principles of moral action
and religious hope: Dogmatism imposed theoretical
opinions respecting speculative points with the impe-
rative tone of rules of conduct and faith.
If, however, the opposite claims of theory and prac-
tice interfered with the progress of science by the con-
fusion they thus occasioned, they did so far more
by drawing men away altogether from mere physical
speculations. The Christian religion, with its pre-
cepts, its hopes, and its promises, became the leading
subject of men's thoughts; and the great active truths
thus revealed, and the duties thus enjoined, made all
inquiries of mere curiosity appear frivolous and un-
worthy of man. The Fathers of the Church some-
times philosophized ill; but far more commonly they
were too intent upon the great lessons which they had
to teach, respecting man's situation in the eyes of his
Heavenly Master, to philosophize at all respecting
things remote from the business of life and of no im-
portance in man's spiritual concerns.
Yet man has his intellectual as well as his spiritual
wants. He has faculties which demand systems and
reasons, as well as precepts and promises. The Christ-
ian doctor, who knew so much more than the heathen
philosopher respecting the Creator and Governor of the
universe, was not long content to know or to teach less,
respecting the universe itself. While it was still main-
SCHOOLMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
47
tained that Theology was the only really important
study, Theology was so extended and so fashioned as
to include all other knowledge : and after no long
time, the Fathers of the Church themselves became
the authors of systems of universal knowledge.
But when this happened, the commentatorial spirit
was still in its full vigour. The learned Christians
Romans, devise, by the mere force of their own inven-
tion, new systems, full, comprehensive, and connected,
like those of the heroic age of philosophy. The same
mental tendencies which led men to look for specula-
tive coherence and completeness in the view of the
universe, led them also to admire and dwell upon the
splendid and acute speculations of the Greeks. They
were content to find, in those immortal works, the
answers to the questions which their curiosity prompt-
ed; and to seek what further satisfaction they might
require, in analysing and unfolding the doctrines pro-
mulgated by those great masters of knowledge. Thus
the Christian doctors became, as to general philosophy,
commentators upon the ancient Greek teachers.
Among these, they selected Aristotle as their pecu-
liar object of admiration and study. The vast store,
both of opinions and facts, which his works contain,
his acute distinctions, his cogent reasons in some por-
tions of his speculations, his symmetrical systems in
almost all, naturally commended him to the minds of
subtle and curious men. We may add that Plato,
who taught men to contemplate Ideas separate from
Things, was not so well fitted for general acceptance
as Aristotle, who rejected this separation. For al-
though the due apprehension of this opposition of Ideas
and Sensations is a necessary step in the progress of
true philosophy, it requires a clearer view and a more
possess; and Aristotle, who evaded the necessary per-
plexities in which this antithesis involves us, appeared,
to the temper of those times, the easier and the
plainer guide of the two.
The Doctors of the middle ages having thus adopted
48
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Aristotle as their master in philosophy, we shall not be
surprised to find them declaring, after him, that ex-
perience is the source of our knowledge of the visible
world. But though, like the Greeks, they thus talked
of experiment, like the Greeks, they showed little
disposition to discover the laws of nature by observa-
tion of facts. This barren and formal recognition of
experience or sensation as one source of knowledge,
not being illustrated by a practical study of nature,
and by real theoretical truths obtained by such a
study, remained ever vague, wavering, and empty.
Such a mere acknowledgment cannot, in any times,
ancient or modern, be considered as indicating a just
apprehension of the true basis and nature of science.
In imperfectly perceiving how, and how far, expe-
rience is the source of our knowledge of the external
world, the teachers of the middle ages were in the
dark; but so, on this subject, have been almost all the
writers of all ages, with the exception of those who
in recent times have had their minds enlightened by
contemplating philosophically the modern progress of
science. The opinions of the doctors of the middle
ages on such subjects generally had those of Aristotle
for their basis; but the subject was often still further
analysed and systematized, with an acute and metho-
dical skill hardly inferior to that of Aristotle himself.
The Stagirite, in the beginning of his Physics, had
made the following remarks. "In all bodies of doc-
trine which involve principles, causes, or elements,
Science and Knowledge arise from the knowledge
of these; (for we then consider ourselves to know
respecting any subject, when we know its first cause,
its first principles, its ultimate elements.) It is evi-
dent, therefore, that in seeking a knowledge of
nature, we must first know what are its principles.
But the course of our knowledge is, from the things
which are better known and more manifest to us, to
the things which are more certain and evident in
nature. For those things which are most evident in
truth, are not most evident to us. [And consequently
we must advance from things obscure in nature, but
SCHOOLMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
49
manifest to us, towards the things which are really in
nature more clear and certain. The things which
are first obvious and apparent to us are complex; and
from these we obtain, by analysis, principles and ele-
ments. We must proceed from universals to particu-
lars. For the whole is better known to our senses
than the parts, and for the same reason, the universal
better known than the particular. And thus words
signify things in a large and indiscriminate way,
which is afterwards analysed by definition; as we see
that the children at first call all men father, and all
women mother, but afterwards learn to distinguish.”
There are various assertions contained in this ex-
tract which came to be considered as standard maxims;
and which occur constantly in the writers of the mid-
dle ages. Such are, for instance, the maxim, “ Verè
scire est per causas scire;" the remark, that com-
pounds are known to us before their parts, and the
illustration from the expressions used by children.
Of the mode in which this subject was treated by the
schoolmen, we may judge by looking at passages of
Thomas Aquinas which treat of the subject of the
human understanding. In the Sunma Theologice, the
eighty-fifth Question is on the manner and order of
understanding, which subject he considers in eight
Articles; and these must, even now, be looked upon
as exhibiting many of the most important and inter-
esting points of the subject. They are, First, Whether
our understanding understands by abstracting ideas
(species) from appearances; Second, Whether intelli-
gible species abstracted from appearances are related
to our understanding as that which we understand, or
that by which we understand; Third, Whether our
understanding does naturally understand universals
first; Fourth, Whether our understanding can under-
stand many things at once; Fifth, Whether our un-
derstanding understands by compounding and dividing;
Sixth, Whether the understanding can err; Seventh,
Whether one person can understand the same thing
better than another; Eighth, Whether our under-
standing understands the indivisible sooner than the
E
50
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
divisible. And in the discussion of the last point, for
example, reference is made to the passage of Aristotle
which we have already quoted. “It may seem," he
says, “that we understand the indivisible before the
divisible; for the Philosopher says that we understand
and know by knowing principles and elements; but
indivisibles are the principles and elements of divisible
things. But to this we may reply, that in our receiving
of science, principles and elements are not always
first; for sometimes from the sensible effects we go on
to the knowledge of intelligible principles and causes.”
We see that both the objection and the answer are
drawn from Aristotle.
We find the same close imitation of Aristotle in
Albertus Magnus, who, like Aquinas, flourished in the
thirteenth century. Albertus, indeed, wrote treatises
corresponding to almost all those of the Stagirite, and
was called the Ape of Aristotle. In the beginning of
his Physics, he says, “Knowledge does not always
begin from that which is first according to the nature
of things, but from that of which the knowledge is
easiest. For the human intellect, on account of its
relation to the senses (propter reflexionem quam habet
ad sensum), collects science from the senses; and thus
it is easier for our knowledge to begin from that which
we can apprehend by sense, imagination, and intellect,
than from that which we apprehend by intellect alone.”
We see that he has somewhat systematized what he
has borrowed.
This disposition to dwell upon and systematize the
leading doctrines of metaphysics assumed a more defi-
nite and permanent shape in the opposition of the
Realists and Nominalists. The opposition involved in
this controversy is, in fact, that fundamental antithesis
of Sense and Ideas about which philosophy has always
been engaged ; and of which we have marked the
manifestation in Plato and Aristotle. The question,
What is the object of our thoughts when we reason
concerning the external world? must occur to all
speculative minds : and the difficulties of the answer
are manifest. We must reply, either that our own
SCHOOLMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 51
Ideas, or that Sensible Things, are the elements of
our knowledge of nature. And then the scruples
again occur,-how we have any general knowledge if
our thoughts are fixed on particular objects; and, on
the other hand,--how we can attain to any true know-
ledge of nature by contemplating ideas which are not
identical with objects in nature. The two opposite
opinions maintained on this subject were, on the one
side, that our general propositions refer to objects
which are real, though divested of the peculiarities of
individuals; and, on the other side,--that in such
propositions, individuals are not represented by any
reality, but bound together by a name. These two
views were held by the Realists and Nominalists re-
spectively : and thus the Realist manifested the adhe-
rence to Ideas, and the Nominalist the adherence to
the impressions of Sense, which have always existed
as opposite yet correlative tendencies in man.
The Realists were the prevailing sect in the Scho-
lastic times : for example, both Thomas Aquinas and
Duns Scotus, the Angelical and the Subtle Doctor,
held this opinion, although opposed to each other in
many of their leading doctrines on other subjects.
And as the Nominalist, fixing his attention upon sen-
sible objects, is obliged to consider what is the princi-
ple of generalization, in order that the possibility of
any general proposition may be conceivable; so on the
other hand, the Realist, beginning with the contem-
plation of universal ideas, is compelled to ask what is
the principle of individuation, in order that he may
comprehend the application of general propositions in
each particular instance. This inquiry concerning the
principle of individuation was accordingly a problem
which occupied all the leading minds among the
Schoolmen?. It will be apparent from what has been
said, that it is only one of the many forms of the
fundamental antithesis of the Ideas and the Senses,
which we have constantly before us in this review.
1 See the opinion of Aquinas, in Degerando, Hist. Com. des Syst. iv. 499 ;
of Duns Scotus, ibid. iv. 523.
E 2
52
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
The recognition of the derivation of our knowledge,
in part at least, from Experience, though always loose
and incomplete, appears often to be independent of the
Peripatetic traditions. Thus Richard of St. Victor,
a writer of contemplative theology in the twelfth cen-
tury, says”, that “there are three sources of know-
ledge, experience, reason, faith. Some things we prove
by experiment, others we collect by reasoning, the
certainty of others we hold by believing. And with
regard to temporal matters, we obtain our knowledge
by actual experience; the other guides belong to
divine knowledge.” Richard also propounds a division
of human knowledge which is clearly not derived
directly from the ancients, and which shows that con-
siderable attention must have been paid to such specu-
lations. He begins by laying down clearly and broadly
the distinction, which, as we have seen, is of primary
importance, between practice and theory. Practice, he
says, includes seven mechanical arts; those of the
clothier, the armourer, the navigator, the hunter, the
physician, and the player. Theory is threefold, divine,
natural, doctrinal; and is thus divided into Theology,
Physics, and Mathematics. Mathematics, he adds,
treats of the invisible forms of visible things. We
have seen that by many profound thinkers this word
forms has been selected as best fitted to describe those
relations of things which are the subject of mathema-
tics. Again, Physics discovers causes from their effects
and effects from their causes. It would not be easy
at the present day to give a better account of the ob-
ject of physical science. But Richard of St. Victor
makes this account still more remarkably judicious,
by the examples to which he alludes ; which are
earthquakes, the tides, the virtues of plants, the in-
stincts of animals, the classification of minerals, plants
and reptiles.
Unde tremor terris, quâ vi maria alta tumescant,
Herbarum vires, animos irasque ferarum,
Omne genus fruticum, lapidum quoque, reptiliumque.
? Liber Excerptionum, Lib. i. c. i.
SCHOOLMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
53
He further adds, “Physical science ascends from
effects to causes, and descends again from causes to
effects.” This declaration Francis Bacon himself
might have adopted. It is true, that Richard would
probably have been little able to produce any clear
ascent and descent were exemplified; but still the
statement, even considered as a mere conjectural
thought, contains a portion of that sagacity and com-
prehensive power which we admire so much in Bacon.
Richard of St. Victor, who lived in the twelfth
century, thus exhibits more vigour and independence
of speculative power than Thomas Aquinas, Albertus
Magnus, and Duns Scotus, in the thirteenth. In the
interval, about the end of the twelfth century, the
writings of Aristotle had become generally known in
the West; and had been elevated into the standard of
philosophical doctrine, by the divines mentioned above,
who felt a reverent sympathy with the systematizing
and subtle spirit of the Stagirite as soon as it was
made manifest to them. These doctors, following the
example of their great forerunner, reduced every part
of human knowledge to a systematic form; the sys-
tems which they thus framed were presented to men's
minds as the only true philosophy, and dissent from
them was no longer considered to be blameless. It was
an offence against religion as well as reason to reject
the truth, and the truth could be but one. In this
manner arose that claim which the Doctors of the
Church put forth to control men's opinions upon all
of Science as the Dogmatism of the Middle Ages.
There is no difficulty in giving examples of this cha-
racteristic. We may take for instance a Statute of
the University of Paris, occasioned by a Bull of Pope
John XXI., in which it is enacted, “that no Master
or Bachelor of any faculty, shall presume to read lec-
tures upon any author in a private room, on account
of the many perils which may arise therefrom; but
3 Tr. Ex. Lib. i. c. vii.
54
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
shall read in public places, where all may resort, and
may faithfully report what is there taught; excepting
only books of Grammar and Logic, in which there can
be no presumption.” And certain errors of Brescian
are condemned in a Rescript* of the papal Legate
Odo, with the following expressions: “Whereas, as
we have been informed, certain Logical professors
treating of Theology in their disputations, and Theo-
logians treating of Logic, contrary to the command of
the law are not afraid to mix and confound the lots
of the Lord's heritage; we exhort and admonish your
University, all and singular, that they be content with
the landmarks of the Sciences and Faculties which
our Fathers have fixed; and that having due fear of
the curse pronounced in the law against him who
removeth his neighbour's landmark, you hold such
sober wisdom according to the Apostles, that ye may
by no means incur the blame of innovation or pre-
sumption.”
The account which, in the History of Science, I gave
of Dogmatism as a characteristic of the middle ages,
has been indignantly rejected by a very pleasing
modern writer, who has, with great feeling and great
diligence, brought into view the merits and beauties
of those times, termed by him Ages of Faith. He
urges that religious authority was never claimed for
physical science : and he quotes from Thomas Aquinas,
à passage in which the author protests against the
practice of confounding opinions of philosophy with
doctrines of faith. We might quote in return the Re-
script“ of Stephen, bishop of Paris, in which he declares
that there can be but one truth, and rejects the dis-
tinction of things being true according to philosophy
and not according to the Catholic faith ; and it might
be added, that among the errors condemned in this
document are some of Thomas Aquinas himself. We
might further observe, that if no physical doctrines
4 Tenneman, viii. 461.
5 Mores Catholici, or Ages of l'aith, viii. p. 247.
6 Tenneman, vii. 460.
SCHOOLMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
55
were condemned in the times of which we now speak,
this was because, on such subjects, no new opinions
were promulgated, and not because opinion was free.
As soon as new opinions, even on physical subjects,
attracted general notice, they were prohibited by
authority, as we see in the case of Galileo?.
But this disinclination to recognize philosophy as
independent of religion, and this disposition to find in
new theories, even in physical ones, something contrary
to religion or scripture, are, it would seem, very na-
tural tendencies of theologians; and it would be unjust
to assert that these propensities were confined to the
periods when the authority of papal Rome was highest;
or that the spirit which has in a great degree con-
trolled and removed such habits was introduced by
the Reformation of religion in the sixteenth century.
We must trace to other causes, the clear and general
recognition of Philosophy, as distinct from Theology,
and independent of her authority. In the earlier ages
of the Church, indeed, this separation had been ac-
knowledged. St. Augustin says, “ A Christian should
beware how he speaks on questions of natural philo-
sophy, as if they were doctrines of Holy Scripture; for
7 If there were any doubt on this (Tenneman, ix. 43.) We might urge
subject, we might refer to the writers too, the evasions practised by philo-
who afterwards questioned the su- sophical Reformers, through fear of
premacy of Aristotle, and who with the dogmatism to which they had to
one voice assert that an infallible submit; for example, the protesta-
authority had been claimed for him. tion of Telesius at the end of the
Thus Laurentius Valla: “Quo minus Proem to his work, De Rerum Na-
ferendi sunt recentes Peripatetici, tura: “Nec tamen, si quid eorum
qui nullius sectæ hominibus interdi- quæ nobis posita sunt, sacris literis,
cunt libertate ab Aristotele dissenti- Catholicæve ecclesiæ decretis non
endi, quasi sophos hic, non philoso- cohæreat, tenendum id, quin penitus
phus." Pref. in Dial. (Tenneman, ix. rejiciendum asseveramus contendi-
29.) So Ludovicus Vives: “Sunt ex musque. Neque enim humana modo
philosophis et ex theologis qui non ratio quævis, sed ipse etiam sensus
solum quo Aristoteles pervenit ex- illis posthabendus, et si illis non con-
tremum esse aiunt naturæ, sed quå gruat, abnegandus omnino et ipse
pervenit eam rectissimam esse om etiam est sensus."
nium et certissimani in natura viam."
56
U
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
an infidel who should hear him deliver absurdities
could not avoid laughing. Thus the Christian would
be confused, and the infidel but little edified; for the
infidel would conclude that our authors really enter-
tained these extravagant opinions, and therefore they
would despise them, to their own eternal ruin. There-
fore the opinions of philosophers should never be pro-
posed as dogmas of faith, or rejected as contrary to
faith, when it is not certain that they are so.” These
words are quoted with approbation by Thomas Aqui-
nas, and it is said, are cited in the same manner in
every encyclopedical work of the middle ages. This
warning of genuine wisdom was afterwards rejected,
as we have seen; and it is only in modern times that
its value has again been fully recognized. And this
improvement we must ascribe, mainly, to the progress
of physical science. For a great body of undeniable
truths on physical subjects being accumulated, such as
had no reference to nor connexion with the truths of
religion, and yet such as possessed a strong interest for
most men's minds, it was impossible longer to deny
that there were wide provinces of knowledge which
were not included in the dominions of Theology, and
over which she had no authority. In the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, the fundamental doctrines of
mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, magnetics, chemistry,
were established and promulgated; and along with
them, a vast train of consequences, attractive to the
mind by the ideal relations which they exhibited, and
striking to the senses by the power which they gave
man over nature. Here was a region in which philo-
sophy felt herself entitled and impelled to assert her
independence. From this region, there is a gradation
of subjects in which philosophy advances more and
more towards the peculiar domain of religion; and at
some intermediate points there have been, and pro-
bably will always be, conflicts respecting the boundary
8 Ages of Faith, viii. 247: to the author of which I am obliged for this
quotation.
SCHOOLMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
57
line of the two fields of speculation. For the limit is
vague and obscure, and appears to fluctuate and shift
with the progress of time and knowledge.
Our business at present is not with the whole ex-
tent and limits of philosophy, but with the progress of
physical science more particularly, and the methods by
which it may be attained : and we are endeavouring
to trace historically the views which have prevailed
respecting such methods, at various periods of man's
intellectual progress. Among the most conspicuous of
the revolutions which opinions on this subject have
undergone, is the transition from an implicit trust in
the internal powers of man's mind to a professed de-
pendence upon external observation; and from an un-
bounded reverence for the wisdom of the past, to a
fervid expectation of change and improvement. The
origin and progress of this disposition of mind;-the
introduction of a state of things in which men not
only obtained a body of indestructible truths from
experience, and increased it from generation to gene-
ration, but professedly, and we may say, ostenta-
tiously, declared such to be the source of their know-
ledge, and such their hopes of its destined career;
the rise, in short, of Experimental Philosophy, not
only as a habit, but as a Philosophy of Experience, is
what we must now endeavour to exhibit.
CHAPTER X.
THE INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Raymond Lrilly.
1. General Remarks.—In the rise of Experimental
Philosophy, understanding the term in the way just
now stated, two features have already been alluded to:
the disposition to cast off the prevalent reverence for
the opinions and methods of preceding teachers with
an eager expectation of some vast advantage to be de-
rived from a change; and the belief that this improve-
ment must be sought by drawing our knowledge from
external observation rather than from mere intellectual
efforts ;-the Insurrection against Authority, and the
Appeal to Experience. These two movements were
closely connected; but they may easily be distinguished,
and in fact, persons were very prominent in the former
part of the task, who had no comprehension of the lat-
ter principle, from which alone the change derives its
value. There were many Malcontents who had not
the temper, talent or knowledge, which fitted them to
be Reformers.
The authority which was questioned, in the struggle
of which we speak, was that of the Scholastic System,
the combination of Philosophy with Theology; of which
Aristotle, presented in the form and manner which the
Doctors of the Church had imposed upon him, is to be
considered the representative. When there was de-
manded of men a submission of the mind, such as this
system claimed, the natural love of freedom in man's
bosom, and the speculative tendencies of his intellect,
l'ose in rebellion, from time to time, against the ruling
oppression. We find in all periods of the scholastic
ages examples of this disposition of man to resist over-
INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 59
strained authority; the tendency being mostly, how-
ever, combined with a want of solid thought, and
showing itself in extravagant pretensions and fantasti-
cal systems put forwards by the insurgents. We have
pointed out one such opponent' of the established sys-
tems, even among the Arabian schoolmen, a more
servile race than ever the Europeans were. We may
here notice more especially an extraordinary character
who appeared in the thirteenth century, and who may
be considered as belonging to the Prelude of the Re-
form in Philosophy, although he had no share in the
Reform itself.
2. Raymond Lully.— Raymond Lully is perhaps
traditionally best known as an Alchemist, of which
art he appears to have been a cultivator. But this
was only one of the many impulses of a spirit ardently
thirsty of knowledge and novelty. He had”, in his
youth, - been a man of pleasure, but was driven by a
sudden shock of feeling to resolve on a complete change
of life. He plunged into solitude, endeavoured to still
the remorse of his conscience by prayer and penance,
and soon had his soul possessed by visions which he
conceived were vouchsafed to him. In the feeling of
religious enthusiasm thus excited, he resolved to de-
vote his life to the diffusion of Christian truth among
Heathens and Mahomedans. For this purpose, at the
age of thirty he betook himself to the study of Gram-
mar, and of the Arabic language. He breathed earnest
supplications for an illumination from above; and these
were answered by his receiving from heaven, as his
admirers declare, his Ars Magna by which he was able
without labour or effort to learn and apply all know-
ledge. The real state of the case is, that he put him-
self in opposition to the established systems, and pro-
pounded a New Art, from which he promised the most
wonderful results; but that his Art really is merely a
mode of combining ideal conceptions without any re-
ference to real sources of knowledge, or any possibility
1 Algazel. See Hist. Ind. Sc. b. iv. C. I.
? Tenneman, viii. 830.
60
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
of real advantage. In a Treatise addressed, in A. D.
1310, to King Philip of France, entitled Liber La-
mentationis Duodecim Principiorum Philosophice contra
Averroistas, Lully introduced Philosophy, accompanied
by her twelve Principles, (Matter, Form, Generation,
&c.) uttering loud complaints against the prevailing
system of doctrine; and represents her as presenting
to the king a petition that she may be upheld and
restored by her favourite, the Author. His Tabula
Generalis ad omnes Scientias applicabilis was begun
the 15th September, 1292, in the Harbour of Tunis,
and finished in 1293, at Naples. In order to frame an
Art of thus tabulating all existing sciences, and indeed
all possible knowledge, he divides into various classes
the conceptions with which he has to deal. The first
Greatness, Duration, Power, Wisdom, Will, Virtue,
Truth, Majesty. The second class has nine Relative
Conceptions : Difference, Identity, Contrariety, Begin-
ning, Middle, End, Majority, Equality, Minority. The
third class contains nine Questions: Whether? What?
Whence? Why? How great? How circumstanced ?
the nine Most General Subjects: God, Angel, Heaven,
Man, Imaginativum, Sensitivum, Vegetativum, Elemen-
tativun, Instrumentativum. Then come nine Prædica-
merts, nine Moral Qualities, and so on. These con-
ceptions are arranged in the compartments of certain
concentric moveable circles, and give various combina-
tions by means of triangles and other figures, and thus
propositions are constructed.
It must be clear at once, that real knowledge, which
is the union of facts and ideas, can never result from
this machinery for shifting about, joining and disjoin-
ing, empty conceptions. This, and all similar schemes,
go upon the supposition that the logical combinations of
notions do of themselves compose knowledge; and that
really existing things may be arrived at by a successive
system of derivation from our most general ideas. It
is imagined that by distributing the nomenclature of
abstract ideas according to the place which they can
INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 61
hold in our propositions, and by combining them ac-
cording to certain conditions, we may obtain formula
including all possible truths, and thus fabricate a
science in which all sciences are contained. We thus
obtain the means of talking and writing upon all sub-
jects, without the trouble of thinking: the revolutions
of the emblematical figures are substituted for the
operations of the mind. Both exertion of thought,
and knowledge of facts, become superfluous. And this
reflection, adds an intelligent authors, explains the
enormous number of books which Lully is said to have
written; for he might have written those even during
his sleep, by the aid of a moving power which should
keep his machine in motion. Having once devised
this invention for manufacturing science, Lully varied
it in a thousand ways, and followed it into a variety
of developments. Besides Synoptical Tables, he em-
ploys Genealogical Trees, each of which he dignifies
with the name of the Tree of Science. The only requi-
site for the application of his System was a certain
agreement in the numbers of the classes into which
different subjects were distributed; and as this sym-
metry does not really exist in the operations of our
thoughts, some violence was done to the natural dis-
tinction and subordination of conceptions, in order to
fit them for the use of the system.
Thus Lully, while he professed to teach an Art
which was to shed new light upon every part of
science, was in fact employed in a pedantic and trifling
repetition of known truths or truisms; and while he
complained of the errors of existing methods, he pro-
posed in their place one which was far more empty,
barren, and worthless, than the customary processes of
human thought. Yet his method is spoken of4 with
3 Degerando, iv. 535.
Arte Combinatoria, publié en 1666, et
4 Leibnitz's expressions are, (Op. t. qui a été reimprimé après malgré moi.
vi. p. 16): “Quand j'étais jeune, je Mais comme je ne méprise rien facile-
prenois quelque a l'Art de Lule, mais ment, excepté les arts divinatoires
ju crus y entrevoir bien des défectuo- que ne sont que des tromperies toutes
sités, dont j'ai dit quelque chose dans pures, j'ai trouvé quelque chose d'es-
un petit Essai d'écolier intitulé De timable encore dans l'Art de Lulle.”
62
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY. .
some praise by Leibnitz, who indeed rather delighted
in the region of ideas and words, than in the world of
realities. But Francis Bacon speaks far otherwise and
more justly on this subjects. “It is not to be omitted
that some men, swollen with emptiness rather than
knowledge, have laboured to produce a certain Method,
not deserving the name of a legitimate Method, since
it is rather a method of imposture: which yet is
doubtless highly grateful to certain would-be philoso-
phers. This method scatter's about certain little drops
of science in such a manner that a smatterer may
make a perverse and ostentatious use of them with a
certain show of learning. Such was the art of Lully,
which consisted of nothing but a mass and heap of the
words of each science; with the intention that he who
can readily produce the words of any science shall be
supposed to know the science itself. Such collections
are like a rag shop, where you find a patch of every-
thing, but nothing which is of any value.”
5 IVorks, vii. 296.
CHAPTER XI.
THE INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES—CONTINUED.
Roger Bacon.
W E now come to a philosopher of a very different
VV character, who was impelled to declare his dissent
from the reigning philosophy by the abundance of his
knowledge, and by his clear apprehension of the mode
in which real knowledge had been acquired and must
be increased.
Roger Bacon was born in 1214, near Ilchester, in
Somersetshire, of an old family. In his youth he was
a student at Oxford, and made extraordinary progress
in all branches of learning. He then went to the
University of Paris, as was at that time the custom
of learned Englishmen, and there received the degree
of Doctor of Theology. At the persuasion of Robert
Grostête, bishop of Lincoln, he entered the brother-
hood of Franciscans in Oxford, and gave himself up to
study with extraordinary fervour. He was termed by
his brother monks Doctor Mirabilis. We know from
his own works, as well as from the traditions concern-
ing him, that he possessed an intimate acquaintance
with all the science of his time which could be ac-
quired from books; and that he had made many re-
markable advances by means of his own experimental
labours. He was acquainted with Arabic, as well as
with the other languages common in his time. In
the title of his works, we find the whole range of
science and philosophy, Mathematics and Mechanics
Optics, Astronomy, Geography, Chronology, Chemistry,
Magic, Music, Medicine, Grammar, Logic, Metaphysics,
Ethics, and Theology; and judging from those which
are published, these works are full of sound and exact
64
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
knowledge. He is with good reason, supposed to
have discovered, or to have had some knowledge of,
several of the most remarkable inventions which were
made generally known soon afterwards; as gunpow-
der, lenses, burning specula, telescopes, clocks, the
correction of the calendar, and the explanation of the
rainbow.
Thus possessing, in the acquirements and habits of
his own mind, abundant examples of the nature of
knowledge and of the process of invention, Roger
Bacon felt also a deep interest in the growth and pro-
gress of science, a spirit of inquiry respecting the
causes which produced or prevented its advance, and
a fervent hope and trust in its future destinies; and
these feelings impelled him to speculate worthily and
wisely respecting a Reform of the Method of Philoso-
phizing. The manuscripts of his works have existed
for nearly six hundred years in many of the libraries
of Europe, and especially in those of England; and
for a long period the very imperfect portions of them
which were generally known, left the character and
attainments of the author shrouded in a kind of mys-
terious obscurity. About a century ago, however, his
Opus Majus was published" by Dr. S. Jebb, princi-
pally from a manuscript in the Library of Trinity
College, Dublin; and this contained most or all of the
separate works which were previously known to the
public, along with others still more peculiar and cha-
racteristic. We are thus able to judge of Roger
Bacon's knowledge and of his views, and they are in
every way well worthy our attention.
The Opus Majus is addressed to Pope Clement the
Fourth, whom Bacon had known when he was legate
in England as Cardinal-bishop of Sabina, and who
admired the talents of the monk, and pitied him for
the persecutions to which he was exposed. On his
elevation to the papal chair, this account of Bacon's
1 Fratris Rogeri Bacon, Ordinis Mi-
norum, Opus Majus, ad Clementem
Quartum, Pontificem Romanum, e
MS. Codice Dubliniensi cum aliis qui-
busdam collato, nunc primum edidit
S. Jebb, M.D. Londini, 1733.
INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 65
labours and views was sent, at the earnest request of
the pontift. Besides the Opus Majus, he wrote two
others, the Opus Minus and Opus Tertiun; which
were also sent to the pope, as the author says, “on
account of the danger of roads, and the possible loss
of the work.” These works still exist unpublished,
in the Cottonian and other libraries.
The Opus Majus is a work equally wonderful with
regard to its general scheme, and to the special trea-
tises with which the outlines of the plan are filled up.
The professed object of the work is to urge the neces-
sity of a reform in the mode of philosophizing, to set
forth the reasons why knowledge had not made a
greater progress, to draw back attention to the sources
of knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to
discover other sources which were yet almost un-
touched, and to animate men in the undertaking, by a
prospect of the vast advantages which it offered. In
the development of this plan, all the leading portions
of science are expounded in the most complete shape
which they had at that time assumed; and improve-
ments of a very wide and striking kind are proposed
in some of the principal of these departments. Even
if the work had had no leading purpose, it would have
been highly valuable as a treasure of the most solid
knowledge and soundest speculations of the time; even
if it had contained no such details, it would have been
a work most remarkable for its general views and
scope. It may be considered as, at the same time, the
Encyclopedia and the Novum Organon of the thir-
teenth century.
Since this work is thus so important in the history
of Inductive Philosophy I shall give, in a note, a view 3
2 Opus Majus, Præf.
3 Contents of Roger Bacon's Opus
Majus.
Part I. On the four causes of human
ignorance :~Authority, Custom,
Popular Opinion, and the Pride
of supposed Knowledge.
Part II. On the source of perfect
wisdom in the Sacred Scrip-
ture.
Part III. On the Usefulness of
Grammar.
Part IV. On the Usefulness of Ma-
thematics.
66
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
of its divisions and contents. But I must now endea-
vour to point out more especially the way in which
the various principles, which the reform of scientific
method involved, are here brought into view.
One of the first points to be noticed for this pur-
pose, is the resistance to authority; and at the stage
of philosophical history with which we here have to
do, this means resistance to the authority of Aristotle,
as adopted and interpreted by the Doctors of the
Schools. Bacon's workis divided into Six Parts; and
of these Parts, the First is, Of the four universal
Causes of all Human Ignorance. The causes thus
enumerated” are :--the force of unworthy authority;
— traditionary habit;—the imperfection of the undis-
ciplined senses ;-and the disposition to conceal our
ignorance and to make an ostentatious show of our
knowledge. These influences involve every man, oc-
cupy every condition. They prevent our obtaining
the most useful and large and fair doctrines of wisdom,
the secret of all sciences and arts. He then proceeds
to argue, from the testimony of philosophers them-
selves, that the authority of antiquity, and especially
of Aristotle, is not infallible. “We find their books
full of doubts, obscurities, and perplexities. They
scarce agree with each other in one empty question or
(1) The necessity of Mathematics in
Human Things (published se-
parately as the Specula Mathe-
matica).
(2) The necessity of Mathematics in
Divine Things.—1°. This study
has occupied holy men: 2°.
Geography: 30. Chronology: 4º.
Cycles; the Golden Number,
&c. : 5º. Natural Phenomena,
as the Rainbow: 6º. Arithme-
tic: 7º. Music.
(3) The necessity of Mathematics in
Ecclesiastical Things. 1°. The
Certification of Faith: 2°. The
Correction of the Calendar.
(4) The necessity of Mathematics in
the State.-1°. Of Climates: 2°.
Hydrography: 3º. Geography:
4º. Astrology.
Part V. On Perspective (published
separately as Perspectiva).
(1) The organs of vision.
(2) Vision in straight lines.
(3) Vision reflected and refracted.
(4) De multiplicatione specierum
(on the propagation of the im-
pressions of light, heat, &c.) .
Part VI. On Experimental Scieuce.
4 Op. Maj. p. 1.
5 Ibid. p. 2.
Ibid. p. 1o.
INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 67
one worthless sophism, or one operation of science, as
one man agrees with another in the practical operations
of medicine, surgery, and the like arts of Secular
men. Indeed,” he adds, “not only the philosophers,
but the saints have fallen into errors which they have
afterwards retracted," and this he instances in Augus-
tin, Jerome, and others. He gives an admirable
sketch' of the progress of philosophy from the Ionic
School to Aristotle; of whom he speaks with great
applause. « Yet," he adds', “those who came after
him corrected him in some things, and added many
things to his works, and shall go on adding to the end
of the world.” Aristotle, he adds, is now called pecu-
liarly® the Philosopher, “yet there was a time when
account of the rarity of copies of his works, or their dif-
ficulty, or from envy; till after the time of Mahomet,
7 I will give a specimen. Opus Socrates and Greece could teach, made
Majus, c. viii. p. 35: “These two kinds a laborious voyage to Egypt, to Ar-
of philosophers, the Ionic and Italic, chytas of Tarentumn and Timæus, as
ramified through many sects and says Jerome to Paulinus. And this
various successors, till they came to Plato is, according to holy men, pre-
the doctrine of Aristotle, who cor- ferred to all philosophers, because he
rected and changed the propositions has written many excellent things con-
of all his predecessors, and attempted cerning God, and morality, and a fu-
to perfect philosophy. In the [Italic) ture life, which agree with the divine
succession, Pythagoras, Archytas Ta wisdom of God. And Aristotle was
rentinus and Timæus are most pro- born before the death of Socrates,
minently mentioned. But the prin- since he was his hearer for three
cipal philosophers, as Socrates, Plato, years, as we read in the life of
and Aristotle, did not descend from Aristotle... This Aristotle, being
this line, but were Iouics and true made the master of Alexander the
Greeks, of whom the first was Thales Great, sent two thousand men into
Milesius. . . Socrates, according to Au- all regions of the earth, to search out
gustine in his 8th book, is related to the nature of things, as Pliny relates
have been a disciple of Archelaus in the 8th book of his Naturalia, and
This Socrates is called the father of composed a thousand books, as we
the great philosophers, since he was read in his life.”
the master of Plato andAristotle, from 8 Ibid. p. 36.
whom all the sects of philosophers 9 Autonoinaticè.
descended...Plato, first learning what
68
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
when Avicenna and Averroes, and others, recalled
this philosophy into the full light of exposition. And
although the Logic and some other works were trans-
lated by Boethius from the Greek, yet the philoso-
phy of Aristotle first received a quick increase among
the Latins at the time of Michael Scot; who, in the
year of our Lord 1230, appeared, bringing with him
portions of the books of Aristotle on Natural Philo-
sophy and Mathematics. And yet a small part only
of the works of this author is translated, and a still
smaller part is in the hands of common students."
He adds further 10 (in the Third Part of the Opus
Majus, which is a Dissertation on language), that the
translations which are current of these writings, are
very bad and imperfect. With these views, he is
moved to express himself somewhat impatiently re-
specting these works : “If I had," he says, “power
over the works of Aristotle, I would have them all
burnt; for it is only a loss of time to study in them,
and a cause of error, and a multiplication of ignorance
beyond expression." - The common herd of students,"
he says, "with their heads, have no principle by which
they can be excited to any worthy employment; and
hence they mope and make asses of themselves over
their bad translations, and lose their time, and trouble,
and money."
The remedies which he recommends for these evils,
are, in the first place, the study of that only perfect
wisdom which is to be found in the sacred Scripture”,
in the next place, the study of mathematics and the
use of experimentsBy the aid of these methods,
0
0
10 Op. Maj. P. 46.
ignorantiæ ultra id quod valeat ex-
11 See Pref. to Jebb's edition. The plicari.... Vulgus studentum cum
passages, there quoted, however, are capitibus suis non habet unde exci-
not extracts from the Opus Majus, but tetur ad aliquid dignum, et ideo lan-
(apparently) from the Opus Minus guet et asininat circa male translata,
(MS. Cott. Tib. c. 5.) “Si haberem et tempus et studiun amittit in om-
potestatem supra libros Aristotelis, nibus et expensas.”
ego facerem omnes cremari ; quia non 12 Part ii. .
est nisi temporis amnissio studere in 13 Parts iv. v. and vi.
llis, et causa erroris, et multiplicatio .
INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 69
Bacon anticipates the most splendid progress for human
knowledge. He takes up the strain of hope and
confidence which we have noticed as so peculiar in
the Roman writers; and quotes some of the passages
of Seneca which we adduced in illustration of this:
that the attempts in science were at first rude and
imperfect, and were afterwards improved ;-that the
day will come, when what is still unknown shall be
brought to light by the progress of time and the
labours of a longer period;--that one age does not
suffice for inquiries so wide and various ;-that the
people of future times shall know many things un-
known to us;—and that the time shall arrive when
posterity will wonder that we overlooked what was so
obvious. Bacon himself adds anticipations more pecu-
liarly in the spirit of his own time. “We have seen,"
he says, at the end of the work, “how Aristotle, by
the ways which wisdom teaches, could give to Alex-
ander the empire of the world. And this the Church
ought to take into consideration against the infidels
and rebels, that there may be a sparing of Christian
blood, and especially on account of the troubles that
shall come to pass in the days of Antichrist; which
by the grace of God, it would be easy to obviate, if
prelates and princes would encourage study, and join
in searching out the secrets of nature and art.”
It may not be improper to observe here that this
belief in the appointed progress of knowledge, is not
combined with any overweening belief in the un-
bounded and independent power of the human intellect.
On the contrary, one of the lessons which Bacon draws
from the state and prospects of knowledge, is the duty
of faith and humility. “To him," he says 14, “who
denies the truth of the faith because he is unable to
understand it, I will propose in reply the course of
nature, and as we have seen it in examples.” And
after giving some instances, he adds, “These, and the
like, ought to move men and to excite them to the
reception of divine truths. For if, in the vilest objects
14 Op. Maj. P. 476.
70
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
of creation, truths are found, before which the inward
pride of man must bow, and believe though it cannot
understand, how much more should man humble his
mind before the glorious truths of God!” He had
before said 15: “Man is incapable of perfect wisdom in
this life; it is hard for him to ascend towards perfec-
tion, easy to glide downwards to falsehoods and vani-
ties : let him then not boast of his wisdom, or extol
his knowledge. What he knows is little and worth-
less, in respect of that which he believes without know-
ing; and still less, in respect of that which he is igno-
rant of. He is mad who thinks highly of his wisdom;
be most mad, who exhibits it as something to be won-
dered at.” He adds, as another reason for humility,
that he has proved by trial, he could teach in one year,
to a poor boy, the marrow of all that the most diligent
person could acquire in forty years' laborious and ex-
pensive study.
To proceed somewhat more in detail with regard to
Roger Bacon's views of a Reform in Scientific Inquiry,
we may observe that by making Mathematics and Ex-
periment the two great points of his recommendation,
be directed his improvement to the two essential parts
of all knowledge, Ideas and Facts, and thus took the
course which the most enlightened philosophy would
have suggested. He did not urge the prosecution of
experiment, to the comparative neglect of the existing
mathematical sciences and conception; a fault which
there is some ground for ascribing to his great name-
sake and successor Francis Bacon: still less did he
content himself with a mere protest against the au-
thority of the schools, and a vague demand for change,
which was almost all that was done by those who put
themselves forward as reformers in the intermediate
time. Roger Bacon holds his way steadily between
the two poles of human knowledge; which, as we, have
seen, it is far from easy to do. “There are two modes
of knowing,” says he lº; "by argument, and by experi-
15 Or. Maj. P. 15.
10 Ibid. p. 445, see also p. 448.
“Scientiæ aliæ sciunt sua principia
invenire per experimenta, sed con-
INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 71
ment. Argument concludes a question; but it does
not make us feel certain, or acquiesce in the contem-
plation of truth, except the truth be also found to be
so by experience.” It is not easy to express more
decidedly the clearly seen union of exact conceptions
with certain facts, which, as we have explained, consti-
tutes real knowledge.
One large division of the Opus Majus is “On the
Usefulness of Mathematics,” which is shown by a copi-
ous enumeration of existing branches of knowledge, as
Chronology, Geography, the Calendar and in a sepa-
rate Part) Optics. There is a chapter?), in which it
is proved by reason, that all science requires mathe-
matics. And the arguments which are used to es-
tablish this doctrine, show a most just appreciation of
the office of mathematics in science. They are such as
follows:- That other sciences use examples taken from
mathematics as the most evident:- That mathematical
knowledge is, as it were, innate in us, on which point
he refers to the well-known dialogue of Plato, as
quoted by Cicero : That this science, being the easi-
est, offers the best introduction to the more difficult:
That in mathematics, things as known to us are
identical with things as known to nature :—That we
can here entirely avoid doubt and error, and obtain
certainty and truth :--That mathematics is prior to
other sciences in nature, because it takes cognizance of
quantity, which is apprehended by intuition, (intuitu
intellectus). “Moreover," he adds 18, “there have been
found famous men, as Robert, bishop of Lincoln, and
Brother Adam Marshman (de Marisco), and many
others, who by the power of mathematics have been
able to explain the causes of things; as may be seen
in the writings of these men, for instance, concerning
the Rainbow and Comets, and the generation of heat,
and climates, and the celestial bodies.”
clusiones per argumenta facta ex
principiis inventis. Si vero debeant
habere experientiam conclusionum
suarum particularem et completam,
tunc oportet quod habeant per adju-
torium istius scientiæ nobilis (expe-
rimentalis).”
17 Op. Maj. p. 60. 18 Ibid. p. 64..
72
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
But undoubtedly the most remarkable portion of the
Opus Majus is the Sixth and last Part, which is en-
titled “De Scientia experimentali.” It is indeed an
extraordinary circumstance to find a writer of the
thirteenth century, not only recognizing experiment
as one source of knowledge, but urging its claims as
something far more important than men had yet been
aware of, exemplifying its value by striking and just
examples, and speaking of its authority with a dignity
of diction which sounds like a foremurmur of the Ba-
conian sentences uttered nearly four hundred years
later. Yet this is the character of what we here find".
“Experimental science, the sole mistress of speculative
sciences, has three great. Prerogatives among other
parts of knowledge: First she tests by experiment the
noblest conclusions of all other sciences: Next she
discovers respecting the notions which other sciences
deal with, magnificent truths to which these sciences
of themselves can by no means attain: her Third dig-
nity is, that she by her own power and without respect
of other sciences, investigates the secret of nature.”
The examples which Bacon gives of these “Preroga-
tives” are very curious, exhibiting, among some error
and credulity, sound and clear views. His leading
example of the First Prerogative, is the Rainbow, of
which the cause, as given by Aristotle, is tested by
reference to experiment with a skill which is, even to
us now, truly admirable. The examples of the Second
Prerogative are three :- first, the art of making an
artificial sphere which shall move with the heavens by
natural influences, which Bacon trusts may be done,
though astronomy herself cannot do it—"et tunc,” he
says, “thesaurum unius regis valeret hoc instrumen-
tum;" — secondly, the art of prolonging life, which
experiment may teach, though medicine has no means
of securing it except by regimen Ҽ ;-thirdly, the art of
19 “Veritates magnificas in termi- lativarum, potest dare.” Op. Maj.
nis aliarum scientiarum in quas per p. 465.
nullam viam possunt illae scientiæ, 20 One of the ingredients of a pre-
bæc sola scientiarum domina specu- paration here mentioned, is the fleshi
INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 73
making gold finer than fine gold, which goes beyond
the power of alchemy. The Third Prerogative of ex-
perimental science, arts independent of the received
sciences, is exemplified in many curious examples, many
of them whimsical traditions. Thus it is said that the
character of a people may be altered by altering the
air. Alexander, it seems, applied to Aristotle to
know whether he should exterminate certain nations
which he had discovered, as being irreclaimably bar-
barous; to which the philosopher replied, “ If you can
alter their air, permit them to live, if not, put them to
death.” In this part, we find the suggestion that the
fire-works made by children, of saltpetre, might lead :
to the invention of a formidable military weapon.
It could not be expected that Roger Bacon, at a
time when experimental science hardly existed, could
give any precepts for the discovery of truth by experi-
ment. But nothing can be a better example of the
method of such investigation, than his inquiry con-
cerning the cause of the Rainbow. Neither Aristotle,
nor Avicenna, nor Seneca, he says, have given us any
clear knowledge of this matter, but experimental
science can do so. Let the experimenter (experimen-
tator) consider the cases in which he finds the same
colours, as the hexagonal crystals from Ireland and
India; by looking into these he will see colours like
those of the rainbow. Many think that this arises
from some special virtue of these stones and their hex-
agonal figure; let therefore the experimenter go on,
and he will find the same in other transparent stones,
in dark ones as well as in light-coloured. He will find
the same effect also in other forms than the hexagon,
of a dragon, which it appears is used them, and make them bound about
as food by the Ethiopians. The mode in the air in a violent manner, that
of preparing this food cannot fail to the hardness and toughness of the
'amuse the reader. “Where there are flesh may be reduced, as boars are
good flying dragons, by the art which hunted and bulls are baited before
they possess, they draw them out of they are killed for eating.” Op. Maj.
their dens, and have bridles and sad. p. 470.
dles in readiness, and they ride upon 21 Op. Maj. p. 473.
74
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
if they be furrowed in the surface, as the Irish crys-
tals are. Let him consider too, that he sees the same
colours in the drops which are dashed from oars in
the sunshine;-and in the spray thrown by a mill-
wheel ;- and in the dew-drops which lie on the grass
in a meadow on a summer-morning;—and if a man
takes water in his mouth and projects it on one side
into a sunbeam ;-and if in an oil-lamp hanging in the
air, the rays fall in certain positions upon the surface
of the oil;—and in many other ways, are colours pro-
duced. We have here a collection of instances, which
are almost all examples of the same kind as the phe-
nomenon under consideration; and by the help of a
principle collected by induction from these facts, the
colours of the rainbow were afterwards really explained.
With regard to the form and other circumstances of
the bow he is still more precise. He bids us measure
the height of the bow and of the sun, to show that the
center of the bow is exactly opposite to the sun. He
explains the circular form of the bow,-its being inde-
pendent of the form of the cloud, its moving when we
move, its flying when we follow,—by its consisting of
the reflections from a vast number of minute drops.
He does not, indeed, trace the course of the rays
through the drop, or account for the precise magni-
tude which the bow assumes; but he approaches to
the verge of this part of the explanation; and must be
considered as having given a most happy example of
experimental inquiry into nature, at a time when such
examples were exceedingly scanty. In this respect,
he was more fortunate than Francis Bacon, as we shall
hereafter see.
We know but little of the biography of Roger Bacon,
but we have every reason to believe that his influence
upon his age was not great. He was suspected of
magic, and is said to have been put into close confine-
ment in consequence of this charge. In his work he
speaks of Astrology as a science well worth cultivat-
ing. “But," says he, “Theologians and Decretists,
not being learned in such matters and seeing that evil
as well as good may be done, neglect and abhor such.
INNOVATORS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 75
things, and reckon them among Magic Arts." We
have already seen, that at the very time when Bacon
was thus raising his voice against the habit of blindly
following authority, and seeking for all science in
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas was employed in fashion-
ing Aristotle's tenets into that fixed form in which
they became the great impediment to the progress of
knowledge. It would seem, indeed, that something
of a struggle between the progressive and stationary
powers of the human mind was going on at this time.
Bacon himself says”, “Never was there so great an
appearance of wisdom, nor so much exercise of study
in so many Faculties, in so many regions, as for this
last forty years. Doctors are dispersed everywhere, in
every castle, in every burgh, and especially by the stu-
dents of two Orders, (he means the Franciscans and
Dominicans, who were almost the only religious orders
that distinguished themselves by an application to
study 23.) which has not happened except for about
forty years. And yet there was never so much igno-
rance, so much error.” And in the part of his work
which refers to Mathematics, he says of that study. 4,
that it is the door and the key of the sciences; and
that the neglect of it for thirty or forty years has en-
tirely ruined the studies of the Latins. According to
these statements, some change, disastrous to the for-
tunes of science, must have taken place about 1230,
soon after the foundation of the Dominican and Fran-
ciscan Orders”. Nor can we doubt that the adoption
of the Aristotelian philosophy by these two Orders,
in the form in which the Angelical Doctor had sys-
tematized it, was one of the events which most tended
to defer, for three centuries, the reform which Roger
Bacon urged as a matter of crying necessity in his
own time.
22 Quoted by Jebb, Prof. to Op. Maj.
w 24 Op. Maj. p. 57.
23 Mosheim, Hist. iii. 161.
25 Mosheim, iii. 161.
CHAPTER XII.
THE REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
1. Causes of Delay in the Advance of Knowledge.-
In the insight possessed by learned men into the
method by which truth was to be discovered, the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries went backwards, rather
than forwards, from the point which had been reached
in the thirteenth. Roger Bacon had urged them to
have recourse to experiment; but they returned with
additional and exclusive zeal to the more favourite
employment of reasoning upon their own conceptions.
He had called upon them to look at the world without;
but their eyes forthwith turned back upon the world
within. In the constant oscillation of the human
inind between Ideas and Facts, after having for a
moment touched the latter, it seemed to swing back
more impetuously to the former. Not only was the
philosophy of Aristotle firmly established for a con-
siderable period, but when men began to question its
authority, they attempted to set up in its place a phi-
losophy still more purely ideal, that of Plato. It was
not till the actual progress of experimental knowledge
for some centuries had given it a vast accumulation of
force, that it was able to break its way fully into the
circle of speculative science. The new Platonist school-
men had to run their course, the practical discoverers
had to prove their merit by their works, the Italian
innovators had to utter their aspirations for a change,
before the second Bacon could truly declare that the
time for a fundamental reform was at length arrived.
It cannot but seem strange, to any one who attempts
to trace the general outline of the intellectual progress
of man, and who considers him as under the guidance
REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
77
of a Providential sway, that he should thus be permit-
ted to wander so long in a wilderness of intellectual
darkness; and even to turn back, by a perverse ca-
price as it might seem, when on the very border of the
brighter and better land which was his destined in-
heritance. We do not attempt to solve this difficulty:
but such a course of things naturally suggests the
thought, that a progress in physical science is not the
main object of man's career, in the eyes of the Power
who directs the fortunes of our race. We can easily
conceive that it may have been necessary to man's
general welfare that he should continue to turn his
eyes inwards upon his own heart and faculties, till
Law and Duty, Religion and Government, Faith and
Hope, had been fully incorporated with all the past
acquisitions of human intellect; rather than that he
should have rushed on into a train of discoveries tend-
ing to chain him to the objects and operations of the
material world. The systematic Law and philoso-
phical Theology which acquired their ascendancy in
men's minds at the time of which we speak, kept
them engaged in a region of speculations which per-
haps prepared the way for a profounder and wider
civilization, for a more elevated and spiritual charac-
ter, than might have been possible without such a
preparation. The great Italian poet of the fourteenth
century speaks with strong admiration of the founders
of the system which prevailed in his time. Thomas,
Albert, Gratian, Peter Lombard, occupy distinguished
places in the Paradise. The first, who is the poet's
instructor, says,—
Io fui degli agni della santa greggia
Che Domenico mena per cammino
U' ben s'impingua se non si vaneggia.
Questo che m'è a destra piu vicino
Frate e maestro fummi; ed esso Alberto
E di Cologna, ed io Tomas d'Aquino. ...
Quell'altro fiammeggiar esce del riso
. i Gratian published the Decretals
in the twelfth century; and the Canon
and Civil Law became a regular study
in the universities soon afterwards..
78
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
De Grazian, che l'uno et l'altro foro
Ajuto si che piace in Paradiso.
I, then, was of the lambs that Dominic
Leads, for his saintly flock, along the way
Where well they thrive not swoln with vanity.
He nearest on my right-hand brother was
And master to me; Albert of Cologne
Is this; and of Aquinum Thomas, I. ..
That next resplendence issues from the smile
Of Gratian, who to either forum lent
Such help as favour wins in Paradise.
It appears probable that neither poetry, nor painting,
nor the other arts which require for their perfection a
lofty and spiritualized imagination, would have ap-
peared in the noble and beautiful forms which they
assumed in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, if
men of genius had, at the beginning of that period,
made it their main business to discover the laws of
nature, and to reduce them to a rigorous scientific
form. Yet who can doubt that the absence of these
touching and impressive works would have left one of
the best and purest parts of man's nature without its
due nutriment and development ? It may perhaps
be a necessary condition in the progress of man, that
the Arts which aim at beauty should reach their ex-
cellence before the Sciences which seek speculative
truth; and if this be so, we inherit, from the middle
ages, treasures which may well reconcile us to the
delay which took place in their cultivation of experi-
mental science.
However this may be, it is our business at present
to trace the circumstances of this very lingering ad-
vance. We have already noticed the contest of the
Nominalists and Realists, which was one form, though,
with regard to scientific methods, an unprofitable one,
of the antithesis of Ideas and Things. Though, there-
fore, this struggle continued, we need not dwell upon
it. The Nominalists denied the real existence of Ideas,
which doctrine was to a great extent implied in the
prevailing systems; but the controversy in which they
thus engaged, did not lead them to seek for knowledge
in a new field and by new methods. The arguments
· REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
79
which Occam the Nominalist opposes to those of Duns
Scotus the Realist, are marked with the stamp of the
sane system, and consist only in permutations and
combinations of the same elementary conceptions. It
was not till the impulse of external circumstances was
added to the discontent, which the more stirring in-
tellects felt towards the barren dogmatism of their
age, that the activity of the human mind was again
called into full play, and a new career of progression
entered upon, till then undreamt of, except by a few
prophetie spirits.
2. Causes of Progress.-These circumstances were
principally the revival of Greek and Roman literature,
the invention of Printing, the Protestant Reformation,
and a great number of curious discoveries and inven-
tions in the arts, which were soon succeeded by im-
portant steps in speculative physical science. Con-
nected with the first of these events, was the rise of a
party of learned men who expressed their dissatisfac-
tion with the Aristotelian philosophy, as it was then
taught, and manifested a strong preference for the
views of Plato. It is by no means suitable to our plan
to give a detailed account of this new Platonic school;
but we may notice a few of the writers who belong to
it, so far at least as to indicate its influence upon the
Methods of pursuing science.
In the fourteenth century, the frequent intercourse
of the most cultivated persons of the Eastern and
Western Empire, the increased study of the Greek lan-
guage in Italy, the intellectual activity of the Italian
States, the discovery of manuscripts of the classical
authors, were circumstances which excited or nourished
a new and zealous study of the works of Greek and
Roman genius. The genuine writings of the ancients,
when presented in their native life and beauty, instead
of being seen only in those lifeless fragments and dull
transformations which the scholastic system had ex-
hibited, excited an intense enthusiasm. Europe, at
that period, might be represented by Plato's beautiful
2 Tenneman, ix. 4.
80
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
allegory, of a man who, after being long kept in a dark
cavern, in which his knowledge of the external world
is gathered from the images which stream through the
chinks of his prison, is at last led forth into the full
blaze of day. It was inevitable that such a change
should animate men's efforts and enlarge their facul-
ties. Greek literature became more and more known,
especially by the influence of learned men who came
from Constantinople into Italy: these teachers, though
they honoured Aristotle, reverenced Plato no less, and
had never been accustomed to follow with servile sub-
mission of thought either these or any other leaders.
The effect of such influences soon reveals itself in the
works of that period. Dante has woven into his Divina
Conimedia some of the ideas of Platonism. Petrarch,
who had formed his mind by the study of Cicero, and
had thus been inspired with a profound admiration for
the literature of Greece, learnt Greek from Barlaam,
a monk who came as ambassador from the Emperor of
the East to the Pope, in 1339. With this instructor,
the poet read the works of Plato; struck by their
beauty, he contributed, by his writings and his con-
versation, to awake in others an admiration and love
for that philosopher, which soon became strongly and
extensively prevalent among the learned in Italy.
3. Hermolaus Barbarus, dc.-Along with the feel-
ing there prevailed also, among those who had learnt
to relish the genuine beauties of the Greek and Latin
writers, a strong disgust for the barbarisms in which
the scholastic philosophy was clothed. Hermolaus Bar-
barus, who was born in 1454, at Venice, and had
formed his taste by the study of classical literature,
translated, among other learned works, Themistius's
paraphrastic expositions of the Physics of Aristotle;
with the view of trying whether the Aristotelian Natu-
ral Philosophy could not be presented in good Latin,
which the scholastic teachers denied. In his Preface
he expresses great indignation against those philoso-
phers who have written and disputed on philosophical
3 Teuneman, ix. 25.
REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
81
subjects in barbarous Latin, and in an uncultured
style, so that all refined minds are repelled from these
studies by weariness and disgust. They have, he says,
by this barbarism, endeavoured to secure to themselves,
in their own province, a supremacy without rivals or
opponents. Hence they maintain that mathematics,
philosophy, jurisprudence, cannot be expounded in cor-
rect Latin ;-that between these sciences and the ge-
nuine Latin language there is a great gulf, as between
things that cannot be brought together; and on this
ground they blame those who combine the study of phi-
lology and eloquence with that of science. This opinion,
adds Hermolaus, perverts and ruins our studies; and is
highly prejudicial and unworthy in respect to the state.
Hermolaus awoke in others, as for instance, in John
Picus of Mirandula, the same dislike to the reigning
school philosophy. As an opponent of the same kind,
we may add Marius Nizobius of Bersallo, a scholar who
carried his admiration of Cicero to an exaggerated ex-
tent, and who was led, by a controversy with the de-
fenders of the scholastic philosophy, to publish (1553)
a work on the True Principles and True Method of
Philosophizing. In the title of this work, he professes
to give the true principles of almost all arts and
sciences, refuting and rejecting almost all the false
principles of the Logicians and Metaphysicians.” But
although, in the work, he attacks the scholastic phi-
losophy, he does little or nothing to justify the large
pretensions of his title; and he excited, it is said, little
notice. It is therefore curious that Leibnitz should
have thought it worth his while to re-edit this work,
which he did in 1670, adding remarks of his own.
4. Nicolaus Cusanus.— Without dwelling upon
this opposition to the scholastic system on the ground
of taste, I shall notice somewhat further those writers
who put forwards Platonic views, as fitted to complete
or to replace the doctrines of Aristotle. Among these,
I may place Nicolaus Cusanus, (so called from Cus, a
village on the Moselle, where he was born in 1401 ;)
who was afterwards raised to the dignity of cardinal.
We might, indeed, at first be, tempted to include
82
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Cusanus among those persons who were led to reject
the old philosophy by being themselves agents in the
progressive movement of physical science. For he
published, before Copernicus, and independently of
him, the doctrine that the earth is in motion*. But
it should be recollected that in order to see the possi-
bility of this doctrine, and its claims to acceptance,
no new reference to observation was requisite. The
Heliocentric System was merely a new mode of repre-
senting to the mind facts, with which all astronomers
had long been familiar. The system might very easily
have been embraced and inculcated by Plato himself;
as indeed it is said to have been actually taught by
Pythagoras. The mere adoption of the Heliocentric
view, therefore, without attempting to realize the sys-
tem in detail, as Copernicus did, cannot entitle a
writer of the fifteenth century to be looked upon as
one of the authors of the discoveries of that period;
and we must consider Cusanus as a speculative anti-
Aristotelian, rather than as a practical reformer.
The title of Cusanus's book, De Doctå Ignorantia,
shows how far he was from agreeing with those who
conceived that, in the works of Aristotle, they had
a full and complete system of all human knowledge.
At the outset of this book”, he says, after pointing out
some difficulties in the received philosophy, “If, there-
fore, the case be so, (as even the very profound Aris-
totle, in his First Philosophy, affirms,) that in things
most manifest by nature, there is a difficulty, no less
than for an owl to look at the sun; since the appetite
of knowledge is not implanted in us in vain, we ought
to desire to know that we are ignorant. If we can
fully attain to this, we shall arrive at Instructed Ig-
norance." How far he was from placing the source of
knowledge in experience, as opposed to ideas, we may
see in the following passage from another work of
þis, On Conjectures. “Conjectures must proceed from
4 “Jam nobis manifestum est terram istam in veritate moveri,” &c.--De
Doctů Ignorantii, lib. ii. c. xii.
. 5 D: Doct. Ignor. lib. i. c. i, o De Conjecturis, lib. i. c. ii. iv. .
· REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
our mind, as the real world proceeds from the infinite
Divine Reason. For since the human mind, the lofty
likeness of God, participates, as it may, in the fruitful-
ness of the creative nature, it doth from itself, as the
image of the Omnipotent Form, bring forth reasonable
thoughts which have a similitude to real existences.
Thus the Human Mind exists as a conjectural form of
the world, as the Divine Mind is its real form.” We
have here the Platonic or ideal side of knowledge put
prominently and exclusively forwards.
5. Marsilius Ficinus, &c.—A person who had much
more influence on the diffusion of Platonism was Mar-
silius Ficinus, a physician of Florence. In that city
there prevailed, at the time of which we speak, the
greatest enthusiasm for Plato. George Gemistius Ple-
tho, when in attendance upon the Council of Florence,
had imparted to many persons the doctrines of the
Greek philosopher; and, among others, had infused a
lively interest on this subject into the elder Cosmo,
the head of the family of the Medici. Cosmo formed
the plan of founding a Platonic academy. Ficinus?,
well instructed in the works of Plato, Plotinus, Pro-
clus, and other Platonists, was selected to further this
object, and was employed in translating the works of
these authors into Latin. It is not to our present
purpose to consider the doctrines of this school, except
so far as they bear upon the nature and methods of
knowledge; and therefore I must pass by, as I bave
in other instances done, the greater part of their specu-
lations, which related to the nature of God, the im-
mortality of the soul, the principles of Goodness and
Beauty, and other points of the same order. The
object of these and other Platonists of this school,
however, was not to expel the authority of Aristotle
by that of Plato. Many of them had come to the con-
viction that the highest ends of philosophy were to be
reached only by bringing into accordance the doctrines
of Plato and of Aristotle. Of this opinion was John
Picus, Count of Mirandula and Concordia; and under
7 Born in 1433.
G 2
84
PĦILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
this persuasion he employed the whole of his life in
labouring upon a work, De Concordia Platonis et Aris-
totelis, which was not completed at the time of his
death, in 1494; and has never been published. But
about a century later, another writer of the same school,
Francis Patricius", pointing out the discrepancies be-
tween the two Greek teachers, urged the propriety of
deposing Aristotle from the supremacy he had so long
enjoyed. “Now all these doctrines, and others not
a few," he says, “since they are Platonic doctrines,
philosophically most true, and consonant with the Catho-
lic faith, whilst the Aristotelian tenets are contrary
to the faith, and philosophically false, who will not,
both as a Christian and a Philosopher, prefer Plato to
Aristotle? And why should not hereafter, in all the
colleges and monasteries of Europe, the reading and
study of Plato be introduced ? Why should not the
philosophy of Aristotle be forthwith exiled from such
places? Why must men continue to drink the mortal
poison of impiety from that source?” with much more
in the same strain.
The Platonic school, of which we have spoken, had,
however, reached its highest point of prosperity before
this time, and was already declining. About 1500,
the Platouists appeared to triumph over the Peripa-
tetics 10; but the death of their great patron, Cardinal
Bessarion, about this time, and we may add, the hol-
lowness of their system in many points, and its want
of fitness for the wants and expectations of the age,
turned men's thoughts partly back to the established
Aristotelian doctrines, and partly forwards to schemes
of bolder and fresher promise.
6. Francis Patricius.—Patricius, of whom we have
just spoken, was one of those who had arrived at the
conviction that the formation of a new philosophy,
and not merely the restoration of an old one, was
needed. In 1593, appeared his Nova de Universis
8 Born 1529, died 1597.
9 Aristotiles Exotericus, P. 50,
10 Tiraboschi, t. vii. pt. ii. P. 411.
REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
85
Philosophia; and the mode in which it begins can
hardly fail to remind us of the expressions which
Francis Bacon soon afterwards used in the opening of
a work of the same nature. “Francis Patricius, being
about to found anew the true philosophy of the uni-
verse, dared to begin by announcing the following
indisputable principles." Here, however, the resem-
blance between Patricius and true inductive philoso-
phers ends. His principles are barren à priori axioms;
and his system has one main element, Light, (Lux, or
Inimen,) to which all operations of nature are referred.
In general cultivation, and practical knowledge of
nature, he was distinguished among his contempora-
ries. In various passages of his works he relates 12 ob-
servations which he had made in the course of his
travels, in Cyprus, Corfu, Spain, the mountains of the
Modenese, and Dalmatia, which was his own country;
his observations relate to light, the saltness of the sea,
its flux and reflux, and other points of astronomy,
meteorology, and natural history. He speaks of the
sex of plants 13; rejects judicial astrology; and notices
the astronomical systems of Copernicus, Tycho, Fra-
castoro, and Torre. But the mode in which he speaks
of experiments proves, what indeed is evident from
the general scheme of his system, that he had no due
appreciation of the place which observation must hold
in real and natural philosophy.
7. Picus, Agrippa, &c.-It had been seen in the
later philosophical history of Greece, how readily the
ideas of the Platonic school lead on to a system of
unfathomable and unbounded mysticism. John Picus,
of Mirandula", added to the study of Plato and the
11 “Franciscus Patricius, novam ve-
ram integram de universis couditurus
philosophiam, sequentia uti verissima
prænuntiare est ausus. Prænunciata
ordine persecutus, divinis oraculis,
geometricis rationibus, clarissimisque
experimentis comprobavit.
Ante primum nihil,
Post primum omnia,
A principio omnia,” &c.
His other works are Panaugia, l'an-
cosmia, Dissertationes Peripatetica'.
12 Tiraboschi, t. vii. pt. ii. p. 411.
13 Dissert. Perip. t. ii. lib. v. sub fin.
14 Tenneman, ix. 148.
86
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Neoplatonists, a mass of allegorical interpretations of
the Scriptures, and the dreams of the Cabbala, a Jew-
ish system '5, which pretends to explain how all things
are an emanation of the Deity. To this his nephew,
Francis Picus, added a reference to inward illumina-
tion 19, by which knowledge is obtained, independently
of the progress of reasoning. John Reuchlin, or Cap-
nio, born 1455; John Baptist Helmont, born 1577;
Francis Mercurius Helmont, born 1618, and others,
succeeded John Picus in his admiration of the Cab-
bala: while others, as Jacob Boehmen, rested upon
internal revelations like Francis Picus. And thus
we have a series of mystical writers, continued into
modern times, who may be considered as the successors
of the Platonic school; and who all exhibit views alto-
gether erroneous with regard to the nature and origin
of knowledge. Among the various dreams of this
school are certain wide and loose analogies of terres-
trial and spiritual things. Thus in the writings of
Cornelius Agrippa (who was born 1487, at Cologne)
we have such systems as the following 17:—“Since
there is a threefold world, elemental, celestial, and in-
tellectual, and each lower one is governed by that
above it, and receives the influence of its powers : so
that the very Archetype and Supreme Author trans-
fuses the virtues of his omnipotence into us through
angels, heavens, stars, elements, animals, plants, stones,
-into us, I say, for whose service he has framed and
created all these things ;-the Magi do not think it
irrational that we should be able to ascend by the
same degrees, the same worlds, to this Archetype of
the world, the Author and First Cause of all, of whom
all things are, and from whom they proceed; and
should not only avail ourselves of those powers which
exist in the nobler works of creation, but also should
be able to attract other powers, and add them to
these."
Agrippa's work, De Vanitate Scientiarum, may be
15 Tenneman, ix. 167.
16 Ibid. 158.
17 Agrippa, De Occult. Phil. lib. i. c. 1
-REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
87.
said rather to have a skeptical and cynical, than a
Platonic, character. It is a declamation 13, in a melan-
choly mood, against the condition of the sciences in
his time. His indignation at the worldly success of
men whom he considered inferior to himself, had, he
says, metamorphosed him into a dog, as the poets
relate of Hecuba of Troy, so that his impulse was to
snarl and bark. His professed purpose, however, was
to expose the dogmatism, the servility, the self-conceit,
and the neglect of religious truth which prevailed in
the reigning Schools of philosophy. His views of the
nature of science, and the modes of improving its cul-
tivation, are too imperfect and vague to allow us to
rank him among the reformers of science.
8. Paracelsus, Fludd, &c.—The celebrated Para-
celsus 19 put himself forwards as a reformer in philo-
sophy, and obtained no small number of adherents.
He was, in most respects, a shallow and impudent
pretender; and had small knowledge of the literature
or science of his time: but by the tone of his speaking
and writing he manifestly belongs to the mystical
school of which we are now speaking. Perhaps by
the boldness with which he proposed new systems,
and by connecting these with the practical doctrines
of medicine, he contributed something to the intro-
duction of a new philosophy. We have seen in the
History of Chemistry that he was the author of the
system of Three Principles, (salt, sulphur, and mèr-
cury,) which replaced the ancient doctrine of Four
Elements, and prepared the way for a true science of
chemistry. But the salt, sulphur, and mercury of
Paracelsus were not, he tells his disciples, the visible
bodies which we call by those names, but certain in-
visible, astral, or sidereal elements. The astral salt is
the basis of the solidity and incombustible parts in
bodies; the astral sulphur is the source of combustion
18 Written in 1526.
19 Philip Aurelius Theophrastus
Bombastus von Holienheim, also
called Paracelsus Eremita, born at
Einsiedlen in Switzerland, in 1493.
88.
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
and vegetation; the astral mercury is the origin of
fluidity and volatility. And again, these three ele-
ments are analogous to the three elements of man,-
Body, Spirit, and Soul.
A writer of our own country, belonging to this
mystical school, is Robert Fludd, or De Fluctibus,
who was born in 1571, in Kent, and after pursuing
his studies at Oxford, travelled for several years. Of
all the Theosophists and Mystics, he is by much the
most learned; and was engaged in various controver-
sies with Mersenne, Gassendi, Kepler, and others.
He thus brings us in contact with the next class of
philosophers whom we have to consider, the practical
reformers of philosophy;—those who furthered the
cause of science by making, promulgating, or defeud-
ing the great discoveries which now began to occupy
men. He adopted the principle, which we have no-
ticed elsewhere?, of the analogy of the Macrocosm and
Microcosm, the world of nature and the world of man.
His system contains such a mixture and confusion of
physical and metaphysical doctrines as might be ex-
pected from his ground-plan, and from his school.
Indeed his object, the general object of mystical specu-
lators, is to identify physical with spiritual truths.
Yet the influence of the practical experimental philo-
sophy which was now gaining ground in the world
may be traced in him. Thus he refers to experiments
on distillation to prove the existence and relation of
the regions of water, air, and fire, and of the spirits
which correspond to them; and is conceived, by some
persons“, to have anticipated Torricelli in the inven-
tion of the Barometer.
We need no further follow the speculations of this
school. We see already abundant reason why the re-
form of the methods of pursuing science could not
proceed from the Platonists. Instead of seeking know-
ledge by experiment, they immersed themselves deeper
than even the Aristotelians had done in traditionary
ET
20 Hist. Sc. Id. b. ix. C. 2. sect. 1. The Mystical School of Biology.
21 Tenneman, ix. 221.
REVIVAL OF PLATONISM.
89
lore, or turned their eyes inwards in search of an in-
ternal illumination. Some attempts were made to
remedy the defects of philosophy by a recourse to the
doctrines of other sects of antiquity, when men began
to feel more distinctly the need of a more connected
and solid knowledge of nature than the established
system gave them. Among these attempts were those
of Berigardº, Magernus, and especially Gassendi, to
bring into repute the philosophy of the Ionian school,
of Democritus and of Epicurus. But these endeavours
were posterior in time to the new impulse given to
knowledge by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and
were influenced by views arising out of the success of
these discoveries, and they must, therefore, be con-
sidered hereafter. In the mean time, some indepen-
dent efforts (arising from speculative rather than prac-
tical reformers) were made to cast off the yoke of the
Aristotelian dogmatism, and to apprehend the true
form of that new philosophy which the most active
and hopeful minds saw to be needed; and we must
give some account of these attempts, before we can
commit ourselves to the full stream of progressive
philosophy.
.
22 Tenneman, ix, 265.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE.
W E have already seen that Patricius, about the
V middle of the sixteenth century, announced his
purpose of founding anew the whole fabric of philoso-
phy; but that, in executing this plan, he ran into wide
and baseless hypotheses, suggested by a priori concep-
tions rather than by external observation; and that he
was further misled by fanciful analogies resembling
those which the Platonic mystics loved to contemplate.
The same time, and the period which followed it, pro-
duced several other essays which were of the same
nature, with the exception of their being free from the
peculiar tendencies of the Platonic school: and these
insurrections against the authority of the established
dogmas, although they did not directly substitute a
better positive system in the place of that which they
assailed, shook the authority of the Aristotelian sys-
tem, and led to its overthrow; which took place as soon
as these theoretical reformers were aided by practical
reformers.
1. Bernardinus Telesius.—Italy, always, in modern
times, fertile in the beginnings of new systems, was
the soil on which these innovators arose. The earli-
est and most conspicuous of them is Bernardinus
Telesius, who was born in 1508, at Cosenza, in the
kingdom of Naples. His studies, carried on with
great zeal and ability, first at Milan and then at
Rome, made him well acquainted with the knowledge
of his times; but his own reflections convinced him
that the basis of science, as then received, was alto-
gether erroneous; and led him to attempt a reform,
with which view, in 1565, he published, at Rome, his
THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 91
work”, “Bernardinus Telesius, of Cosenza, on the Na-
ture of Things, according to principles of his own.”
In the preface of this work he gives a short accounta
of the train of reflection by which he was led to put
himself in opposition to the Aristotelian philosophy.
This kind of autobiography occurs not unfrequently
in the writings of theoretical reformers; and shows
how livelily they felt the novelty of their undertaking.
After the storm and sack of Rome in 1527, Telesius
retired to Padua, as a peaceful seat of the muses;
and there studied philosophy and mathematics, with
great zeal, under the direction of Jerome Amalthæus
and Frederic Delphinus. In these studies he made
great progress; and the knowledge which he thus
acquired threw a new light upon his view of the
Aristotelian philosophy. He undertook a closer ex-
amination of the Physical Doctrines of Aristotle; and
as the result of this, he was astonished how it could
have been possible that so many excellent men, so
many nations, and even almost the whole human race,
should, for so long a time, have allowed themselves to
be carried away by a blind reverence for a teacher,
who had committed errors so numerous and grave
as he perceived to exist in “the philosopher.”
Along with this view of the insufficiency of the Aris-
totelian philosophy, arose, at an early period, the
thought of erecting a better system in its place. With
this purpose he left Padua, when he had received the
degree of Doctor, and went to Rome, where he was
encouraged in his design by the approval and friendly
exhortations of distinguished men of letters, amongst
whom were Ubaldino Bandinelli and Giovanni della
Casa. From Rome he went to his native place, when the
incidents and occupations of a married life for a while
interrupted his philosophical project. But after his
i Bernardini Telesii Consentini De man: this Proem was omitted in sub-
Rerum Natura juxta propria Prin- sequent editions of Telesius, and is
cipia.
not in the one which I have consult-
2 I take this account from Tenne- ed. Tenneman, Gesch. a Phil. ix. 280.
92
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
wife was dead, and his eldest son grown to manhood,
he resumed with ardour the scheme of his youth ;
again studied the works of Aristotle and other phi-
losophers, and composed and published the first two
books of his treatise. The opening to this work suffi-
ciently exhibits the spirit in which it was conceived.
Its object is stated in the title to be to show, that
“the construction of the world, the magnitude and
nature of the bodies contained in it, are not to be
investigated by reasoning, which was done by the
ancients, but are to be apprehended by the senses, and
collected from the things themselves.” And the Proem
is in the same strain. “They who before us have in-
quired concerning the construction of this world and
of the things which it contains, seem indeed to have
prosecuted their examination with protracted vigils
and great labour, but never to have looked at it." And
thus, he observes, they found nothing but error.
This be ascribes to their presumption. “For, as it
were, attempting to rival God in wisdom, and ven-
turing to seek for the principles and causes of the
world by the light of their own reason, and thinking
they had found what they had only invented, they
made an arbitrary world of their own.” “We then,"
he adds, “not relying on ourselves, and of a duller
intellect than they, propose to ourselves to turn our
regards to the world itself and its parts.”
The execution of the work, however, by no means
corresponds to the announcement. The doctrines of
Aristotle are indeed attacked; and the objections to
these, and to other received opinions, form a large part
of the work. But these objections are supported by
à priori reasoning, and not by experiments. And thus,
rejecting the Aristotelian physics, he proposes a system
at least equally baseless; although, no doubt, grateful
to the author from its sweeping and apparently simple
character. He assumes three principles, Heat, Cold,
and Matter : Heat is the principle of motion, Cold of
immobility, and Matter is the corporeal substratum, in
which these incorporeal and active principles produce
their effects. It is easy to imagine that, by combining
THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 93
. and separating these abstractions in various ways, a
sort of account of many natural phenomena may be
given; but it is impossible to ascribe any real value to
such a system. The merit of Telesius must be con-
sidered to consist in his rejection of the Aristotelian
errors, in his perception of the necessity of a reform in
the method of philosophizing, and in his persuasion that
this reform must be founded on experiments rather
than on reasoning. When he said, “We propose to
ourselves to turn our eyes to the world itself, and its
parts, their passions, actions, operations, and species,"
his view of the course to be followed was right; but
bis purpose remained but ill fulfilled, by the arbitrary
edifice of abstract conceptions which his system ex-
hibits.
Francis Bacon, who, about half a century later,
treated the subject of a reform of philosophy in a far
more penetrating and masterly manner, has given us
his judgment of Telesius. In his view, he takes
Telesius as the restorer of the Atomic philosophy,
which Democritus and Parmenides taught among the
ancients; and according to his custom, he presents an
image of this philosophy in an adaptation of a portion
of ancient mythology? The Celestial Cupid, who with
Caelus, was the parent of the Gods and of the Uni-
verse, is exhibited as a representation of matter and
its properties, according to the Democritean philoso-
phy. “Concerning Telesius,” says Bacon, “we think
well, and acknowledge him as a lover of truth, a use-
ful contributor to science, an amender of some tenets,
the first of recent men. But we have to do with him
as the restorer of the philosophy of Parmenides, to
whom much reverence is due.” With regard to this
philosophy, he pronounces a judgment which very
truly expresses the cause of its rashness and empti-
ness. “It is,” he says, “such a system as naturally
3 Proem.
.4 "De Principiis atque Originibus
sccundum fabulas Cupidinis et Coli:
sive Parmenidis et Telesii et præcipuè
Democriti Philosophia tractata in
Fabula de Cupidine."
5“Talia sunt qualia possunt esse
ea quæ ab intellectu sibi permisso,
94
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY,
proceeds from the intellect, abandoned to its own im-..
pulse, and not rising from experience to theory con-
tinuously and successively.” Accordingly, he says that,
“Telesius, although learned in the Peripatetic philoso-
phy (if that were anything), which indeed, he has
turned against the teachers of it, is hindered by his
affirmations, and is more successful in destroying than
in building."
The work of Telesius excited no small notice, and
was placed in the Index Expurgatorius. It made many
disciples, a consequence probably due to its spirit of
system-making, no less than to its promise of reform,
or its acuteness of argument; for till trial and reflec-
tion have taught man modesty and moderation, he can
never be content to receive knowledge in the small
successive instalments in which nature gives it forth
to him. It is the makers of large systems, arranged
with an appearance of completeness and symmetry,
who, principally, give rise to Schools of philosophy.
2. (Thomas Campanella).- Accordingly, Telesius
may be looked upon as the founder of a School. His
most distinguished successor was Thomas Campanella,
who was born in 1568, at Stilo, in Calabria. He showed
great talents at an early age, prosecuting his studies
at Cosenza, the birth-place of the great opponent of
Aristotle and reformer of philosophy. He, too, has
given us an accounto of the course of thought by which
he was led to become an innovator. “Being afraid
that not genuine truth, but falsehood in the place of
truth, was the tenant of the Peripatetic School, I ex-
amined all the Greek, Latin, and Arabic commen-
tators of Aristotle, and hesitated more and more, as I
sought to learn whether what they have said were also
to be read in the world itself, which I had been taught
by learned men was the living book of God. And as
my doctors could not satisfy my scruples, I resolved to
read all the books of Plato, Pliny, Galen, the Stoics,
nec ab experimentis continenter et
gradatim sublevato, profecta viden-
tur.”
Thom. Campanella de Libris pro-
priis, as quoted in Tenueman, ix,
291.
THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 95
and the Democriteans, and especially those of Telesius;
and to compare them with that first and original
writing, the world; that thus from the primary auto-
graph, I might learn if the copies contained anything
false.” Campanella probably refers here to an ex-
pression of Plato, who says, “the world is God's epistle
to mankind.” And this image, of the natural world
as an original manuscript, while human systems of
philosophy are but copies, and may be false ones,
became a favourite thought of the reformers, and ap-
pears repeatedly in their writings from this time.
T. When I held my public disputation at Cosenza,"
Campanella proceeds, “and still more, when I con-
versed privately with the brethren of the monastery,
I found little satisfaction in their answers; but Telesius
delighted me, on account of his freedom in philoso-
phizing, and because he rested upon the nature of
things, and not upon the assertions of men."
With these views and feelings, it is not wonderful
that Campanella, at the early age of twenty-two (1590,)
published a work remarkable for the bold promise of
its title: “ Thomas Campanella's Philosophy demon-
strated to the senses, against those who have philosophized
in an arbitrary and dogmatical manner, not taking
nature for their guide; in which the errors of Aristotle
and his followers are refuted from their own assertions
and the laws of nature; and all the imaginations
feigned in the place of nature by the Peripatetics are
altogether rejected ; with a true defence of Bernardin
Telesius of Cosenza, the greatest of philosophers; con-
firmed by the opinions of the ancients, here elucidated
and defended, especially those of the Platonists."
This work was written in answer to a book pub-
lished against Telesius by a Neapolitan professor named
Marta ; and it was the boast of the young author that
he had only employed eleven months in the composi-
tion of his defence, while his adversary had been
engaged eleven years in preparing his attack. Campa-
nella found a favourable reception in the house of the
Marchese Lavelli, and there employed himself in the
composition of an additional work, entitled On the
90
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Sense of Things and Magic, and in other literary
labours. These, however, are full of the indications of
an enthusiastic temper, inclined to mystical devotion,
and of opinions bearing the cast of pantheism. For
instance, the title of the book last quoted sets forth as
demonstrated in the course of the work, that “the
world is the living and intelligent statue of God; and
that all its parts, and particles of parts, are endowed some
with a clearer, some with a more obscure sense, such as
suffices for the preservation of each and of the whole."
Besides these opinions, which could not fail to make
him obnoxious to the religious authorities, Campa-
nella? engaged in schemes of political revolution, which
involved him in danger and calamity. He took part
in a conspiracy, of which the object was to cast off the
tyranny of Spain, and to make Calabria a republic.
This design was discovered; and Campanella, along
with others, was thrown into prison and subjected to
torture. He was kept in confinement twenty-seven
years; and at last obtained his liberation by the inter-
position of Pope Urban VIII. He was, however, still
in danger from the Neapolitan Inquisition; and escaped
in disguise to Paris, where he received a pension from
the king, and lived in intercourse with the most emi-
nent men of letters. He died there in 1639.
Campanella was a contemporary of Francis Bacon,
whom we must consider as belonging to an epoch to
which the Calabrian school of innovators was only a
prelude. I shall not therefore further follow the con-
nexion of writers of this order. Tobias Adami, a Saxon
writer, an admirer of Campanella's works, employed
himself, about 1620, in adapting them to the German
public, and in recommending them strongly to German
philosophers. ' Descartes, and even Bacon, may be con-
sidered as successors of Campanella; for they too were
theoretical reformers; but they enjoyed the advantage
of the light which had, in the mean time, been thrown
upon the philosophy of science, by the great practical
advances of Kepler, Galileo, and others. To these
? Economisti Italiani, t. i. p. xxxii.
THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 97
practical reformers we must soon turn our attention :
but we may first notice one or two additional circum-
stances belonging to our present subject.
Campanella remarks that both the Peripatetics and
long and circuitous path, which he wished to shorten
by setting out from the sense. Without speaking of
the methods which he proposed, we may notice one
maxim' of considerable value which he propounds, and
to which we have already been led. “We begin to
reason from sensible objects, and definition is the end
and epilogue of science. It is not the beginning of our
knowing, but only of our teaching."
3. (Andrew Caesalpinus.)—The same maxim had al-
ready been announced by Cæsalpinus, a contemporary
of Telesius; (he was born at Arezzo in 1520, and died
at Rome in 1603). Cæsalpinus is a great name in
science, though professedly an Aristotelian. It has
been seen in the History of Science”, that he formed
the first great epoch of the science of botany by his
systematic arrangement of plants, and that in this
task he had no successor for nearly a century. He
also approached near to the great discovery of the
circulation of the blood. He takes a view of science
which includes the remark that we have just quoted
from Campanella: “We reach perfect knowledge by
three steps: Induction, Division, Definition. By In-
duction, we collect likeness and agreement from ob-
servation; by Division, we collect unlikeness and dis-
agreement; by Definition, we learn the proper sub-
stance of each object. Induction makes universals
from particulars, and offers to the mind all intelligible
matter; Division discovers the difference of univer-
sals, and leads to species; Definition resolves species
into their principles and elements.” Without assert-
ing this to be rigorously correct, it is incomparably
more true and philosophical than the opposite view,
8 Tenneman, ix. 305.
10 Toid. b. xvii. c. ii. sect. 1.
9 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. xvi. c. ü. sect. 2.
11 Quæst. Peripat. i. 1.
IL
98
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
which represents definition as the beginning of our
knowledge; and the establishment of such a doctrine
is a material step in inductive philosophy 12
4. (Giordano Bruno.)-Among the Italian innova-
tors of this time we must notice the unfortunate Gior-
dano Bruno, who was born at Nola about 1550, and
burnt at Rome in 1600. He is, however, a reformer of
a different school from Campanella; for he derives his
philosophy from Ideas and not from Observation. He
represents himself as the author of a new doctrine,
which he terms the Nolan Philosophy. He was a
zealous promulgator and defender of the Copernican
system of the universe, as we have noticed in the
History of Science18 Campanella also wrote in de-
fence of that system.
It is worthy of remark that a thought which is
often quoted from Francis Bacon, occurs in Bruno's
Cena di Cenere, published in 1584; I mean, the notion
that the later times are more aged than the earlier.
In the course of the dialogue, the Pedant, who is one
of the interlocutors, says, “In antiquity is wisdom;"
to which the Philosophical Character replies, “If you
knew what you were talking about, you would see
that your principle leads to the opposite result of that
which you wish to infer;—I mean, that we are older,
and have lived longer, than our predecessors." He
then proceeds to apply this, by tracing the course of
astronomy through the earlier astronomers up to Co-
pernicus.
5. (Peter Ramus.)-I will notice one other reformer
of this period, who attacked the Aristotelian system on
another side, on which it was considered to be most
impregnable. This was Peter Ramus, (born in Picardy
in 1515,) who ventured to denounce the Logic of Aris-
totle as unphilosophical and useless. After showing
an extraordinary aptitude for the acquirement of know-
ledge in his youth, when he proceeded to the degree
of Master of Arts, he astonished his examiners by
12 Tenneman, ix. 108.
13 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. V. C. iii. sect. 2.
THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 99
choosing for the subject of the requisite disputation
the thesis 4, “that what Aristotle has said is all
wrong.” This position, so startling in 1535, he de-
fended for the whole day, without being defeated.
This was, however, only a formal academical exercise,
which did not necessarily imply any permanent con-
viction of the opinion thus expressed. But his mind
was really labouring to detect and remedy the errors
which he thus proclaimed. From him, as from the
other reformers of this time, we have an account of
this mental struggle 15. He says, in a work on this
subject, “I will candidly and simply explain how I
was delivered from the darkness of Aristotle. When,
according to the laws of our university, I had spent
three years and a half in the Aristotelian philosophy,
and was now invested with the philosophical laurel as
a Master of Arts, I took an account of the time which
I had consumed in this study, and considered on what
subjects I should employ this logical art of Aristotle,
which I had learnt with so much labour and noise,
I found it made me not more versed in history or an-
tiquities, more eloquent in discourse, more ready in
verse, more wise in any subject. Alas for me! hov
was I overpowered, how deeply did I groan, how did
I deplore my lot and my nature, how did I deem
myself to be by some unhappy and dismal fate and
frame of mind abhorrent from the Muses, when I
found that I was one who, after all my pains, could
reap no benefit from that wisdom of which I heard so
much, as being contained in the Logic of Aristotle.”
He then relates that he was led to the study of the
Dialogues of Plato, and was delighted with the kind
of analysis of the subjects discussed which Socrates is
there represented as executing. "Well," he adds, “I
began thus to reflect within myself—(I should have
thought it impious to say it to another) - What, I
1
14 Tenneman, ix. 420. “Quæcunque ab Aristotele dicta essent commenticia
esse.” Freigius. Vita Petri Rami, p. 10.
15 Rami, Animadv. Aristot. i. iv.
H 2
100
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
pray you, prevents me from socratizing; and from ask-
ing, without regard to Aristotle's authority, whether
Aristotle's Logic be true and correct? It may be that
that philosopher leads us wrong; and if so, no wonder
that I cannot find in his books the treasure which is
not there. What if his dogmas be mere figments? Do
I not tease and torment myself in vain, trying to get
a harvest from a barren soil?" He convinced himself
that the Aristotelian logic was worthless: and con-
structed a new system of Logic, founded mainly on the
Platonic process of exhausting a subject by analytical
classification of its parts. Both works, his Animad-
versions on Aristotle, and his Logic, appeared in 1543.
The learned world was startled and shocked to find a
young man, on his first entrance into life, condemning
as faulty, fallacious, and useless, that part of Aris-
totle's works which had always hitherto been held as
a masterpiece of philosophical acuteness, and as the
Organon of scientific reasoning. And in truth, it
must be granted that Ramus does not appear to have
understood the real nature and object of Aristotle's
Logic; while his own system could not supply the
place of the old one, and was not of much real value.
This dissent from the established doctrines was, how-
ever, not only condemned but punished. The printing
and selling of his books was forbidden through France;
and Ramus was stigmatized by a sentence 16 which
declared him rash, arrogant, impudent, and ignorant,
and prohibited from teaching logic and philosophy.
He was, however, afterwards restored to the office of
professor: and though much attacked, persisted in his
plan of reforniing, not only Logic but Physics and
Metaphysics. He made his position still more dan-
gerous by adopting the reformed religion; and during
the unhappy civil wars of France, he was deprived of
his professorship, driven from Paris, and had his
library plundered. He endeavoured, but in vain, to
engage a German professor, Schegk, to undertake the
16 See Hist. Ind. Sc. b. iv. c. iv. sect. 4
THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. IOI
reform of the Aristotelian Physics; a portion of know-
ledge in which he felt himself not to be strong. Un-
happily for himself, he afterwards returned to Paris,
where he perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew
in 1572.
Ramus's main objection to the Aristotelian Logic
is, that it is not the image of the natural process of
thought; an objectiou which shows little philosophical
insight; for the course by which we obtain knowledge
inay well differ from the order in which our know-
ledge, wlien obtained, is exhibited. We have already
seen that Ramus's contemporaries, Cæsalpinus and
Campanella, had a wiser view; placing definition as
the last step in knowing, but the first in teaching.
But the effect which Ramus produced was by uo
means slight. He aided powerfully in turning the
minds of men to question the authority of Aristotle
on all points; and had many followers, especially
among the Protestants. Among the rest, Milton, our
great poet, published “Artis Logicæ plenior Institu-
tio ad Petri Rami methodum concinnata;" but this
work, appearing in 1672, belongs to a succeeding
period.
6. (The Reformers in general). It is impossible not to
be struck with the series of misfortunes which assailed
the reformers of philosophy of the period we have had
to review. Roger Bacon was repeatedly condemned
and imprisoned; and, not to speak of others who suf-
fered under the imputation of magical arts, Telesius is
said ? to have been driven from Naples to his native
city by calumny and envy; Cæsalpinus was accused
of atheism 1º; Campanella was imprisoned for twenty-
seven years and tortured; Giordano Bruno was burnt
at Rome as a heretic; Ramus was persecuted during
his life, and finally murdered by his personal enemy
Jacques Charpentier, in a massacre of which the plea
was religion. It is true, that for the most part these
inisfortunes were not principally due to the attempts
17 Tenneman, ix. 230.
18 Ibid. 108,
102
• PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
at philosophical reform, but were connected rather
with politics or religion. But we cannot doubt that
the spirit which led men to assail the received philo-
sophy, might readily incline them to reject some tenets
of the established religion; since the boundary line of
these subjects is difficult to draw. And as we have
seen, there was in most of the persons of whom we
have spoken, not only a well-founded persuasion of
the defects of existing systems, but an eager spirit of
change, and a sanguine anticipation of some wide and
lofty philosophy, which was soon to elevate the minds
and conditions of men. The most unfortunate were,
for the most part, the least temperate and judicious
reformers. Patricius, who, as we have seen, declared
himself against the Aristotelian philosophy, lived and
died at Rome in peace and honour19. .
7. (Melancthon.)—It is not easy to point out with
precision the connexion between the efforts at a Reform
in Philosophy, and the great Reformation of Religion
in the sixteenth century. The disposition to assert
(practically at least) a freedom of thinking, and to
reject the corruptions which tradition had introduced
and authority maintained, naturally extended its in-
fluence from one subject to another; and especially in
subjects so nearly connected as theology and philoso-
phy. The Protestants, however, did not reject the
Aristotelian system; they only reformed it, by going
back to the original works of the author, and by re-
ducing it to a conformity with Scripture. In this
reform, Melancthon was the chief author, and wrote
works on Logic, Physics, Morals, and Metaphysics,
which were used among Protestants. On the subject
of the origin of our knowledge, his views contained a
very philosophical improvement of the Aristotelian
doctrines. He recognized the importance of Ideas, as
well as of Experieuce. “We could not,” he says,
“proceed to reason at all, except there were by nature
19 Tenneman, ix, 246
20 Melancthon, De Anima, p. 207, quoted in Tenneman, ix. 12r.
THEORETICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 103
innate in man certain fixed points, that is, principles
of science;--as Number, the recognition of Order and
Proportion, logical, geometrical, physical and moral
Principles. Physical principles are such as these,
everything which exists proceeds from a cause, -a
body cannot be in two places at once,--time is a con-
tinued series of things or of motions, and the like."
It is not difficult to see that such Principles partake
of the nature of the Fundamental Ideas which we
have attempted to arrange and enumerate in a pre-
vious part of this work.
Before we proceed to the next chapter, which treats
of the Practical Reformers of Scientific Method, let
us for an instant look at the strong persuasion implied
in the titles of the works of this period, that the
time of a philosophical revolution was at hand. Tele-
sius published De Rerum Natura juxta propria prin-
cipia; Francis Helmont, Philosophia vulgaris refre-
tata; Patricius, Nova de Universis Philosophic; Cam-
panella, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, adversus
errores Aristotelis; Bruno professed himself the author
of a Nolan Philosophy; and Ramus of a New Logic.
The age announced itself pregnant; and the eyes of
all who took an interest in the intellectual fortunes of
the race, were looking eagerly for the expected off-
spring.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE.
1. Character of the Practical Reformers. We now
come to a class of speculators who had perhaps a
greater share in bringing about the change from sta-
tionary to progressive knowledge, than those writers
who so loudly announced the revolution. The mode
in which the philosophers of whom we now speak
produced their impressions on men's minds, was very
different from the procedure of the theoretical re-
.formers. What these talked of, they did; what these
promised, they performed. While the theorists con-
cerning knowledge proclaimed that great advances
were to be made, the practical discoverers went stead-
ily forwards. While one class spoke of a complete
Reform of scientific Methods, the other, boasting little,
and often thinking little of Method, proved the novelty
of their instrument by obtaining new results. While
the metaphysicians were exhorting men to consult ex-
perience and the senses, the physicists were examining
nature by such means with unparalleled success. And
while the former, even when they did for a moment
refer to facts, soon rushed back into their own region
of ideas, and tried at once to seize the widest generali-
zations, the latter, fastening their attention upon the
phenomena, and trying to reduce them to laws, were
carried forwards by steps measured and gradual, such
as no conjectural view of scientific method had sug-
gested; but leading to truths as profound and com-
prehensive as any which conjecture had dared to
anticipate. The theoretical reformers were bold, self-
confident, hasty, contemptuous of antiquity, ambitious
of ruling all future speculations, as they whom they
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 105
sought to depose had ruled the past. The practical
reformers were cautious, modest, slow, despising no
knowledge, whether borrowed from tradition or obser-
vation, confident in the ultimate triumph of science,
but impressed with the conviction that each single
person could contribute a little only to its progress.
Yet though thus working rather than speculating, -
dealing with particulars more than with generals,-
employed mainly in adding to knowledge, and not in
defining what knowledge is, or how additions are to
be made to it,—these men, thoughtful, curious, and of
comprehensive minds, were constantly led to important
views on the nature and methods of science. And
these views, thus suggested by reflections on their own
mental activity, were gradually incorporated with the
more abstract doctrines of the metaphysicians, and
had a most important influence in establishing an im-
proved philosophy of science. The indications of such
views we must now endeavour to collect from the
writings of the discoverers of the times preceding the
seventeenth century.
Some of the earliest of these indications are to be
found in those who dealt with Art rather than with
Science. I have already endeavoured to show that the
advance of the arts which give us a command over the
powers of nature, is generally prior to the formation
of exact and speculative knowledge concerning those
powers. But Art, which is thus the predecessor of
Science, is, among nations of acute and active intellects,
usually its parent. There operates, in such a case, a
speculative spirit, leading men to seek for the reasons
of that which they find themselves able to do. How
slowly, and with what repeated deviations men follow
this leading, when under the influence of a partial and
dogmatical philosophy, the late birth and slow growth
of sound physical theory shows. But at the period of
which we now speak, we find men, at length, proceed-
ing in obedience to the impulse which thus drives them
from practice to theory ;-from an acquaintance with
phenomena to a free and intelligent inquiry concerning
their causes.
106
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
2. Leonardo da Vinci.--I have already noted, in
the History of Science, that the Indistinctness of Ideas,
which was long one main impediment to the progress
of science in the middle ages, was first remedied among
architects and engineers. These men, so far at least as
mechanical ideas were concerned, were compelled by
their employments to judge rightly of the relations and
properties of the materials with which they had to deal;
and would have been chastised by the failure of their
works, if they had violated the laws of mechanical truth.
It was not wonderful, therefore, that these laws became
known to them first. We have seen, in the History,
that Leonardo da Vinci, the celebrated painter, who.
was also an engineer, is the first writer in whom we
find the true view of the laws of equilibrium of the
Jever in the most general case. This artist, a man of
a lively and discursive mind, is led to make some re-
marks' on the formation of our knowledge, which may
show the opinions on that subject that already offered
themselves at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
He expresses himself as follows:-“Theory is the gene-
įral, Experiments are the soldiers. The interpreter of
the artifices of nature is Experience: she is never de-
ceived. Our judgment sometimes is deceived, because
it expects effects which Experience refuses to allow."
And again, “We must consult Experience, and vary
' the circumstances till we have drawn from them gene-
· lal rules; for it is she who furnishes true rules. But
of what use, you ask, are these rules ; I reply, that
they direct us in the researches of nature and the
operations of art. They prevent our imposing upon
ourselves and others by promising ourselves results
which we cannot obtain.
"In the study of the sciences which depend on mathe-
matics, those who do not consult nature but authors,
are not the children of nature, they are only her grand-
1 His works have never been pub- Essai sur les Ouvrages de Leonard do
'lished, and exist in manuscript in the Vinci. Paris, 1797.
library of the Institute at Paris. Some 2 Leonardo died in 1520, at the age
extracts were published by Venturi, of 78.
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 107
children. She is the true teacher of men of genius.
· But see the absurdity of men ! They turn up their
noses at a man who prefers to learn from nature her-
self rather than from authors who are only her clerks."
In another place, in reference to a particular case,
he says, “Nature begins from the Reason and ends in
Experience; but for all that, we must take the opposite
course; begin from the Experiment and try to discover
the Reason."
Leonardo was born forty-six years before Telesius;
yet we have here an estimate of the value of experience
far more just and substantial than the Calabrian school
ever reached. The expressions contained in the above
extracts, are well worthy our notice;-that experience
is never deceived ; that we must vary our experi-
ments, and draw from them general rules ;—that na-
ture is the original source of knowledge, and books
only a derivative substitute; with a lively image of
the sons and grandsons of nature. Some of these
assertions have been deemed, and not without reason,
very similar to those made by Bacon a century later.
Yet it is probable that the import of such expressions,
in Leonardo's mind, was less clear and definite than
that which they acquired by the progress of sound phi-
losophy. When he says that theory is the general
and experiments the soldiers, he probably meant that
theory directs men what experiments to make; and
had not in his mind the notion of a theoretical Idea
ordering and brigading the Facts. When he says that
Experience is the interpreter of Nature, we may recol-
lect, that in a more correct use of this image, Expe-
rience and Nature are the writing, and the Intellect
of man the interpreter. We may add, that the clear
apprehension of the importance of Experience led, in
this as in other cases, to an unjust depreciation of the
value of what science owed to books. Leonardo would
have made little progress, if he had attempted to master
a complex science, astronomy for instance, by means of
observation alone, without the aid of books.
But in spite of such criticism, Leonardo's maxims
show extraordinary, sagacity and insight; and they
108
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
appear to us the more remarkable, when we see how
rare such views are for a century after his time.
3. Copernicus.—For we by no means find, even in
those practical discoverers to whom, in reality, the re-
volution in science, and consequently in the philosophy
of science, was due, this prompt and vigorous recognition
of the supreme authority of observation as a ground of
belief; this bold estimate of the probable worthlessness
of traditional knowledge; and this plain assertion of
the reality of theory founded upon experience. Among
such discoverers, Copernicus must ever hold a most
distinguished place. The heliocentric theory of the
universe, established by him with vast labour and
deep knowledge, was, for the succeeding century, the
field of discipline and exertion of all the most active
speculative minds. Men, during that time, proved
their freedom of thought, their hopeful spirit, and
their comprehensive view, by adopting, inculcating,
and following out the philosophy which this theory
suggested. But in the first promulgation of the theory,
in the works of Copernicus himself, we find a far
more cautious and reserved temper. He does not,
indeed, give up the reality of his theory, but he ex-
presses himself so as to avoid shocking those who might
(as some afterwards did) think it safe to speak of it as
an hypothesis rather than a truth. In his preface ad-
dressed to the Pope”, after speaking of the difficulties
in the old and received doctrines, by which he was led
to his own theory, he says, “Hence I began to think
of the mobility of the earth; and although the opinion
seemed absurd, yet because I knew that to others be-
fore me this liberty had been conceded, of imagining
any kinds of circles in order to explain the phenomena
of the stars, I thought it would also be readily granted
me, that I might try whether, by supposing the earth
to be in motion, I might not arrive at a better expla-
nation than theirs, of the revolutions of the celestial
orbs.” Nor does he anywhere assert that the seeming
3 Paul III. in 1543.
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 109
absurdity had become a certain truth, or betray any
feeling of triumph over the mistaken belief of his
predecessors. And, as I have elsewhere shown, his
disciples* indignantly and justly defended him from
the charge of disrespect towards Ptolemy and other
ancient astronomers. Yet Copernicus is far from com-
promising the value or evidence of the great truths
which he introduced to general acceptance; and from
sinking in his exposition of his discoveries below the
temper which had led to them. His quotation from
Ptolemy, that “He who is to follow philosophy must
be a freeman in mind,” is a grand and noble maxim,
which it well became him to utter.
4. Fabricius.-In another of the great discoverers
of this period, though employed on a very different sub-
ject; we discern much of the same temper. Fabricius
of Acquapendente", the tutor and forerunner of our
Harvey, and one of that illustrious series of Paduan
professors who were the fathers of anatomy", exhibits
something of the same respect for antiquity, in the
midst of his original speculations. Thus in a disser-
tation? On the Action of the Joints, he quotes Aris-
totle's Mechanical Problems to prove that in all ani-
mal motion there must be some quiescent fulcrum;
and finds merit even in Aristotle's ignorance. "Aris-
totle,” he says, “did not know that motion was
produced by the muscle; and after staggering about
from one supposition to auother, at last is compelled
by the facts themselves to recur to an innate spirit,
which, he conceives, is contrasted, and which pulls
and pushes. And here we cannot help admiring the
genius of Aristotle, who, though ignorant of the mus-
cle, invents something which produces nearly the same
effect as the muscle, namely, contraction and pulling.”
He then, with great acuteness, points out the dis-
tinction between Aristotle's opinions, thus favourably
interpreted, and those of Galen. In all this, we see
4 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. V. c. ii.
5 Born 1537, died 1619
6 Hist. Ind. Sc. B. xvii. c. ii. sect. I.
? Fabricius, De Motu Locali, p. 182.
8 p. 199.
IIO
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
something of the wish to find all truths in the writings
of the ancients, but nothing which materially inter-
feres with freedom of inquiry. The anatomists have
in all ages and countries been practically employed in
seeking knowledge from observation. Facts have ever
been to them a subject of careful and profitable study;
while the ideas which enter into the wider truths of
the science, are, as .we have seen, even still involved
in obscurity, doubt, and contest.
5. Maurolycus.-Francis Maurolycus of Messana,
whose mathematical works were published in 1575, was
one of the great improvers of the science of optics in his
time. In his Preface to his Treatise on the Spheres,
he speaks of previous writers on the same subject; and
observes that as they have not superseded one another,
they have not rendered it unfit for any one to treat
the subject afresh. “Yet," he says, “it is impossible
to amend the errors of all who have preceded us.
This would be a task too hard for Atlas, although he
supports the heavens. Even Copernicus is tolerated,
who makes the sun to be fixed, and the earth to move
round it in a circle, and who is more worthy of a
whip or a scourge than of a refutation.” The mathe-
maticians and astronomers of that time were not the
persons most sensible of the progress of physical know-
ledge; for the basis of their science, and a great part
of its substance, were contained in the writings of the
ancients; and till the time of Kepler, Ptolemy's work
was, very justly, looked upon as including all that was
essential in the science.
6. Benedetti.—But the writers on Mechanics were
naturally led to present themselves as innovators and
experimenters; for all that the ancients had taught
concerning the doctrine of motion was erroneous;
while those who sought their knowledge from experi-
ment, were constantly led to new truths. John Bap-
tist Benedetti, a Venetian nobleman, in 1599, pub-
lished his Speculationum Liber, containing, among other
matter, a treatise on Mechanics, in which several of
the Aristotelian errors were refuted. In the Preface
to this Treatise, he says, “Many authors have written
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. III
much, and with great ability, on Mechanics; but since
nature is constantly bringing to light something either
new, or before unnoticed, I too wished to put forth a
few things hitherto unattempted, or not sufficiently
explained.” In the doctrine of motion he distinctly
and at some length condemns and argues against all
the Aristotelian doctrines concerning motion, weight,
and many other fundamental principles of physics.
Benedetti is also an adherent of the Copernican doc-
trine. He states 9 the enormous velocity which the
heavenly bodies must have, if the earth be the centre
of their motions; and adds, " which difficulty does not
occur according to the beautiful theory of the Samian
Aristarchus, expounded in a divine manner by Nicolas
Copernicus; against which the reasons alleged by Aris-
totle are of no weight.” Benedetti throughout shows
no want of the courage or ability which were needed
in order to rise in opposition against the dogmas of
the Peripatetics. He does not, however, refer to ex-
periment in a very direct manner; indeed most of the
facts on which the elementary truths of mechanics
rest, were known and admitted by the Aristotelians;
and therefore could not be adduced as novelties. On
the contrary, he begins with à priori maxims, which
experience would not have confirmed. “Since,” he
says , "we have undertaken the task of proving that
Aristotle is wrong in his opinions concerning motion,
there are certain absolute truths, the objects of the
intellect known of themselves, which we must lay
down in the first place.” And then, as an example of
these truths, he states this: “Any two bodies of equal
size and figure, but of different materials, will have
their natural velocities in the same proportion as their
weights;" where by their natural velocities, he means
the velocities with which they naturally fall down-
wards.
7. Gilbert. The greatest of these practical reform-
ers of science is our countryman, William Gilbert; if,
9 Speculationun Liber, p. 195.
10 Ibid. p. 169.
II2
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
indeed, in virtue of the clear views of the prospects
which were then opening to science, and of the
methods by which her future progress was to be se-
cured, while he exemplified those views by physical
discoveries, he does not rather deserve the still higher
praise of being at the same time a theoretical and a
practical reformer. Gilbert's physical researches and
speculations were employed principally upon subjects
on which the ancients had known little or nothing;
and on which therefore it could not be doubtful whe-
ther tradition or observation was the source of know-
ledge. Such was magnetism; for the ancients were
barely acquainted with the attractive property of the
magnet. Its polarity, including repulsion as well as
attraction, its direction towards the north, its limited
variation from this direction, its declination from the
horizontal position, were all modern discoveries. Gil-
bert's work on the magnet and on the magnetism of
the earth, appeared in 1600; and in this, he repeatedly
inaintains the superiority of experimental knowledge
over the physical philosophy of the ancients. His
preface opens thus: “Since in making discoveries and
searching out the hidden causes of things, stronger
reasons are obtained from trustworthy experiments
and demonstrable arguments, than from probable con-
jectures and the dogmas of those who philosophize in
the usual manner," he has, he says, “endeavoured to
proceed from common magnetical experiments to the
inward constitution of the earth.” As I have stated
in the History of Magnetism", Gilbert's work con
tains all the fundamental facts of that science, so fully
stated, that we have, at this day, little to add to them.
He is not, however, by the advance which he thus
made, led to depreciate the ancients, but only to claim
for himself the same liberty of philosophizing which
11 Gulielmi Gilberti, Colcestricnsis, Medici Londinensis, De Magnete, Mag-
neticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure, Physiologia Nova, pluri-
mis et Argumentis et Experimentis demonstrata.
12 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. xii. c. i.
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 113
-
-
-
they had enjoyed 13. “To those ancient and first parents
of philosophy, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Ptolemy, Hip-
pocrates, Galen, be all due honour; from them it was
that the stream of wisdom has been derived down to
posterity. But our age has discovered and brought
to light many things which they, if they were yet
alive, would gladly embrace. Wherefore we also shall
not hesitate to expound, by probable hypotheses, those
things which by long experience we have ascertained."
In this work the author not only adopts the Coper-
nican doctrine of the earth's motion, but speaks of
the contrary supposition as utterly absurd, founding
his argument mainly on the vast velocities which such
a supposition requires us to ascribe to the celestial
bodies. Dr. Gilbert was physician to Queen Elizabeth
and to James the First, and died in 1603. Some time
after his death the executors of his brother published
another work of his, De Mundo nostro Sublunari Phi-
losophia Nova, in which similar views are still more
comprehensively presented. In this he says, “The
two lords of philosophy, Aristotle and Galen, are held
in worship like gods, and rule the schools;—the for-
mer by some destiny obtained a sway and influence
among philosophers, like that of his pupil Alexander
among the kings of the earth ;-Galen, with like suc-
cess, holds his triumph among the physicians of Eu-
rope.” This comparison of Aristotle to Alexander
was also taken hold of by Bacon. Nor is Gilbert an
unworthy precursor of Bacon in the view he gives of
the History of Science, which occupies the first three
chapters of his Philosophy. He traces this history
from “the simplicity and ignorance of the ancients,"
through “the fabrication of the fable of the four ele-
ments," to Aristotle and Galen. He mentions with
due disapproval the host of commentators which suc-
ceeded, the alchemists, the “shipwreck of science in
the deluge of the Goths," and the revival of letters
and genius in the time of “our grandfathers.” “This
13 Pref.
14 De Magnete, lib. vi. C. 3, 4
114
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
later age," he says, “has exploded the Barbarians, and
restored the Greeks and Latins to their pristine grace
and honour. It remains, that if they have written
aught in error, this should be remedied by better and
more productive processes (frugiferis institutis), not
to be contemned for their novelty; (for nothing which
is true is really new, but is perfect from eternity,
though to weak man it may be unknown;) and that
thus Philosophy may bear her fruit." The reader of
Bacon will not fail to recognize, in these references to
“fruit-bearing” knowledge, a similarity of expression
with the Novun Organon.
Bacon does not appear to me to have done justice to
his contemporary. He nowhere recognizes in the la-
bours of Gilbert a community of purpose and spirit
with his own. On the other hand, he casts upon him
a reflection which he by no means deserves. In the
Advancement of Learning 15, he says, “ Another error
is, that men have used to infect their meditations,
opinions, and doctrines, with some conceits which they
have most admired, or some sciences to which they
have most applied; and given all things else a tinc-
ture according to them, utterly untrue and improper...
So have the alchemists made a philosophy out of a
few experiments of the furnace; and Gilbertus, our
countryman, hath made a philosophy out of the ob-
servations of a loadstone,” (in the Latin, philosophiam
etiam e magnete elicuit). And in the same manner
he mentions him in the Novum Organon 16, as afford-
ing an example of an empirical kind of philosophy,
which appears to those daily conversant with the ex-
periments, probable, but to other persons incredible
and empty. · But instead of blaming Gilbert for dis-
turbing and narrowing science by a too constant re-
ference to magnetical rules, we might rather censure
Bacon, for not seeing how important in all natural
philosophy are those laws of attraction and repulsion
of which magnetical phenomena are the most obvious
15 Nov. Org. b. i.
16 B. i. Aph. 64.
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 115
illustration. We may find ground for such a judg-
ment in another passage in which Bacon speaks of
Gilbert. In the Second Book of the Novum Orga-
non, having classified motions, he gives, as one kind,
what he calls, in his figurative language, motion for
gain, or motion of need, by which a body shuns hete-
rogeneous, and seeks cognate bodies. And he adds,
"The Electrical operation, concerning which Gilbert
and others since him have made up such a wonderful
story, is nothing less than the appetite of a body,
which, excited by friction, does not well tolerate the
air, and prefers another tangible body if it be found
near." Bacon's notion of an appetite in the body is
certainly much less philosophical than Gilbert's, who
speaks of light bodies as drawn towards amber by
certain material radii 1'; and we might perhaps ven-
ture to say that Bacon here manifests a want of clear
mechanical ideas. Bacon, too, showed his inferior
aptitude for physical research in rejecting the Coper-
nican doctrine which Gilbert adopted. In the Ad-
vancement of Learning", suggesting a history of the
opinions of philosophers, he says that he would have
inserted in it even recent theories, as those of Para-
celsus; of Telesius, who restored the philosophy of
Parmenides; or Patricius, who resublimed the fumes
of Platonism; or Gilbert, who brought back the dog-
mas of Philolaus. But Bacon quotes 20 with pleasure
Gilbert's ridicule of the Peripatetics' definition of
heat. They had said, that heat is that which sepa-
rates heterogeneous and unites homogeneous matter;
which, said Gilbert, is as if any one were to define
man as that which sows wheat and plants vines.
Galileo, another of Gilbert's distinguished contem-
poraries, had a higher opinion of him. He says”, “I
extremely admire and envy this author. I think him
worthy of the greatest praise for the many new and
true observations which he has made, to the disgrace
17 Vol. ix. 185.
18 De Magnete, p. 6o.
19 B. iii. C. 4.
20 Nov. Org. b. ii. Aph. 48.
21 Drinkwater's Life of Galileo, p. 18.
I 2
116
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
of so many vain and fabling authors; who write, not
from their own knowledge only, but repeat everything
they hear from the foolish and vulgar, without at-
tempting to satisfy themselves of the same by experi-
ence; perhaps that they may not diminish the size of
their books."
8. Galileo.--Galileo was content with the active and
not demand that such researches should be made ex-
pressly subservient to that wider and more ambitious
philosophy, on which the author of the Novum Organon
employed his powers. But still it now becomes our
business to trace those portions of Galileo's views which
have reference to the theory, as well as the practice,
of scientific investigation. On this subject, Galileo did
not think more profoundly, perhaps, than several of his
contemporaries; but in the liveliness of expression and
illustration with which he recommended his opinions
on such topics, he was unrivalled. Writing in the lan-
guage of the people, in the attractive form of dialogue,
with clearness, grace, and wit, he did far more than
any of his predecessors had done to render the new
methods, results, and prospects of science familiar to a
wide circle of readers, first in Italy, and soon, all over
Europe. The principal points inculcated by him were
already becoming familiar to men of active and inquir-
ing minds; such as, that knowledge was to be sought
from observation, and not from books; that it was
absurd to adhere to, and debate about, the physical
tenets of Aristotle and the rest of the ancients. On
persons who followed this latter course, Galileo fixed
the epithet of Paper Philosophers”?; because, as he
wrote in a letter to Kepler, this sort of men fancied
that philosophy was to be studied like the Æneid or
Odyssee, and that the true reading of nature was to be
detected by the collation of texts. Nothing so much
shook the authority of the received system of Physics
as the experimental discoveries, directly contradicting
22 Life of Galileo, p. 9.
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 117
it, which Galileo made. By experiment, as I have
elsewhere stated 23, he disproved the Aristotelian doc-
trine that bodies fall quickly or slowly in proportion
to their weight. And when he had invented the tele-
scope, a number of new discoveries of the most striking
kind (the inequalities of the moon's surface, the spots
in the sun, the moon-like phases of Venus, the satel-
lites of Jupiter, the ring of Saturn,) showed, by the
evidence of the eyes, how inadequate were the concep-
tions, and how erroneous the doctrines of the ancients,
respecting the constitution of the universe. How severe
the blow was to the disciples of the ancient schools, we
may judge by the extraordinary forms of defence in
which they tried to intrench themselves. They would
not look through Galileo's glasses ; they maintained
that what was seen was an illusion of witchcraft; and
they tried, as Galileo says”, with logical arguments, as if
with magical incantations, to charm the new planets
out of the sky. No one could be better fitted than
Galileo for such a warfare. His great knowledge, clear
intellect, gaiety, and light irony, (with the advantage
of being in the right,) enabled him to play with his
adversaries as he pleased. Thus when an Aristotelian 25
rejected the discovery of the irregularities in the moon's
surface, because, according to the ancient doctrine, her
form was a perfect sphere, and held that the apparent
cavities were filled with an invisible crystal substance,
Galileo replied, that he had no objection to assent to
this, but that then he should require his adversary in
return to believe that there were on the same sur-
face invisible crystal mountains ten times as high as
those visible ones which he had actually observed and
measured.
since become established maxims of modern philoso-
phy. “Philosophy," he says, “is written in that
great book, I mean the Universe, which is constantly
open before our eyes; but it cannot be understood;
23 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. vi. c. i. sect. 5.
25 Ibid. p. 33.
24 Life of Galileo, p. 29.
26 Il Sagyiatore, ii. 247.
118 .
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
unless we first know the language and learn the
characters in which it is written." With this thought
he combines some other lively images. One of his
interlocutors says concerning another, “Sarsi perhaps
thinks that philosophy is a book made up of the fan-
cies of men, like the Iliad or Orlando Furioso, in
which the matter of least importance is, that what
is written be true." And again, with regard to the
system of authority, he says, “I think I'discover in
him a firm belief that, in philosophizing, it is necessary
to lean upon the opinion of some celebrated author;
as if our mind must necessarily remain unfruitful and
barren till it be married to another man's reason.”—
“No," he says, “the case is not so.—When we have
the decrees of Nature, authority goes for nothing;
reason is absolute 27.”
In the course of Galileo's controversies, questions of
the logic of science came under discussion. Vincenzio
di Grazia objected to a proof from induction which
Galileo adduced, because all the particulars were not
enumerated; to which the latter justly replies 28, that if
induction were required to pass through all the cases,
it would be either useless or impossible;—impossible
when the cases are innumerable; useless when they
have each already been verified, since then the general
proposition adds nothing to our knowledge.
One of the most novel of the characters which
Science assumes in Galileo's hands is, that she becomes
cautious. She not only proceeds leaning upon Experi-
ence, but she is content to proceed a little way at a
time. She already begins to perceive that she must
rise to the heights of knowledge by many small and
separate steps. The philosopher is desirous to know
much, but resigned to be ignorant for a time of that
which cannot yet be known. Thus when Galileo dis-
covered the true law of the motion of a falling body 29,
that the velocity increases proportionally to the time
from the beginning of the fall, he did not insist upon
37 I Saggiatore, ü. 200.
28 Ibid. i. 501.
9 Hist. Inc, Sc. b. vi. c. ii. sect. 2..
.
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 119
immediately assigning the cause of this law. “The
cause of the acceleration of the motions of falling
bodies is not,” he says, “a necessary part of the in-
vestigation." Yet the conception of this acceleration,
as the result of the continued action of the force of
gravity upon the falling body, could hardly fail to
suggest itself to one who had formed the idea of force.
In like manner, the truth that the velocities, acquired
by bodies falling down planes of equal heights, are all
equal, was known to Galileo and his disciples, long
before he accounted for ita, by the principle, ap-
parently so obvious, that the momentum generated
is as the moving force which generates it. He was
not tempted to rush at once, from an experimental
truth to a universal system. Science had learnt that
she must move step by step; and the gravity of her
pace already indicated her approaching maturity and
her consciousness of the long path which lay before
her.
But besides the genuine philosophical prudence which
thus withheld Galileo from leaping hastily from one
inference to another, he had perhaps a preponderating
inclination towards facts; and did not feel, so much as
some other persons of his time, the need of reducing
them to ideas. He could bear to contemplate laws of
motion without being urged by an uncontrollable desire
to refer them to conceptions of force.
9. Kepler. In this respect his friend Kepler differed
from him; for Kepler was restless and unsatisfied till
he had reduced facts to laws, and laws to causes; and
never acquiesced in ignorance, though he tested with
the most rigorous scrutiny that which presented itself
in the shape of knowledge to fill the void. It may be
seen in the History of Astronomy 81 with what per-
severance, energy, and fertility of invention, Kepler
pursued his labours, (enlivened and relieved by the
most curious freaks of fancy,) with a view of discover-
ing the rules which regulate the motions of the planet
30 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. vi. c. ii. sect. 4.
31 I vid. b. V. c. iv. sect. I.
I20
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Mars. He represents this employment under the image
of a warfare; and describes 89 his object to be “to
triumph over Mars, and to prepare for him, as for one
altogether vanquished, tabular prisons and equated
eccentric fetters;”. and when, “the enemy, left at
home a despised captive, had burst all the chains of
the equations, and broken forth of the prisons of the
tables;"_when "it was buzzed here and there that the
victory is vain, and that the war is raging anew as
violently as before;"_that is, when the rules which
he had proposed did not coincide with the facts ;-he
by no means desisted from his attempts, but "suddenly
sent into the field a reserve of new physical reasonings
on the rout and dispersion of the veterans,” that is,
tried new suppositions suggested by such views as he
then entertained of the celestial motions. His efforts
to obtain the formal laws of the planetary motions
resulted in some of the most important discoveries
ever made in astronomy; and if his physical reason-
ings were for the time fruitless, this arose only from
the want of that discipline in mechanical ideas which
the minds of mathematicians had still to undergo; for
the great discoveries of Newton in the next generation
showed that, in reality, the next step of the advance
was in this direction. Among all Kepler's fantastical
expressions, the fundamental thoughts were sound and
true; namely, that it was his business, as a physical
investigator, to discover a mathematical rule which
governed and included all the special facts; and that
the rules of the motions of the planets must conform
to some conception of causation.
The same characteristics,—the conviction of rule and
cause, perseverance in seeking these, inventiveness in
devising hypotheses, love of truth in trying and re-
jecting them, and a lively Fancy playing with the
Reason without interrupting her,—appear also in his
work on Optics; in which he tried to discover the
exact law of optical refraction 83. In this undertaking
32 De Stell. Mart. p. iv. C. 51 (1609); Drinkwater's Kepler, p. 33.
33 Published 1604. Hist. Ind. Sc. b. ix. c. ii.
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. I2I
he did not succeed entirely; nor does he profess to
have done so. He ends his numerous attempts by
saying, “Now, reader, you and I have been detained
sufficiently long while I have been attempting to collect
into one fagot the measures of different refractions."
In this and in other expressions, we see how clearly
he apprehended that colligation of fucts which is the
main business of the practical discoverer. And by his
peculiar endowments and habits, Kepler exhibits an
essential portion of this process, which hardly appears
at all in Galileo. In order to bind together facts,
theory is requisite as well as observation, the cord as
well as the fagots. And the true theory is often, if
not always, obtained by trying several and selecting
the right. Now of this portion of the discoverer's
exertions, Kepler is a most conspicuous example. His
fertility in devising suppositions, his undaunted indus-
try in calculating the results of them, his entire honesty
and. candour in resigning them if these results dis-
agreed with the facts, are a very instructive spectacle;
and are fortunately exhibited to us in the most lively
manner in his own garrulous narratives. Galileo urged
men by precept as well as example to begin their phi-
losophy from observation; Kepler taught them by his
practice that they must proceed from observation by
means of hypotheses. The one insisted upon facts;
the other dealt no less copiously with ideas. In the
practical, as in the speculative portion of our history,
this antithesis shows itself; although in the practical
part we cannot have the two elements separated, as in
the speculative we sometimes have.
In the History of Science 34, I have devoted several
pages to the intellectual character of Kepler, inasmuch
as his habit of devising so great a multitude of hypo-
theses, so fancifully expressed, had led some writers to
look upon him as an inquirer who transgressed the
most fixed rules of philosophical inquiry. This opi-
nion has arisen, I conceive, among those who have
34 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. v. c. iv. sect. I.
I22.
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
forgotten the necessity of Ideas as well as Facts for
all theory; or who have overlooked the impossibility
of selecting and explicating our ideas without a good
deal of spontaneous play of the mind. It must, how-
ever, always be recollected that Kepler's genius and
fancy derived all their scientific value from his genuine
and unmingled love of truth. These qualities appeared,
not only in the judgment he passed upon hypotheses,
but also in matters which more immediately concerned
his reputation. Thus when Galileo's discovery of the
telescope disproved several opinions which Kepler had
published and strenuously maintained, he did not hesi-
tate a moment to retract his assertions and range him-
self by the side of Galileo, whom he vigorously sup-
ported in his warfare against those who were incapable
of thus cheerfully acknowledging the triumph of new
facts over their old theories.
10. Tycho.-There remains one eminent astronomer,
the friend and fellow-labourer of Kepler, whom we must
not separate from him as one of the practical reformers
of science. I speak of Tycho Brahe, who is, I think,
not justly appreciated by the literary world in general,
in consequence of his having made a retrograde step
in that portion of astronomical theory which is most
familiar to the popular mind. Though he adopted the
Copernican view of the motion of the planets about
the sun, he refused to acknowledge the annual and
diurnal motion of the earth. But notwithstanding
this mistake, into which he was led by his interpreta-
tion of Scripture rather than of nature, Tycho must
ever be one of the greatest names in astronomy. In
the philosophy of science also, the influence of what
he did is far from inconsiderable; and especially its
value in bringing into notice these two points :—that
not only are observations the beginning of science, but
that the progress of science may often depend upon
the observer's pursuing his task regularly and carefully
for a long time, and with well devised instruments;
and again, that observed facts offer a succession of
laws which we discover as our observations become
better, and as our theories are better adapted to the
PRACTICAL REFORMERS OF SCIENCE. 123
observations. With regard to the former point, Tycho's
observatory was far superior to all that had preceded
it's not only in the optical, but in the mechanical
arrangements; a matter of almost equal consequence.
And hence it was that his observations inspired in.
Kepler that confidence which led him to all his la-
bours and all his discoveries. “Since," he says 36, “the
divine goodness has given us in Tycho Brahe an exact.
observer, from whose observations this error of eight
minutes in the calculations of the Ptolemaic hypothesis
is detected, let us acknowledge and make use of this
gift of God: and since this error cannot be neglected,
these eight minutes alone have prepared the way for
an entire reform of Astronomy, and are to be the
main subject of this work."
With regard to Tycho's discoveries respecting the
moon, it is to be recollected that besides the first in-
equality of the moon's motion, (the equation of the
centre, arising from the elliptical form of her orbit,) .
Ptolemy had discovered a second inequality, the evec-
tion, which, as we have observed in the History of
this subject 87, might have naturally suggested the sus-
picion that there were still other inequalities. In the
middle ages, however, such suggestions, implying a
constant progress in science, were little attended to;
and, we have seen, that when an Arabian astrono-
mer3had really discovered another inequality of the
moon, it was soon forgotten, because it had no place in
the established systems. Tycho not only rediscovered
the lunar inequality, (the variation,) thus once before
won and lost, but also two other inequalities; namely89,
the change of inclination of the moon's orbit as the
line of nodes moves round, and an inequality in the
motion of the line of nodes. Thus, as I have else-
where said, it appeared that the discovery of a rule
is a step to the discovery of deviations from that
rule, which require to be expressed in other rules. It
35 Hist. Inc. Sc. b. vii. c. vi. sect. I. 36 De Stell. Mart. P. II, C. 19.
37 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. ii. c. iv. sect. 6. 38 Ivid. sect. 8.
39 Montucla, i. 566.
124
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
became manifest to astronomers, and through them to
all philosophers, that in the application of theory to
observation, we find, not only the stated phenomena,
for which the theory does account, but also residual
phenomend, which are unaccounted for, and remain
over and above the calculation. And it was seen fur-
ther, that these residual phenomena might be, alto-
gether or in part, exhausted by new theories.
These were valuable lessons; and the more valuable
inasmuch as men were now trying to lay down maxims
and methods for the conduct of science. A revolution
was not only at hand, but had really taken place, in
the great body of real cultivators of science. The
occasion now required that this revolution should be
formally recognized ;--that the new intellectual power
should be clothed with the forms of government;,
that the new philosophical republic should be acknow-
ledged as a sister state by the ancient dynasties of
Aristotle and Plato. There was needed some great
Theoretical Reformer, to speak in the name of the
Experimental Philosophy; to lay before the world a
declaration of its rights and a scheme of its laws. And
thus our eyes are turned to Francis Bacon, and others
who like him attempted this great office. We quit
those august and venerable names of discoverers, whose
appearance was the prelude and announcement of the
new state of things then opening; and in doing so, we
may apply to them the language which Bacon applies
to himself 40:-
Χαίρετε Κήρυκες Διός άγγελοι ήδε και ανδρών.
Hail, Heralds, Messengers of Gods and Men !
40 De Augm. lib. iv. c. 1.
CHAPTER XV.
FRANCIS BACON.
(I.) 1. General Remarks. It is a matter of some
difficulty to speak of the character and merits of this
illustrious man, as regards his place in that philosophical
history with which we are here engaged. If we were to
content ourselves with estimating him according to the
office which, as we have just seen, he claims for himself',
as merely the harbinger and announcer of a sounder
method of scientific inquiry than that which was re-
cognized before him, the task would be comparatively
easy. For we might select from his writings those
passages in which he has delivered opinions and point-
ed out processes, then novel and strange, but since
confirmed by the experience of actual discoverers, and
by the judgments of the wisest of succeeding philoso-
phers; and we might pass by, without disrespect, but
without notice, maxims and proposals which have not
been found available for use;views so indistinct and
vague, that we are even yet unable to pronounce upon
their justice;—and boundless anticipations, dictated by
the sanguine hopes of a noble and comprehensive in-
tellect. But if we thus reduce the philosophy of
Bacon to that portion which the subsequent progress
of science has rigorously verified, we shall have to pass
over many of those declarations which have excited
most notice in his writings, and shall lose sight of
many of those striking thoughts which his admirers
most love to dwell upon. For he is usually spoken ;
? And in other passages : thus, “Ego enim buccinator tantum pugnam
non ineo." Nov. Orj. lib. iv. C. I.
126
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
م
.
sof, at least in this country, as a teacher who not only
commenced, but in a great measure completed, the
« Philosophy of Induction. He is considered, not only
as having asserted some general principles, but laid
down the special rules of scientific investigation; as
not only one of the Founders, but the supreme Legis-
^ lator of the modern Republic of Science; not only the
Hercules who slew the monsters that obstructed the
earlier traveller, but the Solon who established a con-
stitution fitted for all future time.
2. Nor is it our purpose to deny that of such
praise he deserves a share which, considering the pe-
riod at which he lived, is truly astonishing. But it is
necessary for us in this place to discriminate and select
that portion of his system which, bearing upon physical
science, has since been confirmed by the actual history/
of science. Many of Bacon's most impressive and cap:
tivating passages contemplate the extension of the new
methods of discovering truth to intellectual, to moral,
to political, as well as to physical science. And how
far, and how, the advantages of the inductive method
may be secured for those important branches of specu-
lation, it will at some future time be a highly inter-
esting task to examine. But our plan requires us at
present to omit the consideration of these ; for our
purpose is to learn what the genuine course of the for-
mation of science is, by tracing it in those portions of
human knowledge, which, by the confession of all, are
most exact, most certain, most complete. Hence we
must here deny ourselves the dignity and interest
which float about all speculations in which the great
moral and political concerns of men are involved. It
cannot be doubted that the cominanding position which
Bacon occupies in men's estimation arises from his
proclaiming a reform in philosophy of so comprehen-
sive a nature;-a reform which was to infuse a new
spirit into every part of knowledge. Physical Science
has tranquilly and noiselessly adopted many of his
suggestions; which were, indeed, her own natural im-
pulses, not borrowed from him; and she is too deeply
and satisfactorily absorbed in contemplating her re-
FRANCIS BACON.
127
sults, to talk much about the methods of obtaining
them which she has thus instinctively pursued. But
the philosophy which deals with mind, with manners,
with morals, with polity, is conscious still of much ob-
scurity and perplexity; and would gladly borrow aid
from a system in which aid is so confidently promised.
The aphorisms and phrases of the Novum Organon are
far more frequently quoted by metaphysical, ethical,
and even theological writers, than they are by the au-
thors of works on physics.
3. Again, even as regards physics, Bacon's fame
rests upon something besides the novelty of the max-
ims which he promulgated. That a revolution in the
method of scientific research was going on, all the
greatest physical investigators of the sixteenth century
were fully aware, as we have shown in the last chap-
ter. But their writings conveyed this conviction to
the public at large somewhat slowly. Men of letters,
men of the world, men of rank, did not become fa-
miliar with the abstruse works in which these views
were published; and above all, they did not, by such
occasional glimpses as they took of the state of physi-
cal science, become aware of the magnitude and conse-
quences of this change. But Bacon's lofty eloquence,
wide learning, comprehensive views, bold pictures of
the coming state of things, were fitted to make men
turn a far more general and earnest gaze upon the
passing change. When a man of his acquirements, of
his talents, of his rank and position, of his gravity and
caution, poured forth the strongest and loftiest expres-
sions and images which his mind could supply, in
order to depict the “Great Instauration" which he
announced;-in order to contrast the weakness, the
blindness, the iguorance, the wretchedness, under
which men had laboured while they followed the long
beaten track, with the light, the power, the privileges,
which they were to find in the paths to which he
pointed;—it was impossible that readers of all classes
should not have their attention arrested, their minds
stirred, their hopes warmed; and should not listen
with wonder and with pleasure to the strains of
128
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
prophetic eloquence in which so great a subject was
presented. And when it was found that the pro-
phecy was verified ; when it appeared that an immense
change in the methods of scientific research really had
occurred;—that vast additions to man's knowledge
and power had been acquired, in modes like those
which had been spoken of;--that further advances
might be constantly looked for;—and that a progress,
seemingly boundless, was going on in the direction in
which the seer had thus pointed ;-it was natural that
men should bail him as the leader of the revolution;
that they should identify him with the event which he
was the first to announce; that they should look upon
him as the author of that which he had, as they per-
ceived, so soon and so thoroughly comprehended.
4. For we must remark, that although (as we
have seen) he was not the only, nor the earliest
writer, who declared that the time was come for such
a change, he not only proclaimed it more emphatically,
but understood it, in its general character, much more
exactly, than any of his contemporaries. Among the
maxims, suggestions and anticipations which he threw
out, there were many of which the wisdom and the
novelty were alike striking to his immediate succes-
sors;—there are many which even now, from time to
time, we find fresh reason to admire, for their acute-
ness and justice. Bacon stands far above the herd of
loose and visionary speculators who, before and about
his time, spoke of the establishment of new philoso-
· phies. If we must select some one philosopher as the
Hero of the revolution in scientific method, beyond all
doubt Francis Bacon must occupy the place of honour.
We shall, however, no longer dwell upon these
general considerations, but shall proceed to notice some
of the more peculiar and characteristic features of
Bacon's philosophy; and especially those views, which,
occurring for the first time in his writings, have been
fully illustrated and confirmed by the subsequent pro-
gress of science, and have become a portion of the per-
manent philosophy of our times.
(II.) 5. A New Era announced. The first great
FRANCIS BACON. '
I 29
feature which strikes us in Bacon's philosophical views
is that which we have already notioed ;-his confident
and emphatic announcement of a New Era in the pro-
gress of science, compared with which the advances of
former times were poor and trifling. This was with
Bacon no loose and shallow opinion, taken up on light
grounds and involving only vague, general notions.
He had satisfied himself of the justice of such a view
by a laborious course of research and reflection. In
1605, at the age of forty-four, he published his Trea-
tise of the Advancement of Learning, in which he
takes a comprehensive and spirited survey of the con-
dition of all branches of knowledge which had been
cultivated up to that time. This work was composed
with a view to that reform of the existing philosophy
which Bacon always had before his eyes; and in the
Latin edition of his works, forms the First Part of the
Instauratio Magna. In the Second Part of the In-
stauratio, the Novun Organon, published in 1620, he
more explicitly and confidently states his expectations
on this subject. He points out how slightly and feebly.
the examination of nature had been pursued up to his ,
time, and with what scanty fruit. He notes the indi-1
cations of this in the very limited knowledge of the
Greeks who had till then been the teachers of Europe,
in the complaints of authors concerning the subtilty +
and obscurity of the secrets of nature, in the dissen-1
sions of sects, in the absence of useful inventions re- ;
sulting from theory, in the fixed form which the sci- .
ences had retained for two thousand years. Nor, he ,
adds”, is this wonderful; for how little of his thought
and labour has man bestowed upon science! Out of
twenty-five centuries scarce six have been favourable
to the progress of knowledge. And even in those
favoured times, natural philosophy received the small-
est share of man's attention; while the portion so
given was marred by controversy and dogmatism; and
even those who have bestowed a little thought upon
2 Lib. 1. Ajhor. 78 et seq.
130
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
this philosophy, have never made it their main study,
but have used it as a passage or drawbridge to serve
other objects. And thus, he says, the great Mother of
the Sciences is thrust down with indignity to the of-
fices of a handmaid; is made to minister to the labours
of medicine or mathematics, or to give the first prepa-
ratory tinge to the immature minds of youth. For
these and similar considerations of the errors of past
time, he draws hope for the future, employing the
same argument which Demosthenes uses to the Athe-
nians: “That which is worst in the events of the past,
is the best as a ground of trust in the future. For
if you had done all that became you, and still had
been in this condition, your case might be desperate;
but since your failure is the result of your own mis-
takes, there is good hope that, correcting the error of
your course, you may reach a prosperity yet unknown
to you.”
(III.) 6. A change of existing Method.-All Bacon's
hope of improvement indeed was placed in an entire
change of the Method by which science was pursued;
and the boldness, and at the same time (the then
existing state of science being considered), the definite-
ness of his views of the change that was requisite, are
truly remarkable.
That all knowledge must begin with observation, is
one great principle of Bacon's philosophy; but I hardly
think it necessary to notice the inculcation of this
maxim as one of his main services to the cause of sound
knowledge, since it had, as we have seen, been fully
insisted upon by others before him, and was growing
rapidly into general acceptance without his aid. But
if he was not the first to tell men that they must col-
lect their knowledge from observation, he had no rival
in his peculiar office of teaching them how science
must thus be gathered from experience.
It appears to me that by far the most extraordinary
parts of Bacon's works are those in which, with extreme
earnestness and clearness, he insists upon a graduated
and successive induction, as opposed to a hasty transit
froin special facts to the highest generalizations. The
FRANCIS BACON.
131
nineteenth Axiom of the First Book of the Novum
Organon contains a view of the nature of true science
most exact and profound, and, so far as I am aware,
at the time perfectly new. “There are two ways, and
can only be two, of seeking and finding truth. The one,
from sense and particulars, takes a flight to the most
general axioms, and from those principles and their
truth, settled once for all, invents and judges of inter-
mediate axioms. The other method collects axioms
from sense and particulars, ascending continuously and
by degrees, so that in the end it arrives at the most
general axioms; this latter way is the true one, but
bitherto untried.”
It is to be remarked, that in this passage Bacon
employs the term wcioms to express any propositions
collected from facts by induction, and thus fitted to
become the starting-point of deductive reasonings.
How far propositions so obtained may approach to the
character of axioms in the more rigorous sense of the
term, we have already in some measure examined;
but that question does not here immediately concern
us. The truly remarkable circumstance is to find this
recommendation of a continuous advance from observa-
tion, by limited steps, through successive gradations of
generality, given at a time when speculative men in
general had only just begun to perceive that they must
begin their course from experience in some way or
other. How exactly this description represents the
general structure of the soundest and most compre-
hensive physical theories, all persons who have studied
the progress of science up to modern times can bear
testimony; but perhaps this structure of science can-
not in any other way be made so apparent as by those
Tables of successive generalizations in which we have
exhibited the history and constitution of some of the
principal physical sciences, in the Chapter of a pre-
ceding work which treats of the Logic of Induction,
Aud the view which Bacon thus took of the true pro-
gress of science was not only new, but, so far as I am
aware, has never been adequately illustrated up to the
present day.
* 2
132
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
7. It is true, as I observed in the last chapter, that
Galileo had been led to see the necessity, not only of
. proceeding from experience in the pursuit of know-
wledge, but of proceeding cautiously and gradually; and
he had exemplified this rule more than once, when,
having made one step in discovery, he held back his
foot, for a time, from the next step, however tempting.
But Galileo had not reached this wide and command-
ing view.of the successive subordination of many steps,
all leading up at last to some wide and simple general
truth. In catching sight of this principle, and in
ascribing to it its due importance, Bacon's sagacity, so
far as I am aware, wrought unassisted and unrivalled.
8. Nor is there any wavering or vagueness in Bacon's
assertion of this important truth. He repeats it over
and over again ; illustrates it by a great number of
the most lively metaphors and emphatic expressions.
Thus he speaks of the successive foors (tabulata) of
-induction; and speaks of each science as a pyramid
[which has observation and experience for its basis.
No images can better exhibit the relation of general
and particular truths, as our own Inductive Tables
may serve to show.
(IV.) 9. Comparison of the New and Old Method.
Again; not less remarkable is his contrasting this
true Method of Science (while it was almost, as he
says, yet untried) with the ancient and vicious Method,
1. which began, indeed, with facts of observation, but
rushed at once and with no gradations, to the most
general principles. For this was the course which had
been actually followed by all those speculative re-
formers who had talked so loudly of the necessity of
beginning our philosophy from experience. All these
men, if they attempted to frame physical doctrines at
| all, had caught up a few facts of observation, and had
3 Aug. Sc. Lib. iii. C. 4. P. 194. So non intermissos aut hiulcos a parti-
in other places, as Nov. Org. i. Aph. culari us ascendetur ad axiomata
104. “De scientiis tum demum bene minora, et deinde ad media, alia
sperandum est quando per scalam aliis superiora, et postremo demuni
veram et per gradus continuos, et ad generalissima."
FRANCIS BACON.
133
erected a universal theory upon the suggestions which
these offered. This process of illicit generalization, or,
as Bacon terms it, Anticipation of Nature (anticipatio -
naturo), in opposition to the Interpretation of Nature, -
he depicts with singular acuteness, in its character and
causes. “These two ways," he says “both begin from
sense and particulars; but their discrepancy is immense.
The one merely skims over experience and particulars
in a cursory transit; the other deals with them in a
due and orderly manner. The one, at its very outset,
frames certain general abstract principles, but useless;
the other gradually rises to those principles-which have
a real existence in nature."
"The former path,” he adds, “that of illicit and
hasty generalization, is one which the intellect follows
when abandoned to its own impulse; and this it does
from the requisitions of logic. For the mind has a
yearning which makes it dart forth to generalities, _
that it may have something to rest in; and after a
little dallying with experience, becomes weary of it;
and all these evils are augmented by logic, which re-
quires these generalities to make a show with in its
disputations."
"In a sober, patient, grave intellect," he further adds,
“the mind, by its own impulse, (and more especially if
it be not impelled by the sway of established opinions)
attempts in some measure that other and"true way, of
gradual generalization; but this it does with small
profit; for the intellect, except it be regulated and
aided, is a faculty of unequal operation, and altogether
unapt to master the obscurity of things.”
The profound and searching wisdom of these remarks
appears more and more, as we apply them to the vari-
ous attempts which men have made to obtain know-
ledge; when they begin with the contemplation of a
few facts, and pursue their speculations, as upon most
subjects they have hitherto generally done; for almost
all such attempts have led immediately to some process
4 Nov. Ory. I. Aph. 22.
6 Ib. Aph. 20.
134
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
of illicit generalization, which introduces an intermin-
able course of controversy. In the physical sciences,
however, we have the further inestimable advantage
of seeing the other side of the contrast exemplified :
for many of them, as our inductive Tables show us,
have gone on according to the most rigorous conditions
of gradual and successive generalization, and in con-
sequence of this circumstance in their constitution,
possess, in each part of their structure, a solid truth,
which is always ready to stand the severest tests of
reasoning and experiment.
We see how justly and clearly Bacon judged con-
cerning the mode in which facts are to be employed in
the construction of science. This, indeed, has ever
been deemed his great merit: insomuch that many
persons appear to apprehend the main substance of
his doctrine to reside in the maxim that facts of obser-
vation, and such facts alone, are the essential elements
of all true science.
- (V.) 10. Ideas are necessary.— Yet we have en-
deavoured to establish the doctrine that facts are
but one of two ingredients of knowledge both equally
necessary;-that Ideas are no less indispensable than
facts themselves; and that except these be duly un-
-folded and applied, facts are collected in vain. Has
Bacon then neglected this great portion of his subject?
Has he been led by some partiality of view, or some
peculiarity of circumstances, to leave this curious and
essential element of science in its pristine obscurity?
Was he, unaware of its interest and importance?
We may reply that Bacon's philosophy, in its effect
upon his readers in general, does not give due weight
or due attention to the ideal element of our know-
pledge. He is considered as peculiarly and eminently
the asserter of the value of experiment and observa-
tion. He is always understood to belong to the ex-
periential, as opposed to the ideal school. He is held
up in contrast to Plato and others who love to dwell
upon that part of knowledge which has its origin in
the intellect of man.
II. Nor can it be denied that Bacon has, in the
-.
.-
FRANCIS BACON.
135
finished part of his Novum Organon, put prominently
forwards the necessary dependence of all our know-
ledge upon Experience, and said little of its depend-
ence, equally necessary, upon the Conceptions which
the intellect itself supplies. It will appear, however,
on a close examination, that he was by no means in-
sensible or careless of this internal element of all con-
nected speculation. He held the balance, with no
partial or feeble hand, between phenomena and ideas.
He urged the Colligation of Facts, but he was not the
less aware of the value of the Explication of Con-
ceptions.
12. This appears plainly from some remarkable
Aphorisms in the Novum Organon. Thus, in noticing
the causes of the little progress then made by science,
he states this:-“In the current Notions, all is un-
sound, whether they be logical or physical. Substance,
quality, action, passion, even being, are not good Con-
ceptions; still less are heavy, light, dense, rare, moist,
dry, generation, corruption, attraction, repulsion, ele-
ment, matter, form, and others of that kind; all are
fantastical and ill-defined.” And in his attempt to
exemplify his own system, he hesitates’ in accepting
or rejecting the notions of elementary, celestial, rare,
as belonging to fire, since, as he says, they are vague
and ill-defined notions (notiones vagce nec bene termi-
natce). In that part of his work which appears to be
completed, there is not, so far as I have noticed, any
attempt to fix and define any notions thus complained
of as loose and obscure. But yet such an undertaking
appears to have formed part of his plan; and in the
Abecedarium Naturce", which consists of the heads of
various portions of his great scheme, marked by letters
of the alphabet, we find the titles of a series of dis-
sertations “On the Conditions of Being," which must
have had for their object the elucidation of divers
Notions essential to science, and which would have *
6 I AX, 15.
7 Nov. Org. lib. ii. Aph. 19.
8 Inst. Mag. par. ii. (vol. viii. p. 244).
136
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
been contributions to the Explication of Conceptions,
such as we have attempted in a former part of this
-- work. Thus some of the subjects of these disserta-
tions are ;-Of Much and Little ;—Of Durable and
Transitory ;-Of Natural and Monstrous ;-Of Natu-
ral and Artificial. When the philosopher of induction
came to discuss these, considered as conditions of ex-
istence, he could not do otherwise than develope, limit,
methodize, and define the Ideas involved in these
Notions, so as to make them consistent with them-
selves, and a fit basis of demonstrative reasoning. His
task would have been of the same nature as ours has
been, in that part of this work which treats of the
Fundamental Ideas of the various classes of sciences.
M 13. Thus Bacon, in his speculative philosophy,
Etook firmly hold of both the handles of science; and
| if he had completed his scheme, would probably have
given due attention to Ideas, no less than to Facts, as
Lan element of our knowledge; while in his view of
the general method of ascending from facts to princi-
in ples, he displayed a sagacity truly wonderful. But
we cannot be surprised, that in attempting to ex-
emplify the method which he recommended, he should
have failed. For the method could be exemplified
only by some important discovery in physical science;
and great discoveries, even with the most perfect
methods, do not come at command. Moreover, al-
though the general structure of his scheme was cor-
rect, the precise import of some of its details could
hardly be understood, till the actual progress of science
had made men somewhat familiar with the kind of
steps which it included.
- (VI.) 14. Bacon's Example.—Accordingly, Bacon's
Inquisition into the Nature of Heat, which is given in
the Second Book of the Novum Organon as an ex-
ample of the mode of interrogating Nature, cannot be
W looked upon otherwise than as a complete failure.
This will be evident if we consider that, although the
exact nature of heat is still an obscure and contro-
verted matter, the science of Heat now consists of
many important truths; and that to none of these
FRANCIS BACON.
137
truths is there any approximation in Bacon's essay.
From his process he arrives at this, as the “ forma or
true definition” of heat ;-" that it is an expansive,
restrained motion, modified in certain ways, and ex-
erted in the smaller particles of the body.” But the
steps by which the science of Heat really advanced
were (as may be seen in the history of the subject)
these ;—The discovery of a measure of heat or tem-
perature (the thermometer); the establishment of the
laws of conduction and radiation; of the laws of spe-
cific heat, latent heat, and the like. Such steps have
led to Ampère's hypothesis”, that heat consists in the
vibrations of an imponderable fluid; and to Laplace's
hypothesis, that temperature. consists in the internal
l'adiation of such a fluid. These hypotheses cannot
yet be said to be even probable; but at least they are >>
so modified as to include some of the preceding laws
which are firmly established; whereas Bacon's hypo-
thetical motion includes no laws of phenomena, ex-
plains no process, and is indeed itself an example of
illicit generalization.
15. One main ground of Bacon's ill fortune in this
undertaking appears to be, that he was not aware of
an important maxim of inductive science, that we
must first obtain the measure and ascertain the laws
of phenomena, before we endeavour to discover their
causes. The whole history of thermotics up to the
present time has been occupied with the former step,
and the task is not yet completed : it is no wonder,
therefore, that Bacon failed entirely, when he so pre-
maturely attempted the second. His sagacity had
taught him that the progress of science must be gra-
dual; but it had not led him to judge adequately how
gradual it must be, nor of what different kinds of
inquiries, taken in due order, it must needs consist,
in order to obtain success.
A.nother mistake, which could not fail to render
it unlikely that Bacon should really exemplify his
9 Hist. Ind. Sa. b. X. c. 1:
in Ib. Co.iv,
138
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
-.*
--
- ----
precepts by any actual advance in science, was, that
he did not justly appreciate the sagacity, the inventive
genius, which all discovery requires. He conceived
that be could supersede the necessity of such peculiar
reudowments. “Our method of discovery in science,"
he says", "is of such a nature, that there is not much
left to acuteness and strength of genius, but all de-
grees of genius and iutellect are brought nearly to the
-same level.” And he illustrates this by comparing
his method to a pair of compasses, by means of which
a person with no manual skill may draw a perfect
-circle. In the same spirit he speaks of proceeding by
due rejections; and appears to imagine that when we
have obtained a collection of facts, if we go on suc-
cessively rejecting what is false, we shall at last find
that we have, left in our hands, that scientific truth
· which we seek. I need not observe how far this view
is removed from the real state of the case. The ne-
ị cessity of a conception which must be furnished by the
mind in order to bind together the facts, could hardly
have escaped the eye of Bacon, if he had cultivated,
more carefully the ideal side of his own philosophy.
And any attempts which he could have made to con-
struct such conceptions by mere rule and method,
must have ended in convincing him that nothing but
à peculiar inventive talent could supply that which
was thus not contained in the facts, and yet was needed
for the discovery.
(VII.) 16. His Failure.—Since Bacon, with all his
acuteness, had not divined circumstances so important
in the formation of science, it is not wonderful that
his attempt to reduce this process to a Technical Formu
is of little value. In the first place, he says", we
must prepare a natural and experimental history, good

-
-
collected are to be arranged in Tables in some orderly
way; and then we must apply a legitimate and true
induction. And in his example, he first collects a
11 Nov. Org. lib. i. Aph. 6z.
12 Nov. Org. lib. ii. Aph. Io.
13 Aph. II.
:
FRANCIS BACON.
139
great number of cases in which heat appears under
various circumstances, which he calls “a Muster of
Instances before the intellect,” (comparentia instan-
tiarum ad intellectum,) or a Table of the Presence of
the thing sought. He then adds a Table of its Ab-
sence in proximate cases, containing instances where
heat does not appear; then a Table of Degrees, in
which it appears with greater or less intensity. He
then adds?4, that we must try to cxclude several ob-
vious suppositions, which he does by reference to some
of the instances he has collected; and this step he calls
the Exclusive, or the Rejection of Natures. He then
observes, (and justly,) that whereas truth emerges more
easily from error than from confusion, we may, after
this preparation, give play to the intellect, (fiat permis-
sio intellectus,) and make an attempt at induction,
liable afterwards to be corrected; and by this step,
which he terms his First Vindemiction, or Inchoate
Induction, he is led to the proposition concerning
heat, which we have stated above.
17. In all the details of his example he is unfortu-
nate. By proposing to himself to examine at once
into the nature of heat, instead of the laws of special
classes of phenomena, he makes, as we have said, a
fundamental mistake; which is the less surprising
since he had before him so few examples of the right
course in the previous history of science. But fur-
ther, his collection of instances is very loosely brought
together; for he includes in his list the hot taste of
aromatic plants, the caustic effects of acids, and many
other facts which cannot be ascribed to heat without a
studious laxity in the use of the word. And when he
comes to that point where he permits his intellect its
range, the conception of motion upon which it at once
fastens, appears to be selected with little choice or
skill, the suggestion being taken from flame 15, boiling
liquids, a blown fire, and some other cases. If from
such examples we could imagine heat to be motion, we
14 Aph. 15, P. 105.
15 Page 110.
140
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
ought at least to have some gradation to cases of heat
where no motion is visible, as in a red-hot iron. It
would seem that, after a large collection of instances
had been looked at, the intellect, even in its first at-
tempts, ought not to have dwelt upon such an hypo-
thesis as this.
18. After these steps, Bacon speaks of several
classes of instances which, singling them out of the
general and indiscriminate collection of facts, he terms
Instances with Prerogative: and these he points out as
peculiar aids and guides to the intellect in its task.
These Instances with Prerogative hare generally been
much dwelt upon by those who have commented on
the Novum Organon. Yet, in reality, such a classifi-
cation, as has been observed by one of the ablest
writers of the present day, is of little service in the
task of induction. For the instances are, for the most
part, classed, not according to the ideas which they in-
volve, or to any obvious circumstance in the facts of
which they consist, but according to the extent or
manner of their influence upon the inquiry in which
they are employed. Thus we have Solitary Instances,
Migrating Instances, Ostensive Instances, Clandestine
Instances, so termed according to the degree in which
they exhibit, or seem to exhibit, the property whose
nature we would examine. We have Guide-Post In-
stances, (Instantice Crucis,) Instances of the Parted
Road, of the Doorway, of the Lamp, according to the
guidance they supply to our advance. Such a classi-
fication is much of the same nature as if, having to
teach the art of building, we were to describe tools
with reference to the amount and place of the work
which they inust do, instead of pointing out their con-
struction and use :--as if we were to inform the pupil
that we must have tools for lifting a stone up, tools
for moving it sideways, tools for laying it square,
tools for cementing it firmly. Such an enumeration of
ends would convey little instruction as to the means.
16 Herschel, On the Study of Nat. Phil. Art. 192.
FRANCIS BACON.
141
Moreover, many of Bacon's classes of instances are
vitiated by the assumption that the “form,” that is,
the general law and cause of the property which is the
subject of investigation, is to be looked for directly in
the instances; which, as we have seen in his inquiry
concerning heat, is a fundamental error.
19. Yet his phraseology in some cases, as in the
instantia crucis, serves well to mark the place which
certain experiments hold in our reasonings: and many
of the special examples wbich he gives are full of
acuteness and sagacity. Thus he suggests swinging a
pendulum in a mine, in order to determine whether
the attraction of the earth arises from the attraction of
its parts; and observing the tide at the same moment
in different parts of the world, in order to ascertain
whether the motion of the water is expansive or pro-
gressive; with other ingenious proposals. These marks
of genius may serve to counterbalance the unfavour-
able judgment of Bacon's aptitude for physical science
which we are sometimes tempted to form, in conse-
quence of his false views on other points; as his rejec-
tion of the Copernican system, and his undervaluing
Gilbert's magnetical speculations. Most of these errors
arose from a too ambitious habit of intellect, which
would not be contented with any except very wide
and general truths; and from an indistinctness of
mechanical, and perhaps, in general, of mathematical
ideas :—defects which Bacon's own philosophy was di-
rected to remedy, and which, in the progress of time,
it has remedied in others.
(VIII.) 20. His Idols.-Having thus freely given
our judgment concerning the most exact and definite
portion of Bacon's precepts, it cannot be necessary for
us to discuss at any length the value of those more
vague and general Warnings against prejudice and par-
tiality, against intellectual indolence and presumption,
with which his works abound. His advice and exhor-
tations of this kind are always expressed with energy
and point, often clothed in the happiest forms of ima-
gery; and hence it has come to pass, that such pas-
sages are perhaps more familiar to the general reader
142
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
than any other part of his writings. Nor are Bacon's
counsels without their importance, when we have to
do with those subjects in which prejudice and par-
tiality exercise their peculiar sway. Questions of poli-
tics and morals, of manners, taste, or history, cannot
be subjected to a scheme of rigorous induction; and
though on such matters we venture to assert general
principles, these are commonly obtained with some de-
gree of insecurity, and depend upon special habits of
thought, not upon mere logical connexion. Here,
therefore, the intellect may be perverted, by mixing,
with the pure reason, our gregarious affections, or our
individual propensities; the false suggestions involved
in language, or the imposing delusions of received
theories. In these dim and complex labyrinths of
human thought, the Idol of the Tribe, or of the Den, of
the Forum, or of the Theatre, may occupy men's minds
with delusive shapes, and may obscure or pervert their
vision of truth. But in that Natural Philosophy with
which we are here concerned, there is little oppor-
tunity for such influences. As far as a physical theory
is completed through all the steps of a just induction,
there is a clear daylight diffused over it which leaves
no lurking-place for prejudice. Each part can be ex-
amined separately and repeatedly; and the theory is
not to be deemed perfect till it will bear the scrutiny
of all sound minds alike. Although, therefore, Bacon,
by warning men against the idols of fallacious images
above spoken of, may have guarded them from danger-
ous error, his precepts have little to do with Natural
Philosophy: and we cannot agree with him when he
says"?, that the doctrine concerning these idols bears
the same relation to the interpretation of nature as
the doctrine concerning sophistical paralogisms bears
to common logic.
(IX.) 21. His Aim, Utility. There is one very
prominent feature in Bacon's speculations which we
must not omit to notice; it is a leading and constant
17 Nov. Or. lib. i. Aph. 40.
FRANCIS BACON.
143
object with him to apply his knowledge to Use. The
insight which he obtains into nature, he would employ
in commanding nature for the service of man. He
wishes to have not only principles but works. The
phrase which best describes the aim of his philosophy
is his own", “ Ascendendo ad axiomata, descendendo
ad opera." This disposition appears in the first apho-
rism of the Novuni Organon, and runs through the
work. “Man, the minister and interpreter of nature,
does and understands, so far as he has, in fact or in
thought, observed the course of nature; and he cannot
know or do more than this.” It is not necessary for
us to dwell much upon this turn of mind; for the
whole of our present inquiry goes upon the suppo-
sition that an acquaintance with the laws of nature is
worth our having for its own sake. It may be uni-
versally true, that Knowledge is Power; but we have
to do with it not as Power, but as Knowledge. It is
the formation of Science, not of Art, with which we
are here concerned. It may give a peculiar interest
to the history of science, to show how it constantly
tends to provide better and better for the wants and
comforts of the body; but that is not the interest
which engages us in our present inquiry into the na-
ture and course of philosophy. The consideration of
the means which promote man's material well-being
often appears to be invested with a kind of dignity, by
the discovery of general laws which it involves; and
the satisfaction which rises in our minds at the con-
templation of such cases, men sometimes ascribe, with
a false ingenuity, to the love of mere bodily enjoy-
ment. But it is never difficult to see that this baser
and coarser element is not the real source of our ad-
miration. Those who hold that it is the main business
of science to construct instruments for the uses of life,
appear sometimes to be willing to accept the conse-
quence which follows from such a doctrine, that the
first shoemaker was a philosopher worthy of the highest

18 Nov. Org. lib. i. Ax. 103.
144
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
admiration19. But those who maintain such para-
doxes, often, by a happy inconsistency, make it their
own aim, not to devise some improved covering for the
feet, but to delight the mind with acute speculations,
exhibited in all the graces of wit and fancy.
It has been said žo that the key of the Baconian
dotrine consists in two words, Utility and Progress.
With regard to the latter point, we have already seen
that the hope and prospect of a boundless progress in
human knowledge had sprung up in men's minds, even
in the early times of imperial Rome; and were most
emphatically expressed by that very Seneca who dis-
dained to reckon the worth of knowledge by its value
in food and clothing. And when we say that Utility
was the great business of Bacon's philosophy, we forget
one-half of his characteristic phrase: "Ascendendo ad
aximomata,” no less than "descendendo ad opera," was,
he repeatedly declared, the scheme of his path. He
constantly spoke, we are told by his secretary, of two
kinds of experiments, experimenta fructifera, and ex-
perimenta lucifera.
Again; when we are told by modern writers that
Bacon merely recommended such induction as all men
instinctively practise, we ought to recollect his own
earnest and incessant declarations to the contrary. The
induction hitherto practised is, he says, of no use for
obtaining solid science. There are two ways, “hæc
via in usu est,” “altera vera, sed intentata." Men
have constantly been employed in anticipation; in illicit
induction. The intellect left to itself rushes on in this
roadº; the conclusions so obtained are persuasive 24;
far more persuasive than inductions made with due
caution 25. But still this method must be rejected if
we would obtain true knowledge. We shall then at
length have ground of good hope for science when we
20
19 Edinb. Rev. No. cxxxii. p. 65.
TO.
21 Pref. to the Nat. Hist. i. 243.
22 Nov. Org. lib. i. Aph. 19.
23 Ibid. lib. i. Aph. 20. 24 Aph. 27.
25 Ib. 28.
FRANCIS BACON.
145
Je
H
proceed in another manner 26. We must rise, not by a
leap, but by small steps, by successive advances, by a
gradation of ascents, trying our facts, and clearing our
notions at every interval. The scheme of true philoso-
phy, according to Bacon, is not obvious and simple, but
long and technical, requiring constant care and self-
denial to follow it. And we have seen that, in this
opinion, his judgment is confirmed by the past history
and present condition of science.
Again; it is by no means a just view of Bacon's
character to place him in contrast to Plato. Plato's
philosophy was the philosophy of Ideas; but it was
not left for Bacon to set up the philosophy of Facts in
opposition to that of Ideas. That had been done fully
by the speculative reformers of the sixteenth century.
Bacon had the merit of showing that Facts and Ideas ?
must be combined; and not only so, but of divining
many of the special rules and forms of this combina-
tion, when as yet there were no examples of them,
with a sagacity hitherto quite unparalleled.
(X.) 22. His Perseverance.-— With Bacon's un-
happy political life we have here nothing to do. But
we cannot but notice with pleasure how faithfully,
how perseveringly, how energetically he discharged
his great philosophical office of a Reformer of Methods.
He had conceived the purpose of making this his ob-
ject at an early period. When meditating the con-
tinuation of his ſovum Organon, and speaking of his
reasons for trusting that his work will reach some
completeness of effect, he says, “I am by two argu-
ments thus persuaded. First, I think thus from the
zeal and constancy of my mind, which has not waxed
old in this design, nor, after so many years, grown cold
and indifferent; I remember that about forty years ago.
I composed a juvenile work about these things, which
with great contrivance and a pompous title I called
temporis partum maximum, or the most considerable
26 Aph. 104. So Aph. 105. “In constituendo axiomate forma inductionis
alia quam adhuc in usu fuit excogitanda est," &c.
27 Ep. ad P. Fulgentium. Op. X. 330.
146
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
birth of time; Next, that on account of its usefulness,
it may hope the Divine blessing.” In stating the
grounds of hope for future progress in the sciences, he
says 28 : “Some hope may, we conceive, be ministered
to men by our own example: and this we say, not for
the sake of boasting, but because it is useful to be said.
If any despond, let them look at me, a man among all
others of my age most occupied with civil affairs, nor
of very sound health, (which brings a great loss of
time;) also in this attempt the first explorer, following
the footsteps of no man, nor communicating on these
subjects with any mortal; yet, having steadily entered
upon the true road and made my mind submit to
things themselves, one who has, in this undertaking,
made, (as we think,) some progress.” He then pro-
ceeds to speak of what may be done by the combined
and more prosperous labours of others, in that strain
of noble hope and confidence, which rises again and
again, like a chorus, at iutervals in every part of his
writings. In the Advancement of Learning he had
said, “I could not be true and constant to the argu-
ment I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond
others, but yet not more willing than to have others
go beyond me again.” In the Preface to the Instau-
ratio Magna, he had placed among his postulates those
expressions which have more than once warmed the
breast of a philosophical reformera. “Concerning our-
selves we speak not; but as touching the matter which
we have in hand, this we ask;—that men be of good
hope, neither feign and imagine to themselves this
our Reform as something of infinite dimension and
beyond the grasp of mortal man, when in truth it
is the end and true limit of infinite error; and is by
no means unmindful of the condition of mortality and
humanity, not confiding that such a thing can be
carried to its perfect close in the space of a single age,
but assigning it as a task to a succession of genera-
tions." In a later portion of the Instauratio lie
28 Nov. Org i. Aph. 113.
29 See the motto to Kant's Kritik der Ruincu Veriunt.
FRANCIS BACON.
147
says: “We bear the strongest love to the human re-
public our common country; and we by no means
abandon the hope that there will arise and come forth
some man among posterity, who will be able to receive
and digest all that is best in what we deliver; and
whose care it will be to cultivate and perfect such
things. Therefore, by the blessing of the Deity, to
tend to this object, to open up the fountains, to dis-
cover the useful, to gather guidance for the way, shall
be our task; and from this we shall never, while we
remain in life, desist.”
(XI.) 23. His Piety.-We may add, that the spirit
of piety as well as of hope which is seen in this passage,
appears to have been habitual to Bacon at all periods
of his life. We find in his works several drafts of por-
tions of his great scheme, and several of them begin
with a prayer. One of these entitled, in the edition
of his works, “The Student's Prayer," appears to me
to belong probably to his early youth. Another, en-
titled “The Writer's Prayer," is inserted at the end
of the Preface of the Instauratio, as it was finally pub-
lished. I will conclude my notice of this wonderful
man by inserting here these two prayers.
“To God the Father, God the Word, God the Spirit,
we pour forth most humble and hearty supplications ;
that he, remembering the calamities of mankind, and
the pilgrimage of this our life, in which we wear out
days few and evil, would please to open to us new
refreshments out of the fountains of his goodness for
the alleviating of our miseries. This also we humbly
and earnestly beg, that human things may not preju-
dice such as are divine; neither that, from the unlock-
ing of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater
natural light, anything of incredulity, or intellectual
night, may arise in our minds towards divine mysteries.
But rather, that by our mind thoroughly cleansed and
purged from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and
perfectly given up to the Divine oracles, there may be
given unto faith the things that are faith's."
“Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as
the first-born of thy creatures, and didst pour into
L 2
148
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
man the intellectual light as the top and consumma-
tion of thy workmanship, be pleased to protect and
govern this work, which coming from thy goodness,
returneth to thy glory. Thou, after thou hadst re-
viewed the works which thy hands had made, be-
heldest that everything was very good, and thou didst
rest with complacency in them. But man, reflecting
on the works which he had made, saw that all was
vanity and vexation of spirit, and could by no means
acquiesce in them. Wherefore, if we labour in thy
works with the sweat of our brows, thou wilt make
us partakers of thy vision and thy Sabbath. We
humbly beg that this mind may be steadfastly in us;
and that thou, by our hands, and also by the hands of
others on whom thou shalt bestow the same spirit, wilt
please to convey a largess of new alms to thy family of
mankind. These things we commend to thy everlasting
love, by our Jesus, thy Christ, God with us. Amen."
CHAPTER XVI.
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON FRANCIS BACON.
TRANCIS BACON and his works have recently
T been discussed and examined by various writers
in France and Germany as well as England". Not to
mention smaller essays, M. Bouillet has published a
valuable edition of his philosophical works; Count
Joseph de Maistre wrote a severe critique of his philo-
sophy, which has been published since the death of
the author; M. Charles Remusat has written a lucid
and discriminating Essay on the subject; and in Eng-
land we have had a new edition of the works pub-
lished, with a careful and thoughtful examination of
the philosophy which they contain, written by one of
the editors: a person especially fitted for such an ex-
amination by an acute intellect, great acquaintance
with philosophical literature, and a wide knowledge
of modern science. Robert Leslie Ellis, the editor
of whom I speak, died during the publication of the
edition, and before he had done full justice to his
powers; but he had already written various disserta-
tions on Bacon's philosophy, which accompany the
different Treatises in the new edition.
Mr. Ellis has given a more precise view than any of
his predecessors had done of the nature of Bacon's
1 Euvres Philosophiques de Bacon, de François Bacon, par J. B. de Vau-
&c. par M. N. Bouillet, 3 Tomes.
gelles.
Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon Franz Baco von Verulam, von
(Euvres Posthumes du Comte J. de Kuno Fischer.
Maistre).
The Works of Francis Bacon, col-
Bacon, sa Vie, son Temps, sa Philo- lected and edited by James Spedding,
suppie, par Charles de Remusat. Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas
Histoire de la Vic et des Ouvrages Denon Heath.
150
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
induction and of his philosophy of discovery. Bacon's
object was to discover the natures' or essences of
things, in order that he might reproduce these natures
or essences at will; he conceived that these natures
were limited in number, and manifested in various
combinations in the bodies which exist in the uni-
verse; so that by accumulating observations of them
in a multitude of cases, we may learn by induction in
what they do and in what they do not consist; the In-
duction which is to be used for this purpose consists
in a great measure of excluding the cases which do
not exhibit the nature in question; and by such
exclusion, duly repeated, we have at last left in our
hands the elements of which the proposed nature con-
sists. And the knowledge which is thus obtained may
be applied to reproduce the things so analysed. As
exhibiting this view clearly we may take a passage in
the Sylva Sylvarum : “Gold has these natures : great-
ness of weight, closeness of parts, fixation, pliantness or
softness, immunity from rust, colour or tincture of
yellow. Therefore the sure way, though most about, to
make gold, is to know the causes of the several na-
tures before rehearsed, and the axioms concerning the
same. For if a man can make a metal, that hath all
these properties, let men dispute whether it be gold
or no." He means that however they dispute, it is
gold for all practical purposes.
For such an Induction as this, Bacon claims the
merit both of being certain, and of being nearly inde-
pendent of the ingenuity of the inquirer. It is a
method which enables all men to make exact dis-
coveries, as a pair of compasses enables all men to
draw an exact circle.
: Now it is necessary for us, who are exploring the
progress of the true philosophy of discovery, to say
plainly, that this part of Bacon's speculation is erro-
neous and valueless. No scientific discovery ever has
been made in this way. Men have not obtained truths
concerning the natural world by seeking for the na-
tures of things, and by extracting them from pheno-
mena by rejecting the cases in which they were not.
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON FRANCIS BACON. 151
On the contrary, they have begun by ascertaining the
laws of the phenomena; and have then gone on, not
by a mechanical method which levels all intellect, but
by special efforts of the brightest intellects to catch
hold of the ideas by which these laws of phenomena
might be interpreted and expressed in more general
terms. These two steps, the finding the laws of phe-
nomena, and finding the conceptions by which those
laws can be expressed, are really the course of dis-
covery, as the history of science exhibits it to us. -
Bacon, therefore, according to the view now pre-
sented, was wrong both as to his object and as to his
method. He was wrong in taking for his object the
essences of things,—the causes of abstract properties :
for these man cannot, or can very rarely discover;
and all Bacon's ingenuity in enumerating and classify-
ing these essences and abstract properties has led, and
could lead, to no result. The vast results of modern
science have been obtained, not by seeking and finding
the essences of things, but by exploring the laws of
phenomena and the causes of those laws.
And Bacon's method, as well as his object, is vitiated?
by a pervading error:—the error of supposing that to be
done by method which must be done by mind;- that
to be done by rule which must be done by a flight
beyond rule;—that to be mainly negative which is
eminently positive;—that to depend on other meni
which must depend on the discoverer himself;—that
to be mere prose which must have a dash of poetry ;-
that to be a work of mere labour which must be also i
a work of genius.
· Mr. Ellis has seen very clearly and explained very
candidly that this method thus recommended by Bacon
has not led to discovery. “It is," he says, “ neither to
the technical part of his method nor to the details of
his view of the nature and progress of science, that his
great fame is justly owing. His merits are of another
kind. They belong to the spirit rather than to the
positive precepts of his philosophy."
As the reader of the last chapter will see, this
amounts to much the same as the account which I
152
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
had given of the positive results of Bacon's method, and
the real value of that portion of his philosophy which
Tė himself valued most. But still there remain, as I
have also noted, portions of Bacon's speculations which
have a great and enduring value, namely, his doctrine
that Science is the Interpretation of Nature, his dis-
tinction of this Interpretation of Nature from the
vicious and premature Anticipation of Nature which
had generally prevailed till then; and the recom-
mendation of a graduated and successive induction by
which alone the highest and most general truths were
to be reached. These are points which he urges with
great clearness and with great earnestness; and these
are important points in the true philosophy of dis-
covery.
I may add that Mr. Ellis agrees with me in noting
the invention of the conception by which the laws of
phenomena are interpreted as something additional to
Induction, both in the common and in the Baconian
sense of the word. He says (General Preface, Art. 9),
p"In all cases this process scientific discovery] in-
volves an element to which nothing corresponds in the
Tables of Comparence and Exclusion; namely the
application to the facts of a principle of arrangement,
au idea, existing in the mind of the discoverer an-
tecedently to the act of induction.” It may be said
that this principle or idea is aimed at in the Baconian
analysis. “And this is in one sense true: but it
must be added, that this analysis, if it be thought
right to call it so, is of the essence of the discovery
which results from it. To take for granted that it
has been already effected is simply a petitio principii.
In most cases the mere act of induction follows as a
matter of course as soon as the appropriate idea has
been introduced.” And as an example he takes Kep-
ler's invention of the ellipse, as the idea by which
Mars's motions could be reduced to law; making the
same use of this example which we have repeatedly
made of it.
Mr. Ellis may at first sight appear to express him-
self more favourably than I have done, with regard to
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON FRANCIS BACON. 153
the value of Bacon's Inquisitio in Naturam Calidi in
the Second Book of the Novum Organon. He says of
one part of it : “ Bacon here anticipates not merely
the essential character of the most recent theory of
heat, but also the kind of evidence by which it has
been established.... The merit of having perceived the
true significance of the production of heat by friction
belongs of right to Bacon."
But notwithstanding this, Mr. Ellis's general judg-
ment on this specimen of Bacon's application of his
own method does not differ essentially from mine.
He examines the Inquisitio at some length, and finally
says: “If it were affirmed that Bacon, after having
had a glimpse of the truth suggested by some obvious
phenomena, had then recourse, as he himself expresses
it, to certain differentiæ inanes' in order to save the
phenomena, I think it would be hard to dispute the
truth of the censure."
Another of the Editors of this edition (Mr. Sped-
ding) fixes his attention upon another of the features
of the method of discovery proposed by Bacon, and is
disposed to think that the proposed method has never
yet had justice done it, because it has not been tried
in the way and on the scale that Bacon proposes *.
Bacon recommended that a great collection of facts
should be at once made and accumulated, regarding
every branch of human knowledge; and conceived
that, when this had been done by common observers,
philosophers might extract scientific truths from this
mass of facts by the application of a right method.
This separation of the offices of the observer and dis-
coverer, Mr. Spedding thinks is shown to be possible
by such practical examples as meteorological observa-
tions, made by ordinary observers, and reduced to
tables and laws by a central calculator; by hydrogra-
phical observations made by ships provided with pro-
per instructions, and reduced to general laws by the
Note to Aph. xviif..
3 Prof.. to the Parascouc, Vol. i. p. 382.
154
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
man of science in his study; by magnetical observa-
tions made by many persons in every part of the world,
and reduced into subservience to theory by mathema-
ticians at home.
And to this our reply will be, in the terms which
the history of all the Sciences has taught us, that such
methods of procedure as this do not belong to the
Epoch of Discovery, but to the Period of verification
and application of the discovery which follows. When
a theory has been established in its general form, our
knowledge of the distribution of its phenomena in
time and space can be much promoted by ordinary ob-
servers scattered over the earth, and succeeding each
other in time, provided they are furnished with instru-
ments and methods of observation, duly constructed
on the principles of science; but such observers can-
not in any degree supersede the discoverer who is first
to establish the theory, and to introduce into the facts
a new principle of order. When the laws of nature
have been caught sight of, much may be done, even
by ordinary observers, in verifying and exactly deter-
mining them; but when a real discovery is to be made,
Į this separation of the observer and the theorist is not
I possible. In those cases, the questioning temper, the
busy suggestive mind, is needed at every step, to di-
rect the operating hand or the open gaze. No possible
accumulation of facts about mixture and heat, collected
in the way of blind trial, could have led to the doc-
trines of chemistry, or crystallography, or the atomic
theory, or voltaic and chemical and magnetic polarity,
or physiology, or any other science. Indeed not only
is an existing theory requisite to supply the observer
with instruments and methods, but without theory he
cannot even describe his observations. He says that
he mixes an acid and an alkali; but what is an acid ?
What is an alkali? How does he know them? He
classifies crystals according to their forms: but till he
has learnt what is distinctive in the form of a crystal,
he cannot distinguish a cube from a square prism, even
if he had a goniometer and could use it. And the like
impossibility hangs over all the other subjects. To

+
ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON FRANCIS BACON. 155
report facts for scientific purposes without some aid :
from theory, is not only useless, but impossibe.
When Mr. Spedding says, “I could wish that men
of science would apply themselves earnestly to the
solution of this practical problem: What measures
are to be taken in order that the greatest variety of
may be carried on in concert upon a common plan and
brought to a common centre:"/he is urging upon men
of science to do what they have always done, so far as
they have had any power, and in proportion as the
state of science rendered such a procedure possible and
profitable to science. In Astronomy, it has been done
from the times of the Greeks and even of the Chal-
deans, having been begun as soon as the heavens were
reduced to law at all. In meteorology, it has been
done extensively, though to little purpose, because the
weather has not yet been reduced to rule. Men of sci-
ence have shown how barometers, thermometers, hy-
grometers, and the like, may be constructed; and these
may be now read by any one as easily as a clock; but
of ten thousand meteorological registers thus kept by
ordinary observers, what good has come to science
Again : The laws of the tides have been in a great
measure determined by observations in all parts of the
globe, because theory pointed out what was to be ob-
served. In like manner the facts of terrestrial mag-
netism were ascertained with tolerable completeness
by extended observations, then, and then only, when a
most recondite and profound branch of mathematics
had pointed out what was to be observed, and most
ingenious instruments had been devised by men of
science for observing. And even with these, it re-
quires an education to use the instruments. But in e
many cases no education in the use of instruments de- :
retical and suggestive spirit in the inquirer himself. ,
He must devise his own instruments and his own me-
thods, if he is to make any discorery. What chemist,
or inquirer about polarities, or about optical laws yet
undiscovered, can make any progress by using another
156
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
man's experiments and observations? He must invent
A at every step of his observation; and the observer and
theorist can no more be dissevered, than the body and
soul of the inquirer.
That persons of moderate philosophical powers may,
when duly educated, make observations which may be
used by greater discoverers than themselves, is true.
We have examples of such a subordination of scientific
offices in astronomy, in geology, and in many other
departments. But still, as I have said, a very con-
siderable degree of scientific education is needed even
for the subordinate labourers in science; and the more
considerable in proportion as science advances further
and further; since every advance implies a knowledge
of what has already been done, and requires a new
precision or generality in the new points of inquiry.
CHAPTER XVII.
FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
1. Harvey.--We have already seen that Bacon
was by no means the first mover or principal author of
the revolution in the method of philosophizing which
took place in his time; but only the writer who pro-
claimed in the most impressive and comprehensive
manner, the scheme, the profit, the dignity, and the
prospects of the new philosophy. Those, therefore,
who after him, took up the same views are not to be
considered as his successors, but as his fellow-labourers;
and the line of historical succession of opinions must
be pursued without special reference to any one lead-
ing character, as the principal figure of the epoch. I
resume this line, by noticing a contemporary and
fellow-countryman of Bacon, Harvey, the discoverer of
the circulation of the blood. This discovery was not
published and generally accepted till near the end of
Bacon's life; but the anatomist's reflections on the
method of pursuing science, though strongly marked
with the character of the revolution that was taking
place, belong to a very different school from the Chan-
cellor's. Harvey was a pupil of Fabricius of Acqua-
pendente, whom we noticed among the practical re-
formers of the sixteenth century. He entertained,
like his master, a strong reverence for the great names
which had ruled in philosophy up to that time, Aris-
totle and Galen; and was disposed rather to recom-
mend his own method by exhibiting it as the true .
interpretation of ancient wisdom, than to boast of its
novelty. It is true, that he assigns, as his reason for

158
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
publishing some of his researches ", " that by revealing
the method I use in searching into things, I might
propose to studious men, a new and (if I mistake not)
à surer path to the attainment of knowledge;" but
he soon proceeds to fortify himself with the authority
of Aristotle. In doing this, however, he has the very
great merit of giving a living and practical character
to truths which exist in the Aristotelian works, but
which had hitherto been barren and empty professions.
We have seen that Aristotle had asserted the im-
portance of experience as one root of knowledge ; and
in this had been followed by the schoolmen of the
middle ages: but this assertion came with very dif-
ferent force and effect from a man, the whole of whose
life had been spent in obtaining, by means of expe-
rience, knowledge which no man had possessed before.
In Harvey's general reflections, the necessity of both
the elements of knowledge, sensations and ideas, ex-
perience and reason, is fully brought into view, and
rightly connected with the metaphysics of Aristotle.
He puts the antithesis of these two elements with
i Anatomical Exercitations con- knowledge of those less considerable
cerning the Generation of Living Crea- secrets of Nature, but even a certain
tures, 1653. Preface.
admiration of that Supreme Essence,
2 He used similar expressions in the Creator. And though I have
conversation. George Ent, who edit- ever been ready to acknowledge, that
ed his Generation of Animals, visited many things have been discovered
him, “at that time residing not far by learned men of former times; yet
from the city; and found him very do I still believe that the number of
intent upon the perscrutation of those which remain yet concealed in
nature's works, and with a counte- the darkness of impervestigable Na-
nance as cheerful, as mind imper- ture is much greater. Nay, I cannot
turbed; Democritus - like, chiefly forbear to wonder, and sometimes
searching into the cause of natural smile at those, who persuade them-
things.” In the course of conversa- selves, that all things were so con-
tion the writer said, "It hath always summately and absolutely delivered
been your choice about the secrets of by Aristotle, Galen, or some other
Nature, to consult Nature herself.” great name, as that nothing was left
“ 'Tis true," replied he; "and I have to the superaddition of any that suc-
constantly been of opinion that from ceeded.”
thence we might acquire not only the
FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
159
great clearness. “Universals are chiefly known to us,
for science is begot by reasoning from universals to
particulars; yet that very comprehension of universals
in the understanding springs from the perception of
singulars in our sense.” Again, he quotes Aristotle's .
apparently opposite assertions:—that made in his Phy-
sics, “that we must advance from things which are
first known to us, though confusedly, to things more
distinctly intelligible in themselves; from the whole
to the part; from the universal to the particular;"
and that made in the Analytics*; that “ Singulars are
more known to us and do first exist according to
sense: for nothing is in the understanding which was
not before in the sense." Both, he says, are true,
though at first they seem to clash: for “though in
knowledge we begin with sense, sensation itself is a
universal thing." This he further illustrates; and
quotes Seneca, who says, that “Art itself is nothing
but the reason of the work, implanted in the Artist's
mind:” and adds, “the same way by which we gain
an Art, by the very same way we attain any kind of
science or knowledge whatever; for as Art is a habit
whose object is something to be done, so Science is a
habit whose object is something to be known; and as
the former proceedeth from the imitation of examples,
so this latter, from the knowledge of things natural.
The source of both is from sense and experience; since
[but?) it is impossible that Art should be rightly pur-
chased by the one or Science by the other without
a direction from ideas." Without here dwelling on
the relation of Art and Science, (very justly stated by
Harvey, except that ideas exist in a very different
form in the mind of the Artist and the Scientist) it will
be seen that this doctrine, of science springing from
experience with a direction from ideas, is exactly that
the subject. From this view, Harvey proceeds to inferv
the importance of a reference to sense in his own
3 Lib. i. c. 2, 3.
4 Ancil. Post. ii.
160
PHILOSOFHY OF DISCOVERY.
subject, not only for first discovering, but for receiving
knowledge: “Without experience, not other men's but
our own, no man is a proper disciple of any part of
natural knowledge; without experimental skill in ana-
tomy, he will no better apprehend what I shall deliver
concerning generation, than a man born blind can
judge of the nature and difference of colours, or one
born deaf, of sounds.” “If we do otherwise, we may
get a humid and floating opinion, but never a solid
and infallible knowledge: as is happenable to those
who see foreign countries only in maps, and the bowels
of men falsely described in anatomical tables. And
hence it comes about, that in this rank age, we have
many sophisters and bookwrights, but few wise men
and philosophers.” He had before declared "how
unsafe and degenerate a thing it is, to be tutored by
other men's commentaries, without making trial of the
things themselves; especially since Nature's book is
so open and legible.” We are here reminded of Gali-
leo's condemnation of the "paper philosophers.” The
train of thought thus expressed by the practical dis-
coverers, spread rapidly with the spread of the new
knowledge that had suggested it, and soon became
general and unquestioned."
2. Descartes.--Such opinions are now among the
most familiar and popular of those which are current
among writers and speakers; but we should err much
if we were to imagine that after they were once pro-
pounded they were never resisted or contradicted. In-
deed, even in our own time, not only are such maxims
very often practically neglected or forgotten, but
the opposite opinions, and views of science quite in-
consistent with those we have been explaining, are
often promulgated and widely accepted. The philoso-
phy of pure ideas has its commonplaces, as well as the
philosophy of experience. And at the time of which
we speak, the former philosophy, no less than the
latter, had its great asserter and expounder; a man in
his own time more admired than Bacon, regarded
with more deference by a large body of disciples all
Lover Europe, and more powerful in stirring up men's

FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
161
minds to a new activity of inquiry. I speak of Des-
cartes, whose labours, considered as a philosophical
system, were an endeavour to revive the method of
obtaining knowledge by reasoning from our own ideas
only, and to erect it in opposition to the method of
observation and experiment. The Cartesian philoso-
phy contained an attempt at a counter-revolution.
Thus in this author's Principia Philosophice", he says
that “he will give a short account of the principal
phenomena of the world, not that he may use them as
reasons to prove anything; for," adds he, “we desire
to deduce effects from causes, not causes from effects;
but only in order that out of the innumerable effects
which we learn to be capable of resulting from the
same causes, we may determine our mind to consider
some rather than others.” He had before said, “The
principles which we have obtained [by pure à priori
reasoning] are so vast and so fruitful, that many more
consequences follow from them than we see contained
in this visible world, and even many more than our
mind can ever take a full survey of.” And he pro-
fesses to apply this method in detail. Thus in at-
tempting to state the three fundamental laws of mo-
tion; he employs only à priori reasonings, and is in
fact led into error in the third law which he thus ob-
tains. And in his Dioptrics? he pretends to deduce
the laws of reflection and refraction of light from cer-
tain comparisons (which are, in truth, arbitrary,) in
which the radiation of light is represented by the mo-
tion of a ball impinging upon the reflecting or refract-
ing body. It might be represented as a curious in-
stance of the caprice of fortune, which appears in sci-
entific as in other history, that Kepler, professing to
derive all his knowledge from experience, and exert-
ing himself with the greatest energy and perseverance,
failed in detecting the law of refraction; while Des-
cartes, who professed to be able to despise experiment,
obtained the true law of sines. But as we have stated
5 Pars iii. p. 45.
See Hist. Ind. Sc. b. vi. c. ii.
? Cap. i. ii.
162.
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
in the History, Descartes appears to have learnt this
law from Snell's papers. And whether this be so or
not, it is certain that notwithstanding the profession of
independence which his philosophy made, it was in
reality constantly guided and instructed by experience.
Thus in explaining the Rainbow (in which his portion
of the discovery merits great praise) he speaks' of
taking a globe of glass, allowing the sun to shine on
one side of it, and noting the colours produced by rays
after two refractions and one reflection. And in many
other instances, indeed in all that relates to physics,
the reasonings and explanations of Descartes and his
followers were, consciously or unconsciously, directed
by the known facts, which they had observed them-
selves or learnt from others.
But since Descartes thus, speculatively at least, set
himself in opposition to the great reform of scientific
method which was going on in his time, how, it may
be asked, did he acquire so strong an influence over
the most active minds of his time? How is it that he
became the founder of a large and distinguished school
of philosophers? How is it that he not only was
mainly instrumental in deposing Aristotle from his in-
tellectual throne, but for a time appeared to have esta-
blished himself with almost equal powers, and to have
rendered the Cartesian school as firm a body as the
Peripatetic had been?
The causes to be assigned for this remarkable result
are, I conceive, the following. In the first place, the
physicists of the Cartesian school did, as I have just
stated, found their philosophy upon experiment, and
did not practically, or indeed, most of them, theo-
retically, assent to their master's boast of showing
what the phenomena must be, instead of looking to see
what they are. And as Descartes had really incorpo-
rated in his philosophy all the chief physical disco-
veries of his own and preceding times, and had de-
livered, in a more general and systematic shape than
8 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. ix. c. ü.
9 Meteorum, c. viil. p. 187.
FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
163
any one before him, the principles which he thus esta-
blished, the physical philosophy of his school was in
reality far the best then current; and was an immense
improvement upon the Aristotelian doctrines, which
had not yet been displaced as a system. Another cir-
cumstance which gained him much favour, was the
bold and ostentatious manner in which he professed
to begin his philosophy by liberating himself from all
preconceived prejudice. The first sentence of his phi-
losophy contains this celebrated declaration : “Since,"
he says, “we begin life as infants, and have contracted
various judgments concerning sensible things before
we possess the entire use of our reason, we are turned
aside from the knowledge of truth by many prejudices :
from which it does not appear that we can be any
otherwise delivered, than if once in our life we make
it our business to doubt of everything in which we
discern the smallest suspicion of uncertainty.” In the
face of this sweeping rejection or unhesitating scrutiny
of all preconceived opinions, the power of the ancient
authorities and masters in philosophy must obviously
shrink away; and thus Descartes came to be con-
sidered as the great hero of the overthrow of the Aris-
totelian dogmatism. But in addition to these causes,
and perhaps more powerful than all in procuring the
assent of men to his doctrines, came the deductive and
systematic character of his philosophy. For although
all knowledge of the external world is in reality only
to be obtained from observation, by inductive steps,
minute, perhaps, and slow, and many, as Galileo and
Bacon had already taught; the human mind conforms
to these conditions reluctantly and unsteadily, and is
ever ready to rush to general principles, and then to
employ itself in deducing conclusions from these by
synthetical reasonings; a task grateful, from the dis-
tinctness and certainty of the result, and the accom- :
panying feeling of our own sufficiency. Hence men
readily overlooked the precarious character of Des-
cartes' fundamental assumptions, in their admiration
of the skill with which a varied and complex Universe
was evolved out of them. And the complete and
M 2
164
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
systematic character of this philosophy attracted men
no less than its logical connexion. I may quote here
what a philosopher10 of our own time has said of another
writer: “He owed his influence to various causes; at
the head of which may be placed that genius for sys-
tem which, though it cramps the growth of know-
ledge, perhaps finally atones for that mischief by the
zeal and activity which it rouses among followers and
opponents, who discover truth by accident when in
pursuit of weapons for their warfare. A system which
attempts a task so hard as that of subjecting vast pro-
vinces of human knowledge to one or two principles,
if it presents some striking instances of conformity to
superficial appearances, is sure to delight the framer ;
and for a time to subdue and captivate the student too
entirely for sober reflection and rigorous examination.
In the first instance consistency passes for truth. When
principles in some instances have proved sufficient to
give an unexpected explanation of facts, the delighted
reader is content to accept as true all other deductions
from the principles. Specious premises being assumed
to be true, nothing more can be required than logical
inference. Mathematical forms pass current as the
equivalent of mathematical certainty. The unwary
admirer is satisfied with the completeness and sym-
metry of the plan of his house, unmindful of the need
of examining the firmness of the foundation and the
soundness of the materials. The system-maker, like
the conqueror, long dazzles and overawes the world;
but when their sway is past, the vulgar herd, unable
to measure their astonishing faculties, take revenge
by trampling on fallen greatness." Bacon showed
his wisdom in his reflections on this subject, when
he said that “Method, carrying a show of total and
perfect knowledge, bath a tendency to generate ac-
quiescence.”
The main value of Descartes' physical doctrines
consisted in their being arrived at in a way incon-
10 Mackintosh, Dissertation on Ethical Science.
FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
165
sistent with his own professed method, namely, by a
reference to observation. But though he did in reality
begin from facts, his system was nevertheless a glaring
example of that error which Bacon had called Anti-
cipation; that illicit generalization which leaps at once
from special facts to principles of the widest and
remotest kind; such, for instance, as the Cartesian
doctrine, that the world is an absolute plenum, every
part being full of matter of some kind, and that all
natural effects depend on the laws of motion. Against
this fault, to which the human mind is so prone, Bacon
had lifted his warning voice in vain, so far as the
Cartesians were concerned; as indeed, to this day, one
theorist after another pursues his course, and turns
a deaf ear to the Verulamian injunctions; perhaps
even complacently boasts that he founds his theory
upon observation; and forgets that there are, as the
aphorism of the Novuni Organon declares, two ways
by which this may be done ;-the one hitherto in
use and suggested by our common tendencies, but
barren and worthless; the other almost untried, to
be pursued only with effort and self-denial, but alone
capable of producing true knowledge.
3. Gassendi. --Thus the lessons which Bacon
taught were far from being generally accepted and
applied at first. The amount of the influence of these
two men, Bacon and Descartes, upon their age, has
often been a subject of discussion. The fortunes of
the. Cartesian school have been in some measure traced
in the History of Science. But I may mention the
notice taken of these two philosophers by Gassendi,
a contemporary and countryman of Descartes. Gas-
sendi, as I have elsewhere stated”, was associated with
Descartes in public opinion, as an opponent of the
Aristotelian dogmatism; but was not in fact a follower
or profound admirer of that writer. In a Treatise
on Logic, Gassendi gives an account of the Logic of
various sects and authors; treating, in order, of the
11 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. vii. c. i.
166
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Logic of Zeno (the Eleatic), of Euclid (the Megarean),
of Plato, of Aristotle, of the Stoics, of Epicurus, of
Lullius, of Ramus; and to these he adds the Logic
of Verulam, and the Logic of Cartesius. “We must
not," he says, “on account of the celebrity it has
obtained, pass over the Organon or Logic of Francis
Bacon Lord Verulam, High Chancellor of England,
whose noble purpose in our time it has been, to make
an Instauration of the Sciences.” He then gives a
brief account of the Novun Organon, noticing the prin-
cipal features in its rules, and especially the distinction
between the vulgar induction which leaps at once from
particular experiments to the more general axioms,
and the chastised and gradual induction, which the
author of the Organon recommends. In his account
of the Cartesian Logic, he justly observes, that “He
too imitated Verulam in this, that being about to build
up a new philosophy from the foundation, he wished
in the first place to lay aside all prejudice : and
having then found some solid principle, to make that
the ground-work of his whole structure. But he pro-
ceeds by a very different path from that which Veru-
lam follows; for while Verulam seeks aid from things,
to perfect the cogitation of the intellect, Cartesius con-
ceives, that when we have laid aside all knowledge of
things, there is, in our thoughts alone, such a resource,
that the intellect may by its own power arrive at a per-
fect knowledge of all, even the most abstruse things.”
The writings of Descartes have been most admired,
and his method most commended, by those authors
who have employed themselves upon metaphysical ra-
ther than physical subjects of inquiry. Perhaps we
might say that, in reference to such subjects, this
method is not so vicious as at first, when contrasted
with the Baconian induction, it seems to be: for it
might be urged that the thoughts from which Descartes
begins his reasonings are, in reality, experiments of the
kind which the subject requires us to consider : each
such thought is a fact in the intellectual world; and
of such facts, the metaphysician seeks to discover the
laws. I shall not here examine the validity of this
* FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
167
plea; but shall turn to the consideration of the actual
progress of physical science, and its effect on men's
minds.
4. Actual progress in Science.—The practical dis-
coverers were indeed very active and very successful
during the seventeenth century, which opened with
Bacon's survey and exhortations. The laws of nature,
of which men had begun to obtain a glimpse in the
preceding century, were investigated with zeal and
sagacity, and the consequence was that the foundations
of most of the modern physical sciences were laid.
That mode of research by experiment and observation,
which had, a little time ago, been a strange, and to
many, an unwelcome innovation, was now become the
habitual course of philosophers. The revolution from
the philosophy of tradition to the philosophy of ex-
perience was completed. The great discoveries of Kep-
ler belonged to the preceding century. They are not,
I believe, noticed, either by Bacon or by Descartes;
but they gave a strong impulse to astronomical and
mechanical speculators, by showing the necessity of a
sound science of motion. Such a science Galileo had
already begun to construct. At the time of which I
speak, his disciples 12 were still labouring at this task,
and at other problems which rapidly suggested them-
selves. They had already convinced themselves that
air had weight; in 1643 Torricelli proved this practi-
cally by the invention of the Barometer; in 1647 Pas-
cal proved it still further by sending the Barometer to
the top of a mountain. Pascal and Boyle brought into
clear view the fundamental laws of fluid equilibrium;
Boyle and Mariotte determined the law of the com-
pression of air as regulated by its elasticity. Otto
Guericke invented the air-pump, and by his “Madge-
burg Experiments” on a vacuum, illustrated still fur-
ther the effects of the air. Guericke pursued what
Gilbert had begun, the observation of electrical pheno-
12 Castelli, Torricelli, Viviani, Baliani, Gassendi, Mersenne, Borelli, Ca-
valleri.
168
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
mena; and these two physicists made an important
step, by detecting repulsion as well as attraction in
these phenomena. Gilbert had already laid the founda-
tions of the science of Magnetism. The law of refrac-
tion, at which Kepler had laboured in vain, was, as
we have seen, discovered by Snell (about 1621), and
some of the more important parts of the theory of
Harmonics. In sciences of a different kind, the same
movement was visible. Chemical doctrines tended to
assume a proper degree of generality, when Sylvius in
1679 taught the opposition of acid and alkali, and
Stahl, soon after, the phlogistic theory of combustion.
Steno had remarked the most important law of crystal-
lography in 1669, that the angles of the same kind of
crystals are always equal. In the sciences of classifi-
cation, about 1680, Ray and Morison in England
resumed the attempt to form a systematic botany,
which had been interrupted for a hundred years, from
the time of the memorable essay of Cæsalpinus. The
Harvey about 1619, was followed in 1651 by Pecquet's
discovery of the course of the chyle. There could now
no longer be any question whether science was pro-
gressive, or whether observation could lead to new
truths.
- Among these cultivators of science, such sentiments
as have been already quoted became very familiar;
that knowledge is to be sought from nature herself by
observation and experiment;—that in such matters
and that mere reasonings without facts cannot lead to
solid knowledge. But I do not know that we find in
these writers any more special rules of induction and
scientific research which have since been confirmed.
and universally adopted. Perhaps too, as was natural
in so great a revolution, the writers of this time, espe-
cially the second-rate ones, were somewhat too prone
to disparage the labours and talents of Aristotle and
the ancients in general, and to overlook the ideal
element of our knowledge, in their zealous study of
FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
169
phenomena. They urged, sometimes in an exagge-
rated manner, the superiority of modern times in all
that regards science, and the supreme and sole im-
portance of facts in scientific investigations. There
prevailed among them also a lofty and dignified tone
of speaking of the condition and prospects of science,
such as we are accustomed to admire in the Verula-
mian writings; for this, in a less degree, is epidemic
among those who a little after his time speak of the
new philosophy.
5. Otto Guericke, &c.—I need not illustrate these
characteristics at any great length. I may as an ex-
ample notice Otto Guericke's Preface to his Experi-
menta Magdeburgica (1670). He quotes a passage
from Kircher's Treatise on the Magnetic Art, in which
the author says, “Hence it appears how all philosophy,
except it be supported by experiments, is empty, fal-
lacious, and useless; what monstrosities philosophers,
in other respects of the highest and subtlest genius,
may produce in philosophy by neglecting experiment.
Thus Experience alone is the Dissolver of Doubts, the
Reconciler of Difficulties, the sole Mistress of Truth,
who holds a torch before us in obscurity, unties our
knots, teaches us the true causes of things." Guericke
himself reiterates the same remark, adding that "phi-
losophers, insisting upon their own thoughts and argu-
ments merely, cannot come to any sound conclusion
respecting the natural constitution of the world.” Nor
were the Cartesians slow in taking up the same train
of reflection. Thus Gilbert Clark who, in 1660, pub-
lished 13 a defence of Descartes' doctrine of a plenum
in the universe, speaks in a tone which reminds us
of Bacon, and indeed was very probably caught from
him: “Natural philosophy formerly consisted entirely
of loose and most doubtful controversies, carried on in
high-sounding words, fit rather to delude than to in-
struct men. But at last (by the favour of the Deity)
18 De Plenitudine Mundi, in qua defenditur Cartesiana Philosophia contra
sententias Francisci Baconi, Th. Hobbii et Sethi Wardı.
170
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
there shone forth some more divine intellects, who
taking as their counsellors reason and experience to-
gether, exhibited a new method of philosophizing.
Hence has been conceived a strong hope that philoso-
phers may embrace, not a shadow or empty image of
Truth, but Truth herself: and that Physiology (Physics)
scattering these controversies to the winds, will con-
tract an alliance with Mathematics. Yet this is hardly
the work of one age; still less of one man. Yet let
not the mind despond, or doubt not that, one party of
investigators after another following the same method
of philosophizing, at last, under good auguries, the
.mysteries of nature being daily unlocked as far as
human feebleness will allow, Truth may at last appear
in full, and these nuptial torches may be lighted.”.
As another instance of the same kind, I may quote
the preface to the First volume of the Transactions
of the Academy of Sciences at Paris: “It is only
since the present century,” says the writer, “that we
can reckon the revival of Mathematics and Physics.
M. Descartes and other great men have laboured at
this work with so much success, that in this depart-
ment of literature, the whole face of things has been
changed. Men have quitted a sterile system of physics,
which for several generations had been always at the
same point; the reign of words and terms is passed;
men will have things; they establish principles which
they understand, they follow those principles; and
thus they make progress. Authority has ceased to
have more weight than Reason: that which was re-
ceived without contradiction because it had been long
received, is now examined, and often rejected: and
philosophers have made it their business to consult,
respecting natural things, Nature herself rather than
the Ancients." These had now become the common-
places of those who spoke concerning the course and
method of the Sciences.
6. Hooke.--In England, as might be expected, the
influence of Francis Bacon was more directly visible.
We find many writers, about this time, repeating the
truths which Bacon had proclaimed, and in almost
· FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
171
every case showing the same imperfections in their
views which we have noticed in him. We may take
as an example of this Hooke's Essay, entitled “A
General Scheme or Idea of the present state of Natural
Philosophy, and how its defects may be remedied by a
Methodical proceeding in the making Experiments and
collecting Observations; whereby to compile a Natural
History as a solid basis for the superstructure of
true Philosophy.” This Essay may be looked upon as
an attempt to adapt the Novum Organon to the age
which succeeded its publication. We have in this
imitation, as in the original, an enumeration of vari-
ous mistakes and impediments which had in preceding
times prevented the progress of knowledge; exhorta-
tions to experiment and observation as the only solid
basis of Science; very ingenious suggestions of trains of
inquiry, and modes of pursuing them; and a promise
of obtaining scientific truths when facts have been
duly accumulated. This last part of his scheme the
author calls a Philosophical Algebra, and he appears
to have imagined that it might answer the purpose of
finding unknown causes from known facts, by means
of certain regular processes, in the same manner as
Common Algebra finds unknown from known quanti-
ties. But this part of the plan appears to have re-
mained unexecuted. The suggestion of such a method
was a result of the Baconian notion that invention
in a discoverer might be dispensed with. We find
Hooke adopting the phrases in which this notion is
implied: thus he speaks of the understanding as "being
very prone to run into the affirmative way of judging,
and wanting patience to follow and prosecute the nega-
tive way of inquiry, by rejection of disagreeing natures."
And he follows Bacon also in the error of attempting
at once to obtain from the facts the discovery of a
“nature," instead of investigating first the measures
and the laws of phenomena. I return to more general
notices of the course of men's thoughts on this subject.
7. Royal Society. Those who associated them-
selves together for the prosecution of science quoted
Bacon as their leader, and exulted in the progress
172
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
made by the philosophy which proceeded upon his
principles. Thus in Oldenburg's Dedication of the
Transactions of the Royal Society of London for 1670,
to Robert Boyle, he says; “I am informed by such
as well remember the best and worst days of the
famous Lord Bacon, that though he wrote his Ad-
vancement of Learning and his Instauratio Magna in
the time of his greatest power, yet his greatest re-
putation rebounded first from the most intelligent
foreigners in many parts of Christendom :” and after
speaking of his practical talents and his public em-
ployments, he adds, “much more justly still may we
wonder how, without any great skill in Chemistry,
without much pretence to the Mathematics or Me-
chanics, without optic aids or other engines of late
invention, he should so much transcend the philoso-
phers then living, in judicious and clear instructions,
in so many useful observations and discoveries, I think
I may say beyond the records of many ages.” And
in the end of the Preface to the same volume, he
speaks with great exultation of the advance of science
all over Europe, referring undoubtedly to facts then
familiar. “And now let envy snarl, it cannot stop
the wheels of active philosophy, in no part of the
known world;—not in France, either in Paris or in
Caen :—not in Italy, either in Rome, Naples, Milan,
Florence, Venice, Bononia or Padua;—in none of the
Universities either on this or on that side of the seas,
Madrid and Lisbon, all the best spirits in Spain and
Portugal, and the spacious and remote dominions to
them belonging ;—the Imperial Court and the Princes
of Germany; the Northern Kings and their best lumi-
naries; and even the frozen Muscovite and Russian
have all taken the operative ferment: and it works
high and prevails every way, to the encouragement
of all sincere lovers of knowledge and virtue."
Again, in the Preface for 1672, he pursues the
same thought into detail : “We must grant that in
the last age, when operative philosophy began to re-
cover ground, and to tread on the heels of triumphant
Philology; emergent adventures and great successes
FROM BACON TO NEWTON211
173
.
were encountered by dangerous oppositions and strong
obstructions. Galilæus and others in Italy suffered
extremities for their celestial discoveries; and here in
England Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was in his
greatest lustre, was notoriously slandered to have
erected a school of atheism, because he gave counte-
nance to chemistry, to practical arts, and to curious
mechanical operations, and designed to form the best
of them into a college. And Queen Elizabeth's Gilbert
was a long time esteemed extravagant for his magnet-
isms; and Harvey for his diligent researches in pur-
suance of the circulation of the blood. But when our
renowned Lord Bacon had demonstrated the methods
for a perfect restoration of all parts of real knowledge;
and the generous and philosophical Peireskius had,
soon after, agitated in all parts to redeem the most
instructive antiquities, and to excite experimental
essays and fresh discoveries; the success became on a
sudden stupendous; and effective philosophy began to
sparkle, and even to flow into beams of shining light
all over the world.”
The formation of the Royal Society of London and
of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, from which pro-
ceeded the declamations just quoted, were among many
indications, belonging to this period, of the importance
which states as well as individuals had by this time
begun to attach to the cultivation of science. The
English Society was established almost immediately
when the restoration of the monarchy appeared to
give a promise of tranquillity to the nation (in 1660),
and the French Academy very soon afterwards in
1666). These measures were very soon followed by
the establishment of the Observatories of Paris and
Greenwich (in 1667 and 1675); which may be con-
sidered to be a kind of public recognition of the astro-
nomy of observation, as an object on which it was the
advantage and the duty of nations to bestow their
wealth.
8. Bacon's New Atalantis. — When philosophers
had their attention turned to the boundless prospect of
increase to the knowledge and powers and pleasures of
174
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
man which the cultivation of experimental philosophy
seemed to promise, it was natural that they should
think of devising institutions and associations by which
such benefits might be secured. Bacon had drawn a
picture of a society organized with a view to such pur-
pose, in his fiction of the “New Atalantis.” The
imaginary teacher who explains this institution to the
inquiring traveller, describes it by the name of Solo-
mon's House; and says 14, “The end of our founda-
tion is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of
things; and the enlarging the bounds of the human
empire to effecting of things possible.” And, as parts
of this House, he describes caves and wells, chambers
and towers, baths and gardens, parks and pools, dis-
pensatories and furnaces, and many other contrivances,
provided for the purpose of making experiments of
many kinds. He describes also the various employ-
ments of the Fellows of this College, who take a share
in its researches. There are merchants of light, who
bring books and inventions from foreign countries ;
depredators, who gather the experiments which exist
in books; mystery-men, who collect the experiments of
the mechanical arts; pioneers or miners, who invent
new experiments; and compilers, “who draw the ex-
periments of the former into titles and tables, to give
the better light for the drawing of observations and
axioms out of them.” There are also dowry-men or
benefactors, that cast about how to draw out of the
experiments of their fellows things of use and prac-
tice for man's life; lamps, that direct new experiments
of a more penetrating light than the former; in-
oculators, that execute the experiments so directed.
Finally, there are the interpreters of nature, that raise
the former discoveries by experiments into greater ob-
servations (that is, more general truths), axioms and
aphorisms. Upon this scheme we may remark, that
fictitious as it undisguisedly is, it still serves to exhibit
very clearly some of the main features of the author's
14 Bacon's Works, vol. ii. 111.
FROM BACON TO NEWTON.
175
philosophy :--namely, his steady view of the necessity
of ascending from facts to the most general truths by
several stages ;—an exaggerated opinion of the aid that
could be derived in such a task from technical sepa-
ration of the phenomena and a distribution of them
into tables ;-a belief, probably incorrect, that the
offices of experimenter and interpreter may be entirely
separated, and pursued by different persons with a
certainty of obtaining success !—and a strong determi-
nation to make knowledge constantly subservient to
the uses of life.
9. Cowley.--Another project of the same kind,
less ambitious but apparently more directed to prac-
tice, was published a little later (1657) by another
eminent man of letters in this country. I speak of
Cowley's “Proposition for the Advancement of Experi-
mental Philosophy.” He suggests that a College should
be established at a short distance from London, en-
dowed with a revenue of four thousand pounds, and
consisting of twenty professors with other members.
The objects of the labours of these professors he de-
scribes to be, first, to examine all knowledge of nature
delivered to us from former ages and to pronounce it
sound or worthless; second, to recover the lost inven-
tions of the ancients; third, to improve all arts that
We now have; lastly, to discover others that we get
have not. In this proposal we cannot help marking
the visible declension from Bacon's more philosophical
view. For we have here only a very vague indication
of improving old arts and discovering new, instead of
the two clear Verulamian antitheses, Experiments and
Axioms deduced from them, on the one hand, and on
the other an ascent to general Laws, and a derivation,
from these, of Arts for daily use. Moreover the pro-
minent place which Cowley has assigned to the verify-
ing the knowledge of former ages and recovering “ the
lost inventions and drowned lands of the ancients,"
implies a disposition to think too highly of traditionary
knowledge; a weakness which Bacon's scheme shows
him to have fully overcome. And thus it has been up
to the present day, that with all Bacon's mistakes, in
176
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
the philosophy of scientific method few have come up
to him, and perhaps none have gone beyond him.
Cowley exerted himself to do justice to the new
philosophy in verse as well as prose, and his Poem to
the Royal Society expresses in a very noble manner
those views of the history and prospects of philosophy
which prevailed among the men by whom the Royal
Society was founded. The fertility and ingenuity of
comparison which characterize Cowley's poetry are
well known; and these qualities are in this instance
largely employed for the embellishment of his subject.
Many of the comparisons which he exhibits are apt
and striking. Philosophy is a ward whose estate (hu-
man knowledge) is, in his nonage, kept from him by
his guardians and tutors; (a case which the ancient
rhetoricians were fond of taking as a subject of decla-
mation;) and these wrong-doers retain him in unjust
tutelage and constraint for their own purposes; until
Bacon at last, a mighty man, arose,
(Whom a wise King, and Nature, chose
Lord Chancellor of both their laws)
And boldly undertook the injured pupil's cause.
Again, Bacon is one who breaks a scarecrow Priapus
which stands in the garden of knowledge. Again,
Bacon is one who, instead of a picture of painted
grapes, gives us real grapes from which we press "the
thirsty soul's refreshing wine." Again, Bacon is like
Moses, who led the Hebrews forth from the barren
wilderness, and ascended Pisgah ;-
Did on the very border stand
Of the blest promised land,
And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit
Saw it himself and showed us it.
The poet however adds, that Bacon discovered, but
did not conquer this new world; and that the men
whom he addresses must subdue these regions. These
“chanıpions” are then ingeniously compared to Gi-
deon's band :
Their old and empty pitchers first they brake,
And with their hands then lifted up the light,
177
There were still at this time some who sneered at or
condemned the new philosophy; but the tide of popular
opinion was soon strongly in its favour. I have else-
where 15 noticed a pasquinade of the poet Boileau in
1682, directed against the Aristotelians. At this time,
and indeed for long afterwards, the philosophers of
France were Cartesians. · The English men of science,
although partially and for a time they accepted some
of Descartes' opinions, for the most part carried on
the reform independently, and in pursuance of their
own views. And they very soon found a much greater
leader than Descartes to place at their head, and to
take as their authority, so far as they acknowledged
authority, in their speculations. I speak of Newton,
whose influence upon the philosophy of science I must
now consider. .
Barrow. I will, however, first mention one other
writer who may, in more than one way, be regarded
as the predecessor of Newton. I speak of Isaac Bar-
row, whom Newton succeeded as Professor of Mathe-
matics in the University of Cambridge, and who in his
mathematical speculations approached very near to
Newton's method of Fluxions. He afterwards (in 1673)
became Master of Trinity College, which office he held
till his death in 1677. But the passages which I
shall quote belong to an earlier period, (when Barrow
was about 22 years old,) and may be regarded as ex-
pressions of the opinions which were then current
among active-minded and studious young men. They
manifest a complete familiarity with the writings both
of Bacon and of Descartes, and a very just appreciation
of both. The discourse of which I speak is an aca-
demical exercise delivered in 1652, on the thesis Car-
tesiana hypothesis haud satisfacit prcecipuis naturae
phænomenis. By the “Cartesian hypothesis,” he does
not mean the hypothesis that the planets are moved
by vortices of etherial matter : I believe that this Car-
tesian tenet never had any disciples in England; it
16 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. vii. c. i
178
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
certainly never took any hold of Cainbridge. By the
Cartesian hypothesis, Barrow means the doctrine that
all the phenomena of nature can be accounted for by
matter and motion; and allowing that the motions of
the planets are to be so accounted for, (which is New-
tonian as well as Cartesian doctrine,) he denies that
the Cartesian hypothesis accounts for the generations,
properties, and specific operations of animals, plants,
minerals, stones, and other natural bodies,” in doing
which he shows a sound philosophical judgment. But
among the parts of this discourse most bearing on our
present purpose are those where he mentions Bacon.
Against Cartesius," he says, “I pit the chymists and
others, but especially as the foremost champion of this
battle, our Verulam, a man of great name and of great
judgment, who condemned this philosophy before it
was born.” “He,” adds Barrow, "several times in his
Organon, warned men against all hypotheses of this
kind, and noticed beforehand that there was not much
to be expected from those principles which are brought
into being by violent efforts of argumentation from the
brains of particular men: for that, as upon the pheno-
mena of the stars, various constructions of the heavens
may be devised, so also upon the phenomena of the
Universe, still more dogmas may be founded and con-
structed; and yet all such are mere inventions, and as
many philosophies of this kind as are or shall be ex-
tant, so many fictitious and theatrical worlds are made."
The reference is doubtless to Aphorism LXII. of the first
Book of the Novum Organon, in which Bacon is
speaking of his “Idols of the Theatre.” After making
the remark which Barrow has adopted, Bacon adds,
“Such theatrical fables have also this in common with
those of dramatic poets, that the dramatic story is
more regular and elegant than true histories are, and
is made so as to be agreeable.” Barrow, having this
in his mind, goes on to say: “And though Cartesius
has dressed up the stage of his theatre more prettily
than any other person, and made his drama more like
history, still he is not exempt from the like censure.”
And he then refers to Cartesius's own declaration, that
FROM BACON TO NEWTON. 179
he did not learn his system from things themselves,
but tried to impose his own laws upon things; thus in-
verting the order of true philosophy,
Other parts of Bacon's work to which Barrow refers
are those where he speaks of the Form, or Formal
Cause of a body, and says that in comparison with
that, the Efficient Cause and the Material Cause are
things unimportant and superficial, and contribute
little to true and active science 10. And again, his
classification of the various kinds of motions"?,—the
motus libertatis, motus nexus, motus continuitatis,
motus ad lucrum, fugæ, unionis, congregationis; and
the explanation of electrical attraction (about which
Gilbert and others had written) as motus ad lucrum.
These passages show that Barrow had read the
Novum Organon in a careful and intelligent manner,
and presumed his Cambridge hearers to be acquainted
with the work. Nor is his judgment of Descartes
less wise and philosophical. He rejects, as we have
seen, his system as a true scheme of the universe, and
condemns altogether his à priori mode of philosophiz-
ing; but this does not prevent his accepting Descartes'
real discoveries, and admiring the boldness and vigour
of his attempts to reform philosophy. There is, in
Barrow's works, academic verse, as well as prose, on
the subject of the Cartesian hypothesis. In this, Des-
cartes himself is highly praised, though his doctrines
are very partially accepted. The writer says: “Par-
don us, great Cartesius, if the Muse resists you. Par-
don! We follow you, Inquiring Spirit that you are,
while we reject your system. As you have taught us
free thought, and broken down the rule of tyranny,
we undauntedly speculate, even in opposition to you."
Descartes is even yet spoken of, especially by French
writers, as the person who first asserted and estab-
lished the freedom of inquiry which is the boast of
modern philosophy; but this is said with reference to
metaphysics, not to physics. In physical philosophy,
16 Nov. Org. lib. ii. Aph. 2.
17 IV. lib. ii. Aph. 45.
N
2
180
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
though he caught hold of some of the discoveries
which were then coming into view, the method in
which he reasoned or professed to reason was alto-
gether vicious; and was, as I have already said, an
attempt to undo what the reformers, both theoretical
and practical, had been doing :-to discredit the philo-
sophy of experience, and to restore the reign of à priori.
systems.
It was, however, now, too late to make any such
attempt; and nothing came of it to interrupt the pro-
gress of a better philosophy of discovery.
CHAPTER XVIII.
NEWTON.
I. DOLD and extensive as had been the antici-
D pations of those whose minds were excited
by the promise of the new philosophy, the discoveries
of Newton respecting the mechanics of the universe,
brought into view truths more general and profound
than those earlier philosophers had hoped or imagined.
With these vast accessions to human knowledge, men's
thoughts were again set in action; and philosophers
made earnest and various attempts to draw, from these
extraordinary advances in science, the true moral with
regard to the conduct and limits of the human under-
standing. They not only endeavoured to verify and
illustrate, by these new portions of science, what had
recently been taught concerning the methods of ob-
taining sound knowledge; but they were also led to
speculate concerning many new and more interesting
questions relating to this subject. They saw, for the
first time, or at least far more clearly than before, the
distinction between the inquiry into the laws, and into
the causes of phenomena. They were tempted to ask,
how far the discovery of causes could be carried; and
whether it would soon reach, or clearly point to, the
ultimate cause. They were driven to consider whether
the properties which they discovered were essential
properties of all matter, necessarily and primarily in-
volved in its essence, though revealed to us at a late
period by their derivative effects. These questions
even now agitate the thoughts of speculative men.
Some of them have already, in this work, been dis-
cussed, or arranged in the places which our view of the
philosophy of these subjects assigns to them. But we
182
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
must here notice them as they occurred to Newton
himself and his immediate followers.
2. The general Baconian notion of the method of
philosophizing,--that it consists in ascending from phe-
nomena, through various stages of generalization, to
truths of the highest order, received, in Newton's dis-
covery of the universal mutual gravitation of every
particle of matter, that pointed actual exemplification,
for want of which it had hitherto been almost over-
looked, or at least very vaguely understood. That
great truth, and the steps by which it was established,
afford, even now, by far the best example of the suc-
cessive ascent, from one scientific truth to another,
of the repeated transition from less to more general pro-
positions, which we can get produce; as may be seen
in the Table which exhibits the relation of these steps
in Book II. of the Novum Organon Renovatum. Newton
himself did not fail to recognize this feature in the
truths which he exhibited. Thus he says, “By the
way of Analysis we proceed from compounds to ingre-
dients, as from motions to the forces producing them;
and in general, from effects to their causes, and from
particular causes to more general ones, till the argument
ends in the most general.” And in like manner in ano-
ther Query: “The main business of natural philoso-
phy is to argue from phenomena without feigning hypo-
theses, and to deduce causes from effects, till we come
to the First Cause, which is certainly not mechanical.”
3. Newton appears to have had a horror of the
term hypothesis, which probably arose from his ac-
quaintance with the rash and illicit general assump-
tions of Descartes. Thus in the passage just quoted,
after declaring that gravity must have some other
cause than matter, he says, “Later philosophers banish
the consideration of such a cause out of Natural Phi-
losophy, feigning hypotheses for explaining all things
mechanically, and referring other causes to meta-
physics.” In the celebrated Scholium at the end of
. 1 Optics, qu. 31, near the end.
2. Qu. 28.
NEWTON.
183
the Principia he says, “Whatever is not deduced
from the phenomena, is to be termed hypothesis ; and
hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or oc- for
cult causes, or mechanical, have no place in experi-
mental philosophy. In this philosophy, propositions
are deduced from phenomena, and rendered general by..
induction.” And in another place, he arrests the
course of his own suggestions, saying, “Verum hypo-
theses non fingo.” I have already attempted to show
that this is, in reality, a superstitious and self-destruc-
tive spirit of speculation. Some hypotheses are neces->
sary, in order to connect the facts which are observed;
some new principle of unity must be applied to the
phenomena, before induction can be attempted. What
is requisite is, that the hypothesis should be close to
the facts, and not connected with them by the interme-
diation of other arbitrary and untried facts; and that
the philosopher should be ready to resign it as soon as
the facts refuse to confirm it. We have seen in the
Historys, that it was by such a use of hypotheses, that
both Newton himself, and Kepler, on whose discoveries
those of Newton were based, made their discoveries.
The suppositions of a force tending to the sun and vary-
ing inversely as the square of the distance; of a mutual
force between all the bodies of the solar system ; of the
force of each body arising from the attraction of all its
parts; not to mention others, also propounded by
Newton,-were all hypotheses before they were veri-,
fied as theories. It is related that when Newton was i
asked how it was that he saw into the laws of nature
so much further than other men, he replied, that if it
were so, it resulted from his keeping his thoughts
steadily occupied upon the subject which was to be
thus penetrated. But what is this occupation of the
thoughts, if it be not the process of keeping the phe-
nomena clearly in view, and trying, one after another,
all the plausible hypotheses which seem likely to con-
nect them, till at last the true law is discovered? Hy-
potheses so used are a necessary element of discovery,
8 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. v. and b. vii.
184
.
Q
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY4. With regard to the details of the process of
discovery, Newton has given us some of his views,
which are well worthy of notice, on account of their
coming from him ; and which are real additions to the
philosophy of this subject. He speaks repeatedly of
the analysis and synthesis of observed facts; and thus
marks certain steps in scientific research, very import-
ant, and not, I think, clearly pointed out by his prede-
cessors. Thus he says", “As in Mathematics, so in
Natural Philosophy, the investigation of difficult things
by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the
method of composition. This analysis consists in mak-
ing experiments and observations, and in drawing
general conclusions from them by induction, and ad-
mitting of no objections against the conclusions, but
such as are taken from experiments or other certain
truths. And although the arguing from experiments
and observations by induction be no demonstration of
general conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing
which the nature of things admits of, and may be look-
ed upon as so much the stronger, by how much the
induction is more general.” And he then observes, as
we have quoted above, that by this way of analysis we
proceed from compounds to ingredients, from motions
to forces, from effects to causes, and from less to more
general causes. The analysis here spoken of includes
the steps which in our Novum Organon we call the
decomposition of facts, the exact observation and mea-
surenent of the phenomena, and the colligation of facts;
the necessary intermediate step, the selection and expli-
cation of the appropriate conception, being passed over
by Newton, in the fear of seeming to encourage the
fabrication of hypotheses. The synthesis of which New-
ton here speaks consists of those steps of deductive reco-
soning, proceeding from the conception once assumed,
which are requisite for the comparison of its conse-
quences with the observed facts. This, his statement
of the process of research, is, as far as it goes, perfectly
exact.
4 Optics, qu. 31.
NEWTON.
185
5. In speaking of Newton's precepts on the subject,
we are naturally led to the celebrated “Rules of Phi-
losophizing," inserted in the second edition of the Prin-
cipia. These rules have generally been quoted and
commented on with an almost unquestioning reverence.
Such Rules, coming from such an authority, cannot
fail to be highly interesting to us; but at the same
time, we cannot here evade the necessity of scrutiniz-
ing their truth and value, according to the principles
which our survey of this subject has brought into view.
The Rules stand at the beginning of that part of the
Principia (the Third Book) in which he infers the mu-
tual gravitation of the sun, moon, planets, and all parts
of each. They are as follows :
“Rule I. We are not to admit other causes of na-
tural things than such as both are true, and suffice for
explaining their phenomena.
56 Rule II. Natural effects of the same kind are
to be referred to the same causes, as far as can be
done.
“Rule III. The qualities of bodies which cannot
be increased or diminished in intensity, and which be-
long to all bodies in which we can institute experi-
ments, are to be held for qualities of all bodies what-
ever.
“Rule IV. In experimental philosophy, proposi-
tions collected from phenomena by induction, are to
be held as true either accurately or approximately, not-
withstanding contrary hypotheses; till other pheno-
mena occur by which they may be rendered either
more accurate or liable to exception."
In considering these Rules, we cannot help remark-
ing, in the first place, that they are constructed with
an intentional adaptation to the case with which New-
ton has to deal,-the induction of Universal Gravita-
tion; and are intended to protect the reasonings before
which they stand. Thus the first Rule is designed to
strengthen the inference of gravitation from the celes-
tial phenomena, by describing it as a verc causa, a true
cause; the second Rule countenances the doctrine that
the planetary motions are governed by mechanical
i
186
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
forces, as terrestrial motions are; the third rule ap-
pears intended to justify the assertion of gravitation,
as a universal quality of bodies; and the fourth con-
tains, along with a general declaration of the authority
of induction, the author's usual protest against hypo-
theses, levelled at the Cartesian hypotheses especially.
6. Of the First Rule.—We, however, must consi-
der these Rules in their general application, in which
point of view they have often been referred to, and
have had very great authority allowed them. One of
the points which has been most discussed, is that
maxim which requires that the causes of phenomena
which we assign should be true causes, verce causa.
Of course this does not mean that they should be the
true or right cause; for although it is the philosopher's
aim to discover such causes, he would be little aided
in his search of truth, by being told that it is truth
which he is to seek. The rule has generally been un-
derstood to prescribe that in attempting to account for
any class of phenomena, we must assume such causes
only, as from other considerations, we know to exist.
Thus gravity, which was employed in explaining the
motions of the moon and planets, was already known
to exist and operate at the earth's surface.
Now the Rule thus interpreted is, I conceive, an
injurious limitation of the field of induction. For it
forbids us to look for a cause, except among the causes
with which we are already familiar. But if we follow
this rule, how shall we ever become acquainted with
any new cause? Or how do we know that the pheno-
mena which we contemplate do really arise from some
cause which we already truly know? If they do not,
must we still insist upon making them depend upon
some of our known causes; or must we abandon the
study of them altogether? Must we, for example,
resolve to refer the action of radiant heat to the air,
rather than to any peculiar fluid or ether, because the
former is known to exist, the latter is merely assumed
for the purpose of explanation ? But why should we
do this? Why should we not endeavour to learn the
cause from the effects, even if it be not already known
NEWTON.
187
to us? We can infer causes, which are new when we
· first become acquainted with them. Chemical Forces,
Optical Forces, Vital Forces, are known to us only by
chemical and optical and vital phenomena; must we,
therefore, reject their existence or abandon their study?
They do not conform to the double condition, that they
far as they explain the facts, but are they, therefore,
unintelligible or useless? Are they not highly im-
portant and instructive subjects of speculation ? And
if the gravitation which rules the motions of the pla-
nets bad not existed at the earth's surface;- if it had
been there masked and concealed by the superior effect
of magnetism, or some other extraneous force,-might
not Newton still have inferred, from Kepler's laws,
the tendency of the planets to the sun; and from their
perturbations, their tendency to each other? His dis-
coveries would still have been immense, if the cause
which he assigned had not been a vera causa in the
sense now contemplated..
7. But what do we mean by calling gravity a "true
cause”? How do we learn its reality? Of course, by
its effects, with which we are familiar;-by the weight
and fall of bodies about us. These strike even the
most careless observer. No one can fail to see that all
bodies which we come in contact with are heavy;
that gravity acts in our neighbourhood here upon
earth. Hence, it may be said, this cause is at any
rate a true cause, whether it explains the celestial
phenomena or not.
But if this be what is meant by a vera causa, it
appears strange to require that in all cases we should
find such a one to account for all classes of pheno-
mena. Is it reasonable or prudent to demand that we
shall reduce every set of phenomena, however minute,
or abstruse, or complicated, to causes so obviously ex-
isting as to strike the most incurious, and to be fami-
liar among men? How can we expect to find such
verce cause for the delicate and recondite phenomena
which an exact and skilful observer detects in chemi-
cal, or optical, or electrical experiments? The facts
188
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
themselves are too fine for vulgar apprehension; their
relations, their symmetries, their measures require a
previous discipline to understand them. How then
can their causes be found among those agencies with
which the common unscientific herd of mankind are
familiar? What likelihood is there that causes held
for real by such persons, shall explain facts which such
persons cannot see or cannot understand?
Again: if we give authority to such a rule, and
require that the causes by which science explains the
facts which she notes and measures and analyses, shall
be causes which men, without any special study, have
already come to believe in, from the effects which they
casually see around them, what is this, except to make
our first rude and unscientific persuasions the criterion
and test of our most laborious and thoughtful infer-
ences? What is it, but to give to ignorance and
thoughtlessness the right of pronouncing upon the con-
victions of intense study and long-disciplined thought?
“ Electrical atmospheres” surrounding electrized bo-
dies, were at one time held to be a “true cause" of
the effects which such bodies produce. These atmo-
spheres, it was said, are obvious to the senses; we
feel them like a spider's web on the hands and face.
Æpinus had to answer such persons, by proving that
there are no atmospheres, no effluvia, but only repul-
sion. He thus, for a true cause in the vulgar sense of
the term, substituted an hypothesis; yet who doubts
that what he did was an advance in the science of
electricity?
8. Perhaps some persons may be disposed to say,
that Newton's Rule does not enjoin us to take those
causes only which we clearly know, or suppose we
know, to be really existing and operating, but only
causes of such kinds as we have already satisfied our-
selves do exist in nature. It may be urged that we
are entitled to infer that the planets are governed in
their motions by an attractive force, because we find,
in the bodies immediately subject to observation and
experiment, that such motions are produced by attrac-
tive forces, for example, by that of the earth. It may
NEWTON.
189
be said that we might on similar grounds infer forces
which unite particles of chemical compounds, or deflect
particles of light, because we see adhesion and deflec-
tion produced by forces.
But it is easy to show that the Rule, thus laxly un-
derstood, loses all significance. It prohibits no hypo-
thesis; for all hypotheses suppose causes such as, in
some case or other, we have seen in action. No one
would think of explaining phenomena by referring
them to forces and agencies altogether different from
any which are known; for on this supposition, how
could he pretend to reason about the effects of the
assumed causes, or undertake to prove that they would
explain the facts? Some close similarity with some
known kind of cause is requisite, in order that the
hypothesis may have the appearance of an explana-
tion. No forces, or virtues, or sympathies, or fluids,
or ethers, would be excluded by this interpretation of
verce cause. Least of all, would such an interpreta-
tion reject the Cartesian hypothesis of vortices; which
undoubtedly, as I conceive, Newton intended to con-
demn by his Rule. For that such a case as a whirling
fluid, carrying bodies round a centre in orbits, does
occur, is too obvious to require proof. Every eddying
stream, or blast that twirls the dust in the road, ex-
hibits examples of such action, and would justify the
assumption of the vortices which carry the planets in
their courses; as indeed, without doubt, such facts
suggested the Cartesian explanation of the solar sys-
tem. The vortices, in this mode of considering the
subject, are at the least as real a cause of motion as
gravity itself.
9. Thus the Rule which enjoins “true causes," is
nugatory, if we take verce cause in the extended sense
of any causes of a real kind, and unphilosophical, if we
understand the term of those very causes which we
familiarly suppose to exist. But it may be said that
we are to designate as “true causes,” not those which
are collected in a loose, confused and precarious man-
ner, by undisciplined minds, from obvious phenomena,
but those which are justly and rigorously inferred.
190
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Such a cause, it may be added, gravity is; for the
facts of the downward pressures and downward mo-
tions of bodies at the earth's surface lead us, by the
plainest and strictest induction, to the assertion of
such a force. Now to this interpretation of the Rule
there is no objection; but then, it must be observed,
that on this view, terrestrial gravity is inferred by the
same process as celestial gravitation; and the cause is
no more entitled to be called “true," because it is
obtained from the former, than because it is obtained
from the latter class of facts. We thus obtain an in-
telligible and tenable explanation of a vera causa;
but then, by this explanation, its verity ceases to be
distinguishable from its other condition, that it "suf-
fices for the explanation of the phenomena." The
assumption of universal gravitation accounts for the
fall of a stone; it also accounts for the revolutions of
the Moon or of Saturn; but since both these explana-
tions are of the same kind, we cannot with justice
make the one a criterion or condition of the admis-
sibility of the other.
Io. But still, the Rule, so understood, is so far
from being unmeaning or frivolous, that it expresses
one of the most important tests which can be given of
a sound physical theory. It is true, the explanation
of one set of facts may be of the same nature as the
explanation of the other class : but then, that the
cause explains both classes, gives it a very different
claim upon our attention and assent from that which
it would have if it explained one class only. The
very circumstance that the two explanations coincide,
is a most weighty presumption in their favour. It is
the testimony of two witnesses in behalf of the hypo-
thesis; and in proportion as these two witnesses are
separate and independent, the conviction produced by
their agreement is more and more complete. When
the explanation of two kinds of phenomena, distinct, -
and not apparently connected, leads us to the same
cause, such a coincidence does give a reality to the
cause, which it has not while it merely accounts for
those appearances which suggested the supposition.
NEWTON.
191
This coincidence of propositions inferred from sepa-
rate classes of facts, is exactly what we noticed in the
Novum Organon Renovatum (b. ii. C. 5, sect. 3), as
one of the most decisive characteristics of a true
theory, under the name of Consilience of Inductions.
That Newton's First Rule of Philosophizing, so un-
derstood, authorizes the inferences which he himself
believed by philosophers. Thus when the doctrine of
a gravity varying inversely as the square of the dis-
tance from the body, accounted at the same time for
the relations of times and distances in the planetary
orbits and for the amount of the moon's deflection
from the tangent of her orbit, such a doctrine became
most convincing: or again, when the doctrine of the
universal gravitation of all parts of matter, which
explained so admirably the inequalities of the moon's
motions, also gave a satisfactory account of a pheno-
menon utterly different, the precession of the equi-
noxes. And of the same kind is the evidence in
favour of the undulatory theory of light, when the
assumption of the length of an undulation, to which
we are led by the colours of thin plates, is found to be
identical with that length which explains the pheno-
mena of diffraction; or when the hypothesis of trans-
verse vibrations, suggested by the facts of polarization,
explains also the laws of double refraction. When
such a convergence of two trains of induction points
to the same spot, we can no longer suspect that we
are wrong. Such an accumulation of proof really
persuades us that we have to do with a vera causa.
And if this kind of proof be multiplied ;-if we again
find other facts of a sort uncontemplated in framing
our hypothesis, but yet clearly accounted for when we
have adopted the supposition ;-we are still further
confirmed in our belief; and by such accumulation of
proof we may be so far satisfied, as to believe without
conceiving it possible to doubt. In this case, when
the validity of the opinion adopted by us has been
repeatedly confirmed by its sufficiency in unforeseen
cases, so that all doubt is removed and forgotten, the
192
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
theoretical cause takes its place among the realities of
the world, and becomes a true cause.
II. Newton's Rule then, to avoid mistakes, might
'be thus expressed : That “we may, provisorily, assume
such hypothetical cause as will account for any given
class of natural phenomena; but that when two dif-
ferent classes of facts lead us to the same hypothesis,
we may hold it to be a true cause.” And this Rule
will rarely or never mislead us. There are no in-
stances, in which a doctrine recommended in this
manner bas afterwards been discovered to be false.
There have been hypotheses which have explained
many phenomena, and kept their ground long, and
have afterwards been rejected. But these have been
hypotheses which explained only one class of pheno-
mena; and their fall took place when another kind of
facts was examined and brought into conflict with the
former. Thus the system of eccentrics and epicycles
accounted for all the observed motions of the planets,
and was the means of expressing and transmitting all
astronomical knowledge for two thousand years. But
then, how was it overthrown? By considering the
distances as well as motions of the heavenly bodies.
Here was a second class of facts; and when the sys-
tem was adjusted so as to agree with the one class, it
was at variance with the other. These cycles and
epicycles could not be true, because they could not be
made a just representation of the facts. But if the
measures of distance as well as of position had con-
spired in pointing out the cycles and epicycles, as the
paths of the planets, the paths so determined could
not have been otherwise than their real paths; and
the epicyclical theory would have been, at least geo-
metrically, true.
12. Of the Second Rule.—Newton's Second Rule
directs that “natural events of the same kind are to
be referred to the same causes, so far as can be done."
Such a precept at first appears to help us but little;
for all systems, however little solid, profess to conform
to such a rule. When any theorist undertakes to ex-
plain a class of facts, he assigns causes which, according
NEWTON.
· 193
to him, will by their natural action, as seen in other
cases, produce the effects in question. The events
which he accounts for by his hypothetical cause, are,
he holds, of the same kind as those which such a cause
is known to produce. Kepler, in ascribing the pla-
netary motions to magnetism, Descartes, in explaining
them by means of vortices, held that they were re-
ferring celestial motions to the causes which give rise
to terrestrial motions of the same kind. The question
is, Are the effects of the same kind? This once settled,
there will be no question about the propriety of assign-
ing them to the same cause. But the difficulty is, to
determine when events are of the same kind. Are
the motions of the planets of the same kind with the
motion of a body moving freely in a curvilinear
path, or do they not rather resemble the motion of a
floating body swept round by a whirling current? The
Newtonian and the Cartesian answered this question
differently. How then can we apply this Rule with
any advantage?
13. To this we reply, that there is no way of escap-
ing this uncertainty and ambiguity, but by obtaining
a clear possession of the ideas which our hypothesis
involves, and by reasoning rigorously from them.
Newton asserts that the planets move in free paths,
acted on by certain forces. The most exact calcula-
tion gives the closest agreement of the results of this
hypothesis with the facts. Descartes asserts that the
planets are carried round by a fluid. The more rigor-
ously the conceptions of force and the laws of motion are
applied to this hypothesis, the more signal is its failure
in reconciling the facts to one another. Without such
calculation, we can come to no decision between the
two hypotheses. If the Newtonian hold that the
motions of the planets are evidently of the same kind
as those of a body describing a curve in free space,
and therefore, like that, to be explained by a force
acting upon the body; the Cartesian denies that the
planets do move in free space. They are, he main-
tains, immersed in a plenum. It is only when it
appears that comets pass through this plenum in all
194 PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
directions with no impediment, and that no possible
form and motion of its whirlpools can explain the forces
and motions which are observed in the solar system,
that he is compelled to allow the Newtonian's classifi-
cation of events of the same kind.
Thus it does not appear that this Rule of Newton
can be interpreted in any distinct and positive manner,
otherwise than as enjoining that, in the task of induc-
tion, we employ clear ideas, rigorous reasoning, and
close and fair comparison of the results of the hypo-
thesis with the facts. These are, no doubt, important
and fundamental conditions of a just induction; but
in this injunction we find no peculiar or technical
criterion by which we may satisfy ourselves that we
are right, or detect our errors. Still, of such general
prudential rules, none can be more wise than one
which thus, in the task of connecting facts by means
of ideas, recommends that the ideas be clear, the facts,
correct, and the chain of reasoning which connects
them, without a flaw.
14. Of the Third Rule.- The Third Rule, that
"qualities which are observed without exception be
held to be universal," as I have already said, seems to
be intended to authorize the assertion of gravitation
as a universal attribute of matter. We formerly stated,
in treating of Mechanical Ideas', that this application
of such a Rule appears to be a mode of reasoning far
from conclusive. The assertion of the universality of
any property of bodies must be grounded upon the
reason of the case, and not upon any arbitrary maxim.
Is it intended by this Rule to prohibit any further ex-
amination how far gravity is an original property of
matter, and how far it may be resolved into the result
of other agencies? We know perfectly well that this
was not Newton's intention; since the cause of gravity
was a point which he proposed to himself as a subject
of inquiry. It would certainly be very unphilosophical
to pretend, by this Rule of Philosophizing, to prejudge
the question of such hypotheses as that of Mosotti,
5 History of Ideas, b. ii. C. X.
NEWTON.
195
That gravity is the excess of the electrical attraction
over electrical repulsion, and yet to adopt this hy-
pothesis, would be to suppose electrical forces more
truly universal than gravity; for according to the
hypothesis, gravity, being the inequality of the attrac-
tion and repulsion, is only an accidental and partial
relation of these forces. Nor would it be allowable to
urge this Rule as a reason of assuming that double
stars are attracted to each other by a force varying
according to the inverse square of the distance; with-
out examining, as Herschel and others have done, the
is not available in such cases, what is its real value and
authority? and in what cases are they exemplified?
fundamental laws of motion, and the properties of
matter which these involve, are, after a full considera-
tion of the subject, unavoidably assumed as universally
true. It was further shown, that although our know-
ledge of these laws and properties be gathered from ex-
perience, we are strongly impelled, (some philosophers
think, authorized,) to look upon these as not only uni-
versally, but necessarily true. It was also stated, that
the law of gravitation, though its universality may be
deemed probable, does not apparently involve the same
necessity as the fundamental laws of motion. But it
was pointed out that these are some of the most
abstruse and difficult questions of the whole of phi-
losophy; involving the profound, perhaps insoluble,
problem of the identity or diversity of Ideas and
Things. It cannot, therefore, be deemed philosophical
to cut these Gordian knots by peremptory maxims,
which encourage us to decide withont rendering a
reason. Moreover, it appears clear that the reason
which is rendered for this Rule by the Newtonians is
quite untenable; namely, that we know extension,
hardness, and inertia, to be universal qualities of bo-
dies by experience alone, and that we have the same
o Ibid. b. iii. c. ix. x. xi.
O
2
196.
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
evidence of experience for the universality of gravita-
tion. We have already observed that we cannot, with
any propriety, say that we find by experience all bodies
are extended. This could not be a just assertion,
unless we conceive the possibility of our finding the
contrary. But who can conceive our finding by ex-
perience some bodies which are not extended ? It
appears, then, that the reason given for the Third
Rule of Newton involves a mistake respecting the
nature and authority of experience. And the Rule
itself cannot be applied without attempting to decide,
by the casual limits of observation, questions which
recessarily depend upon the relations of ideas.
16. Of the Fourth Rule.—Newton's Fourth Rule
is, that “Propositions collected from phenomena by
induction, shall be held to be true, notwithstanding
contrary hypotheses; but shall be liable to be rendered
more accurate, or to have their exceptions pointed out,
by additional study of phenomena.” This Rule con-
tains little more than a general assertion of the autho-
rity of induction, accompanied by Newton's usual
protest against hypotheses.
The really valuable part of the Fourth Rule is that
which implies that a constant verification, and, if neces-
sary, rectification, of truths discovered by induction,
should go on in the scientific world. Even when the
law is, or appears to be, most certainly exact and uni-
versal, it should be constantly exhibited to us afresh in
the form of experience and observation. This is neces-
sary, in order to discover exceptions and modifications
if such exist: and if the law be rigorously true, the
contemplation of it, as exemplified in the world of
phenomena, will best give us that clear apprehension
of its bearings which may lead us to see the ground of
its truth.
The concluding clause of this Fourth Rule appears,
at first, to imply that all inductive propositions are to
be considered as merely provisional and limited, and
never secure from exception. But to judge thus would
be to underrate the stability and generality of scientific
truths; for what man of science can suppose that we
NEWTON
197
shall hereafter discover exceptions to the universal
gravitation of all parts of the solar system? And it
is plain that the author did not intend the restric-
tion to be applied so rigorously; for in the Third Rule,
as we have just seen, he authorizes us to infer uni-
versal properties of matter from observation, and car-
ries the liberty of inductive inference to its full
extent. The Third Rule appears to encourage us to
assert a law to be universal, even in cases in which
it has not been tried; the Fourth Rule seems to warn
us that the law may be inaccurate, even in cases in
which it has been tried. Nor is either of these sug-
gestions erroneous; but both the universality and the
rigorous accuracy of our laws are proved by reference
to Ideas rather than to Experience; a truth, which,
perhaps, the philosophers of Newton's time were some-
what disposed to overlook.
17. The disposition to ascribe all our knowledge to
Experience, appears in Newton and the Newtonians
by other indications; for instance, it is seen in their
extreme dislike to the ancient expressions by which
the principles and causes of phenomena were described,
as the occult causes of the Schoolmen, and the forms
of the Aristotelians, which had been adopted by Bacon.
Newton says”, that the particles of matter not only
possess inertia, but also active principles, as gravity,
fermentation, cohesion; he adds, “ These principles I
consider not as Occult Qualities, supposed to result
from the Specific Forms of things, but as General
Laws of Nature, by which the things themselves are
formed: their truth appearing to us by phenomena,
though their causes be not yet discovered. For these
are manifest qualities, and their causes only are occult.
And the Aristotelians gave the name of occult qualities,
not to manifest qualities, but to such qualities only as
they supposed to lie hid in bodies, and to the unknown
causes of manifest effects : such as would be the causes
of gravity, and of magnetick and electrick attractions,
7 Opticks, qu. 31.
198
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
and of fermentations, if we should suppose that these
forces or actions arose from qualities unknown to us,
and incapable of being discovered and made manifest.
Such occult qualities put a stop to the improvement of
Natural Philosophy, and therefore of late years have
been rejected. To tell us that every species of things
acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us no-
thing: but to derive two or three general principles of
motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
the properties and actions of all corporeal things fol-
low from these manifest principles, would be a great
step in philosophy, though the causes of those prin-
ciples were not yet discovered: and therefore I scruple
not to propose the principles of motion above main-
tained, they being of very general extent, and leave
their causes to be found out."
18. All that is here said is highly philosophical and
valuable; but we may observe that the investigation of
specific forms in the sense in which some writers had
used the phrase, was by no means a frivolous or un-
meaning object of inquiry. Bacon and others had used
form as equivalent to law. If we could ascertain
that arrangement of the particles of a crystal from
which its external crystalline form and other proper-
ties arise, this arrangement would be the internal form
of the crystal. If the undulatory theory be true, the
form of light is transverse vibrations: if the emission
theory be maintained, the form of light is particles
moving in straight lines, and deflected by various
forces. Both the terms, form and law, imply an ideal
connexion of sensible phenomena; form supposes mat-
8 Nov. Org. 1. ii. Aph. 2. “Licet
enim in natura nihil existet præter
corpora individua, edentia actus pu-
ros individuos ex lege; in doctrinis
tamen illa ipsa lex, ejusque inquisi.
tio, et inventio, et explicatio, pro
fundamento est tam ad scienduin
quam ad operandum. Eam autem
legem, ejusque paragraphos, forma-
rum nomine intelligimus; præsertim
cum hoc vocabulum invaluerit, et
familiariter occurrat.”
Aph. 17. “Eadem res est forma
calidi vel forma luminis, et lex calidi
aut lex luminis."
NEWTON.
199
ter which is moulded to the form; law supposes objects
which are governed by the law. The former term
lefers more precisely to existences, the latter to occur-
rences. The latter term is now the more familiar, and
is, perhaps, the better metaphor: but the former also
contains the essential antithesis which belongs to the
subject, and might be used in expressing the same con-
clusions.
But occult causes, employed in the way in which
Newton describes, had certainly been very prejudicial
to the progress of knowledge, by stopping inquiry with
a mere word. The absurdity of such pretended expla-
nations had not escaped ridicule. The pretended phy-
sician in the comedy gives an example of an occult
cause or virtue.
Mibi demandatur
A doctissimo Doctore
Quare Opium facit dormire:
Et ego respondeo,
Quia est in eo
Virtus dormitiva,
Cujus natura est sensus assoupire.
19. But the most valuable part of the view present-
ed to us in the quotation just given from Newton is
the distinct separation, already noticed as peculiarly
brought into prominence by him, of the determination
of the laws of phenomena, and the investigation of
their causes. The maxim, that the former inquiry
must precede the latter, and that if the general laws
of facts be discovered, the result is highly valuable,
although the causes remain unknown, is extremely
important; and had not, I think, ever been so strongly
and clearly stated, till Newton both repeatedly pro-
mulgated the precept, and added to it the weight of
the most striking examples.
We have seen that Newton, along with views the i
most just and important concerning the nature and
methods of science, had something of the tendency,
prevalent in his time, to suspect or reject, at least
speculatively, all elements of knowledge except ob-
servation. This tendency was, however, in him so
200
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
corrected and restrained by his own wonderful sagacity
and mathematical habits, that it scarcely led to any
opinion which we might not safely adopt. But we
must now consider the cases in which this tendency
operated in a more unbalanced manner, and led to the
assertion of doctrines which, if consistently followed,
would destroy the very foundations of all general and
certain knowledge,
CHAPTER XIX.
LOCKE AND HIS FRENCH FOLLOWERS.
I. TN the constant opposition and struggle of the
I schools of philosophy, which consider our Senses
and our Ideas respectively, as the principal sources of
our knowledge, we have seen that at the period of
which we now treat, the tendency was to exalt the
external and disparage the internal element. The dis-
position to ascribe our knowledge to observation alone,
had already, in Bacon's time, led him to dwell to a
disproportionate degree upon that half of his subject;
and had tinged Newton's expressions, though it had
not biassed his practice. But this partiality soon as-
sumed a more prominent shape, becoming extreme in
Locke, and extravagant in those who professed to
follow him.
Indeed Locke appears to owe his popularity and
influence as a popular writer mainly to his being one
of the first to express, in a plain and unhesitating
manner, opinions which had for some time been ripen-
ing in the minds of a large portion of the cultivated
public. Hobbes had already promulgated the main
doctrines which Locke afterwards urged, on the sub-
ject of the origin and nature of our knowledge : but
in him these doctrines were combined with offensive
opinions on points of morals, government, and religion,
so that their access to general favour was impeded :
and it was to Locke that they were indebted for the
extensive influence which they soon after obtained.
Locke owed this authority mainly to the intellectual
circumstances of the time. Although a writer of
great merit, he by no means possesses such metaphysi-
cal acuteness or such philosophical largeness of view,
202
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
or such a charm of writing, as must necessarily give
him the high place he has held in the literature of
Europe. But he came at a period when the reign of
Ideas was tottering to its fall. All the most active
and ambitious spirits had gone over to the new opinions,
and were prepared to follow the fortunes of the Philo-
sophy of Experiment, then in the most prosperous
and brilliant condition, and full of still brighter pro-
mise. There were, indeed, a few learned and thought-
ful men who still remained faithful to the empire of
Ideas; partly, it may be, from a too fond attachment
to ancient systems; but partly, also, because they knew
that there were subjects of vast importance, in which
experience did not form the whole foundation of our
knowledge. They knew, too, that many of the plau-
sible tenets of the new philosophy were revivals of
fallacies which had been discussed and refuted in an-
cient times. But the advocates of mere experience
came on with a vast store of weighty truth among
their artillery, and with the energy which the advance
usually bestows. The ideal system of philosophy could,
for the present, make no effectual resistance; Locke,
by putting himself at the head of the assault, became
the watchword of those who adhere to the philosophy
of the senses up to our owu times.
2. Locke himself did not assert the exclusive au-
thority of the senses in the extreme unmitigated
manner in which some who call themselves his disci-
ples have done. But this is the common lot of the
leaders of revolutions, for they are usually bound by
some ties of affection and habit to the previous state
of things, and would not destroy all traces of that
condition : while their followers attend, not to their
inconsistent wishes, but to the meaning of the revolu-
tion itself; and carry out, to their genuine and com-
plete results, the principles which won the victory,
and which have been brought out more sharp from
the conflict. Thus Locke himself does not assert that
all our ideas are derived from Sensation, but from
Sensation and Reflection. But it was easily seen that,
LOCKE AND HIS FRENCH FOLLOWERS. 203
in this assertion, two very heterogeneous elements
were conjoined : that while to pronounce Sensation
the origin of ideas, is a clear decided tenet, the ac-
ceptance or rejection of which determines the general
character of our philosophy; to make the same decla-
ration concerning Reflection, is in the highest degree
vague and ambiguous; since, reflection may either be
resolved into a mere modification of sensation, as was
done by one school, or may mean all that the opposite
school opposes to sensation, under the name of Ideas.
Hence the clear and strong impression which fastened
upon men's minds, and which does in fact represent
all the systematic and consistent part of Locke's phi-
losophy, was, that in it all our ideas are represented
as derived from Sensation.
3. We need not spend much time in pointing out
the inconsistencies into which Locke fell, as all must
fall into inconsistencies who recognize no source of
knowledge except the senses. Thus he maintains that
our Idea of Space is derived from the senses of sight
and touch; our Idea of Solidity from the touch alone.
Our Notion of Substance is an unknown support of
unknown qualities, and is illustrated by the Indian
fable of the tortoise which supports the elephant, which
supports the world. Our Notion of Power or Cause
is in like manner got from the senses. And yet,
though these ideas are thus mere fragments of our
experience, Locke does not hesitate to ascribe to them
necessity and universality when they occur in pro-
positions. Thus he maintains the necessary truth of
geometrical properties : he asserts that the resistance
arising from solidity is absolutely insurmountable?; he
conceives that nothing short of Omnipotence can.
annihilate a particle of matter?; and he has no mis-
givings in arguing upon the axiom that Every thing
must have a cause. He does not perceive that, upon
his own account of the origin of our knowledge, we
can have no right to make any of these assertions. If
1 Essay, b. xi. c. iv. sect. 3.
2 Ibid. c. xiii. sect. 22.
204
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
our knowledge of the truths which concern the exter-
nal world were wholly derived from experience, all
that we could venture to say would be,—that geome-
trical properties of figures are true as far as we have
tried them ;—that we have seen no example of a solid
body being reduced to occupy less space by pressure,
or of a material substance annihilated by natural
means;-and that wherever we have examined, we have
found that every change has had a cause. Experience
can never entitle us to declare that what she has not
seen is impossible; still less, that things which she can
not see are certain. Locke himself intended to throw
no doubt upon the certainty of either human or divine
knowledge; but his principles, when men discarded
the temper in which he applied them, and the checks
to their misapplication which he conceived that he
had provided, easily led to a very comprehensive skep-
ticism. His doctrines tended to dislodge from their
true bases the most indisputable parts of knowledge;
as, for example, pure and mixed mathematics. It may
well be supposed, therefore, that they shook the foun-
dations of many other parts of knowledge in the minds
of common thinkers.
It was not long before these consequences of the
overthrow of ideas showed themselves in the specula-
tive world. I have already in a previous work
mentioned Hume's skeptical inferences from Locke's
maxim, that we have no ideas except those which
we acquire by experience; and the doctrines set up
in opposition to this by the metaphysicians of Ger-
many. I might trace the progress of the sensational
opinions in Britain till the reaction took place here
also : but they were so much more clearly and deci-
dedly followed out in France, that I shall pursue
their history in that country.
4. The French Followers of Locke, Condillac, &c.-
Most of the French writers who adopted Locke's lead-
ing doctrines, rejected the “ Reflection," which formed
3 History of Ideas, b. ü. c. iii. Modern Opinions respecting the Idea of
Cause.
LOCKE AND. HIS FRENCH FOLLOWERS. 205
an anomalous part of his philosophy, and declared that
Sensation alone was the source of ideas. Among these
writers, Condillac was the most distinguished. He
expressed the leading tenet of their school in a clear
and pointed manner by saying that “All ideas are
transformed sensations." We have already considered
this phrase, and need not here dwell upon it.
Opinions such as these tend to annihilate, as we
have seen, one of the two co-ordinate elements of our
knowledge. Yet they were far from being so preju-
dicial to the progress of science, or even of the philo-
sophy of science, as might have been anticipated. One
reason of this was, that they were practically corrected,
especially among the cultivators of Natural Philosophy,
by the study of mathematics; for that study did really
supply all that was requisite on the ideal side of sci-
ence, so far as the ideas of space, time, and number,
were concerned, and partly also with regard to the idea
of cause and some others. And the methods of disco-
very, though the philosophy of them made no material
advance, were practically employed with so much ac-
tivity, and in so many various subjects, that a certain
kind of prudence and skill in this employment was
very widely diffused.
5. Importance of Language.--In one respect this
school of metaphysicians rendered a very valuable ser-
vice to the philosophy of science. They brought into
prominent notice the great importance of words and
terms in the formation and progress of knowledge, and
pointed out that the office of language is not only to
convey and preserve our thoughts, but to perform the
analysis in which reasoning consists. They were led
to this train of speculation, in a great measure, by
taking pure mathematical science as their standard
example of substantial knowledge. Condillac, reject-
ing, as we have said, almost all those ideas on which
universal and demonstrable truths must be based,
was still not at all disposed to question the reality of
4 Ibid. b. i. c. iv.
206
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
human knowledge ; but was, on the contrary, a zealous
admirer of the evidence and connexion which appear
in those sciences which have the ideas of space and
number for their foundation, especially the latter. He
looked for the grounds of the certainty and reality of
the knowledge which these sciences contain; and found
them, as he conceived, in the nature of the language
which they employ. The Signs which are used in
arithmetic and algebra enable us to keep steadily in
view the identity of the same quantity under all the
forms which, by composition and decomposition, it
may be made to assume; and these Signs also not
only express the operations which are performed, but
suggest the extension of the operations according to
analogy Algebra, according to him, is only a very
perfect language ; and language answers its purpose of
leading us to truth, by possessing the characteristics of
algebra. Words are the symbols of certain groups of
impressions or facts; they are so selected and applied
as to exhibit the analogies which prevail among these
facts; and these analogies are the truths of which our
knowledge consists. “Every language is an analytical
method; every analytical method is a languages ;"
these were the truths “alike new and simple," as he
held, which he conceived that he had demonstrated.
“The art of speaking, the art of writing, the art of
reasoning, the art of thinking, are only, at bottom, one
and the same art 6." Each of these operations consists
in a succession of analytical operations; and words are
the marks by which we are able to fix our minds upon
the steps of this analysis.
6. The analysis of our impressions and notions
does in reality lead to truth, not only in virtue of the
identity of the whole with its parts, as Condillac held,
but also in virtue of certain Ideas which govern the
synthesis of our sensations, and which contain the
elements of universal truths, as we have all along en-
deavoured to show. But although Condillac overlooked
or rejected this doctrine, the importance of words, as
s Langue des Calculs, p. 1.
6 Grammaire, p. xxxvi.
LOCKE AND HIS FRENCH FOLLOWERS. 207
marking the successive steps of this synthesis and.
analysis, is not less than he represented it to be. Every
truth, once established by induction from facts, when
it is become familiar under a brief and precise form
of expression, becomes itself a fact; and is capable of
being employed, along with other facts of a like kind,
as the materials of fresh inductions. In this successive
process, the term, like the cord of a fagot, both binds
together the facts which it includes, and makes it pos-
sible to manage the assemblage as a single thing. On
occasion of most discoveries in science, the selection of
a technical term is an essential part of the proceeding.
In the History of Science, we have had numerous op-
portunities of remarking this; and the List of technical
terms given as an Index to that work, refers us, by
almost every word, to one such occasion. And these
terms, which thus have had so large a share in the
formation of science, and which constitute its language,
do also offer the means of analyzing its truths, each
into its constituent truths; and these into facts more
special, till the original foundations of our most gene-
ral propositions are clearly exhibited. The relations
of general and particular truths are most evidently
represented by the Inductive Tables given in Book II.
of the Novum Organon Renovatum. But each step
in each of these Tables has its proper form of ex-
pression, familiar among the cultivators of science;
and the analysis which our Tables display, is com-
monly performed in men's minds, when it becomes
necessary, by fixing the attention successively upon a
series of words, not upon the lines of a Table. Lan-
guage offers to the mind such a scale or ladder as the
Table offers to the eye; and since such Tables present
to us, as we have said, the Logic of Induction, that is,
the formal conditions of the soundness of our reasoning
from facts, we may with propriety say that a just ana-
lysis of the meaning of words is an essential portion of
Inductive Logic.
In saying this, we must not forget that a decom-
position of general truths into ideas, as well as into
facts, belongs to our philosophy; but the point we
208
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
have here to remark, is the essential importance of
words to the latter of these processes. And this point
had not ever had its due weight assigned to it till the
time of Condillac and other followers of Locke, who
pursued their speculations in the spirit I have just
described. The doctrine of the importance of terms is
the most considerable addition to the philosophy of
science which has been made since the time of Bacon?.
7. The French Encyclopedists.—The French Ency-
clopédie, published in 1751, of which Diderot and Da-
lembert were the editors, may be considered as repre-
senting the leading characters of European philosophy
during the greater part of the eighteenth century. The
writers in this work belong for the most part to the
school of Locke and Condillac; and we may make a
few remarks upon them, in order to bring into view
one or two points in addition to what we have already
said of that school. The Discours Préliminaire, written
by Dalembert, is celebrated as containing a view of
the origin of our knowledge, and the connexion and
classification of the sciences.
A tendency of the speculations of the Encyclope-
dists, as of the School of Locke in general, is to reject
all ideal principles of connexion among facts, as some-
thing which experience, the only source of true know-
ledge, does not give. Hence all certain knowledge
consists only in the recognition of the same thing un-
der different aspects, or different forms of expression.
Axioms are not the result of an original relation of
ideas, but of the use, or it may be the abuse”, of words.
In like manner, the propositions of Geometry are a
series of modifications, of distortions, so to speak,—
of one original truth; much as if the proposition were
stated in the successive forms of expression presented
by a language which was constantly growing more and
7 Since the selection and construc-
tion of terms is thus a matter of so
much consequence in the formation
of science, it is proper that systema-
tic rules, founded upon sound prin-
ciples, should be laid down for the
performance of this operation. Some
such rules are accordingly suggested
in b. iv. of the Nov. Org. Ron.
8 Disc. Prélim. p. viii.
LOCKE AND HIS FRENCH FOLLOWERS. 209
more artificial. Several of the sciences which rest
upon physical principles, that is, (says the writer,)
truths of experience or simple hypotheses, have only
an experimental or hypothetical certainty. Impene-
trability added to the idea of extent is a mystery in
addition: the nature of motion is a riddle for philoso-
phers: the metaphysical principle of the laws of per-
.cussion is equally concealed from them. The more
profoundly they study the idea of matter and of the
properties which represent it, the more obscure this
idea becomes; the more completely does it escape
them.
8. This is a very common style of reflection, even
down to our own times. I have endeavoured to show
that concerning the Fundamental Ideas of space, of
force and resistance, of substance, external quality,
and the like, we know enough to make these Ideas the
grounds of certain and universal truths ;-enough to
supply us with axioms from which we can demonstra-
tively reason. If men wish for any other knowledge
of the nature of matter than that which ideas, and
facts conformable to ideas, give them, undoubtedly
their desire will be frustrated, and they will be left in
a mysterious vacancy; for it does not appear how such
knowledge as they ask for could be knowledge at all.
But in reality, this complaint of our ignorance of the
real nature of things proceeds from the rejection of
ideas, and the assumption of the senses alone as the
ground of knowledge. “Observation and calculation
are the only sources of truth;" this is the motto of
the school of which we now speak. And its import
amounts to this:—that they reject all ideas except the
idea of number, and recognize the modifications which
parts undergo by addition and subtraction as the only
modes in which true propositions are generated. The
laws of nature are assemblages of facts: the truths of
science are assertions of the identity of things which
are the same. “By the avowal of almost all philoso-
phers,” says a writer of this school”, “the most sublime
9 Helvctius Sur l'Homme, c. xxiii..
210
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
truths, when once simplified and reduced to their low-
est terms, are converted into facts, and thenceforth
present to the mind only this proposition; the white is
white, the black is black.”
These statements are true in what they positively
assert, but they involve error in the denial which by
implication they convey. It is true that observation
and demonstration are the only sources of scientific
truth; but then, demonstration may be founded on
other grounds besides the elementary properties of
number. It is true that the theory of gravitation is
but the assertion of a general fact; but this is so, not
because a sound theory does not involve ideas, but be-
cause our apprehension of a fact does.
9. Another characteristic indication of the temper
of the Encyclopedists and of the age to which they
belong, is the importance by them assigned to those
practical Arts which minister to man's comfort and
convenience. Not only, in the body of the Encyclo-
pedia, are the Mechanical Arts placed side by side
with the Sciences, and treated at great length; but in
the Preliminary Discourse, the preference assigned to
the liberal over the mechanical Arts is treated as a
prejudice, and the value of science is spoken of as
measured by its utility. “The discovery of the Mari-
ner's Compass is not less advantageous to the human
race than the explanation of its properties would be to
physics.—- Why should we not esteem those to whom
we owe the fusee and the escapement of watches as
much as the inventors of Algebra?" And in the clas-
sification of sciences which accompanies the Discourse,
the labours of artisans of all kinds have a place.
This classification of the various branches of science
contained in the Dissertation is often spoken of. It
has for its basis the classification proposed by Bacon,
in which the parts of human knowledge are arranged
according to the faculties of the mind in which they
originate; and these faculties are taken, both by Bacon
and by Dalembert, as Memory, Reason, and Imagi-
10 P. xiii.
LOCKE AND HIS FRENCH FOLLOWERS. 211
nation. The insufficiency of Bacon's arrangement as a
scientific classification is so glaring, that the adoption
of it, with only superficial modifications, at the period
of the Encyclopedia, is a remarkable proof of the want
of original thought and real philosophy at the time of
which we speak.
10. We need not trace further the opinion which
derives all our knowledge from the senses in its appli-
cation to the philosophy of Science. Its declared aim
is to reduce all knowledge to the knowledge of Facts;
and it rejects all inquiries which involve the Idea of
Cause, and similar Ideas, describing them as “meta-
physical,” or in some other damnatory way. It pro-
fesses, indeed, to discard all Ideas; but, as we have
long ago seen, some Ideas or other are inevitably in-
cluded even in the simplest Facts. Accordingly the
speculations of this school are compelled to retain the
relations of Position, Succession, Number and Resem-
blance, which are rigorously ideal relations. The phi-
losophy of Sensation, in order to be consistent, ought
to reject these Ideas along with the rest, and to deny
altogether the possibility of general knowledge. .
When the opinions of the Sensational School had
gone to an extreme length, a Reaction naturally began
to take place in men's minds. Such have been the
alternations of opinion, from the earliest ages of human
speculation. Man may perhaps have existed in an
original condition in which he was only aware of the
impressions of Sense; but his first attempts to analyse
his perceptions brought under his notice Ideas as a
separate element, essential to the existence of know-
ledge. Ideas were thenceforth almost the sole subject
of the study of philosophers; of Plato and his disci-
ples, professedly; of Aristotle, and still more of the
followers and commentators of Aristotle, practically.
And this continued till the time of Galileo, when the
authority of the Senses again began to be asserted;
for it was shown by the great discoveries which were
then made, that the Senses had at least some share in
the promotion of knowledge. As discoveries more
numerous and more striking were supplied by Obser-
P 2
212
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
vation, the world gradually passed over to the opinion:
that the share which had been ascribed to Ideas in the
formation of real knowledge was altogether a delusion,
and that Sensation alone was true. But when this
was asserted as a general doctrine, both its manifest
falsity and its alarming consequences roused men's
ininds, and made them recoil from the extreme point
to which they were approaching. Philosophy again
oscillated back towards Ideas; and over a great part of
Europe, in the clearest and most comprehensive minds,
this regression from the dogmas of the Sensational
School is at present the prevailing movement. We
shall conclude our review by noticing a few indications
of this state of things.
CHAPTER XX.
THE REACTION AGAINST THE SENSATIONAL SCHOOL.
1. THEN Locke's Essay appeared, it was easily
V seen that its tendency was to urge, in a much
more rigorous sense than had previously been usual,
the ancient maxim of Aristotle, adopted by the school-
men of the middle ages, that "nothing exists in the
intellect but what has entered by the senses.” Leib-
nitz expressed in a pointed manner the limitation with
which this doctrine had always been understood. “Ni-
hil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu ;-
nempe," he added, "nisi intellectus ipse.” To this it
has been objected', that we cannot say that the in-
tellect is in the intellect. But this remark is obvi-
ously frivolous; for the faculties of the understanding
(which are what the argument against the Sensational
School requires us to reserve) may be said to be in the
understanding, with as much justice as we may assert
there are in it the impressions derived from sense.
And when we take account of these faculties, and
of the Ideas to which, by their operation, we neces-
sarily subordinate our apprehension of phenomena, we
are led to a refutation of the philosophy which makes
phenomena, unconnected by Ideas, the source of all
knowledge. The succeeding opponents of the Lockian
school insisted upon and developed in various ways
this remark of Leibnitz, or some equivalent view.
2. It was by inquiries into the foundations of
Morals that English philosophers were led to question
the truth of Locke's theory. Dr. Price, in his Review
? See Mr Sharpe's Essays.
214
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
of the Principal Questions in Morals, first published
in 1757, maintained that we cannot with propriety
assert all our ideas to be derived from sensation and
reflection. He pointed out, very steadily, the other
source. "The power, I assert, that understands, or
the faculty within us that discerns truth, and that
compares all the objects of thought and judges of them,
is a spring of new ideas?” And he exhibits the anti-
thesis in various forms. “Were not sense and knowledge
entirely different, we should rest satisfied with sensible
impressions, such as light, colours and sounds, and in-
quire no further about them, at least when the im-
pressions are strong and vigorous: whereas, on the
contrary, we necessarily desire some further acquaint-
ance with them, and can never be satisfied till we have
subjected them to the survey of reason. Sense presents
particular forms to the mind, but cannot rise to any
general ideas. It is the intellect that examines and
compares the presented forms, that rises above indi-
viduals to universal and abstract ideas; and thus looks
downward upon objects, takes in at one view an in-
finity of particulars, and is capable of discovering
general truths. Sense sees only the outside of things,
reason acquaints itself with their natures. Sensation
is only a mode of feeling in the mind; but knowledge
implies an active and vital energy in the mind 3."
3. The necessity of refuting Hume's inferences from
the mere-sensation system led other writers to limit, in
various ways, their assent to Locke. Especially was
this the case with a number of intelligent metaphysi-
cians in Scotland, as Reid, Beattie, Dugald Stewart,
and Thomas Brown. Thus Reid asserts", "that the
account which Mr. Locke himself gives of the Idea of
Power cannot be reconciled to his favourite doctrine,
that all our simple ideas have their origin from sensa-
tion or reflection.” Reid remarks, that our memory
and our reasoning power come in for a share in the
3 P. 18.
2 Price's Essays, p. 16.
4 Reid, Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind, üi. 31.
REACTION AGAINST SENSATIONISTS.
215
origin of this idea : and in speaking of reasoning, he
obviously assumes the axiom that every event must
have a cause. By succeeding writers of this school,
the assumption of the fundamental principles, to which
our nature in such cases irresistibly directs us, is more
clearly pointed out. Thus Stewart defends the form
of expression used by Price5: “A variety of intuitive
judgments might be mentioned, involving simple ideas,
which it is impossible to trace to any origin but to the
power which enables us to form these judgments. Thus
it is surely an intuitive truth that the sensations of
which I am conscious, and all those I remember, be-
long to one and the same being, which I call myself.
Here is an intuitive judgment involving the simple
idea of Identity. In like manner, the changes which
I perceive in the universe impress me with a convic-
tion that some cause must have operated to produce
them. Here is an intuitive judgment involving the
simple Idea of Causation. When we consider the
adjacent angles made by a straight line standing upon
another, and perceive that their sum is equal to two
right angles, the judgment we form involves a simple
idea of Equality. To say, therefore, that the Reason
or the Understanding is a source of new ideas, is not
so exceptionable a mode of speaking as has been some-
times supposed. According to Locke, Sense furnishes
our ideas, and Reason perceives their agreements and
disagreements. But the truth is, that these agree-
ments and disagreements are in many instances, sim-
ple ideas, of which no analysis can be given; and of
which the origin must therefore be referred to Reason,
according to Locke's own doctrine.” This view, ac-
cording to which the Reason or Understanding is the
source of certain simple ideas, such as Identity, Causa-
tion, Equality, which ideas are necessarily involved
in the intuitive judgments which we form, when we
recognize fundamental truths of science, approaches
very near in effect to the doctrine which in several works
I have presented, of Fundamental Ideas belonging to
5 Stewart, Outlines of Moral Phil. p. 138.
216
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
each science, and manifesting themselves in the axioms
of the science. It may be observed, however, that by
attempting to enumerate these ideas and axioms, so as
to lay the foundations of the whole body of physical
science, and by endeavouring, as far as possible, to
simplify and connect each group of such Ideas, I
have at least given a more systematic form to this
consequences to which it necessarily leads, but which
do not appear to have been contemplated by the meta-
physicians of the Scotch school. But I gladly acknow-
ledge my obligations to the writers of that school;
and I trust that in the near agreement of my views
on such points with theirs, there is ground for believ-
to be that to which the minds of thoughtful men,
who have meditated on such subjects, are generally
tending.
4. As a further instance that such a tendency is
at work, I may make a quotation from an eminent
English philosophical writer of another school. “If
you will be at the pains," says Archbishop Whately,
“carefully to analyze the simplest description you hear
of any transaction or state of things, you will find that
the process which almost invariably takes place is, in
logical language, this: that each individual has in his
mind certain major premises or principles relative to
the subject in question ;—that observation of what
actually presents itself to the senses, supplies minor
premises; and that the statement given (and which is
reported as a thing experienced) consists, in fact, of
the conclusions drawn from the combinations of these
premises.” The major premises here spoken of are
the Fundamental Ideas, and the Axioms and Proposi-
tions to which they lead; and whatever is regarded
as a fact of observation is necessarily a conclusion in
which these propositions are assumed; for these con-
tain, as we have said, the conditions of our experience.
6 Whately, Polit. Econ. P. 76.
REACTION AGAINST SENSATIONISTS. 217
Our experience conforms to these axioms and their
consequences, whether or not the connexion be stated
in a logical manner, by means of premises and a con-
clusion.
5. The same persuasion is also suggested by the
course which the study of metaphysics has taken of
late years in France. In that country, as we have
seen, the Sensational System, which was considered as
the necessary consequence of the revolution beguu by
Locke, obtained a more complete ascendancy than it
did in England; and in that country too, the reaction,
among metaphysical and moral writers, when its time
came, was more decided and rapid than it was among
Locke's own countrymen. It would appear that M.
Laromiguière was one of the first to give expression to
this feeling, of the necessity of a modification of the
sensational philosophy. He began by professing him-
self the disciple of Condillac, even while he was almost
unconsciously subverting the fundamental principles
of that writer. And thus, as M. Cousin justly ob-
serves?, his opinions had the more powerful effect from
being presented, not as thwarting and contradicting,
but as sharing and following out the spirit of his age.
M. Laromiguière's work, entitled Essai sur les Facul-
tés de l'Ame, consists of lectures given to the Faculty
of Letters of the Academy of Paris, in the years 1811,
1812 and 1813. In the views which these lectures
present, there is much which the author has in com-
mon with Condillac. But he is led by his investiga-
tion to assert, that it is not true that sensation is the
sole fundamental element of our thoughts and our un-
derstanding. Attention also is requisite: and here we
have an element of quite another kind. For sensation
is passive; attention is active. Attention does not
spring out of sensation; the passive principle is not
the reason of the active principle. Activity and pas-
sivity are two facts entirely different. Nor can this
activity be defined or derived; being, as the author
7 Cousin, Fragmens Philosophiques, i. 53.
8 Ibid. i. 67.
218
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
says, a fundamental idea. The distinction is manifest
by its own nature; and we may find evidence of it in
the very forms of language. To look is more than to
see; to hearken is more than to hear. The French
language marks this distinction with respect to other
senses also. “On voit, et l'on regarde; on entend, et
l'on écoute; on sent, et l'on faire; on goûte, et l'on
savoure." And thus the mere sensation, or capacity
of feeling, is only the occasion on which the attention
is exercised; while the attention is the foundation of
all the operations of the understanding.
The reader of my works will have seen how much
I have insisted upon the activity of the mind,
as the necessary basis of all knowledge. In all ob-
servation and experience, the mind is active, and
by its activity apprehends all sensations in subor-
dination to its own ideas; and thus it becomes capa-
ble of collecting knowledge from phenomena, since
ideas involve general relations and connexions, which
sensations of themselves cannot involve. And thus
we see that, in this respect also, our philosophy
stands at that point to which the speculations of the
most reflecting men have of late constantly been
verging
6. M. Cousin himself, from whom we have quoted
the above account of Laromiguière, shares in this tend-
ency, and has argued very energetically and success-
fully against the doctrines of the Sensational School.
He has made it his office once more to bring into
notice among his countrymen, the doctrine of ideas as
the sources of knowledge; and has revived the study
of Plato, who may still be considered as one of the
great leaders of the ideal school. But the larger
portion of M. Cousin's works refers to questions
out of the reach of our present review, and it would
be unsuitable to dwell longer upon them in this
place.
7. We turn to speculations more closely connected
with our present subject. M. Ampère, a French man
of science, well entitled by his extensive knowledge,
and large and profound views, to deal with the philo-
REACTION AGAINST SENSATIONISTS. 219
"sophy of the sciences, published in 1834, his Essai sur
la Philosophie des Sciences, ou Exposition analytique
d'une Classification Naturelle de toutes les connaissances
Humaines. In this remarkable work we see strong
evidence of the progress of the reaction against the
system which derives our knowledge from sensation
only. The author starts from a maxim, that in class-
ing the sciences, we must not only regard the nature
of the objects about which each science is concerned,
but also the point of view under which it considers
them: that is, the ideas which each science involves.
M. Ampère also gives briefly his views of the intel-
lectual constitution of man; a subject on which he
had long and sedulously employed his thoughts; and
these views are far from belonging to the Sensational
School. Human thought, he says, is composed of phe-
nomena and of conceptions. Phenomena are external,
or sensitive; and internal, or active. Conceptions are
of four kinds; primitive, as space and motion, duration
and cause; objective, as our idea of matter and sub-
stance; onomatic, or those which we associate with
the general terms which language presents to us; and
explicative, by which we ascend to causes after a com-
parative study of phenomena. He teaches further,
that in deriving ideas from sensation, the mind is not
passive; but exerts an action which, when voluntary,
is called attention, but when it is, as it often is, inyo-
luntary, may be termed reaction.
I shall not dwell upon the examination of these
opinions'; but I may remark, that both in the recog-
nition of conceptions as an original and essential ele-
ment of the mind, and in giving a prominent place to
the active function of the mind, in the origin of our
knowledge, this view approaches to that which I have
presented in preceding works; although undoubtedly
with considerable differences.
8. The classification of the sciences which M.
See also the vigorous critique of Locke's Essay, by Lemaistre, Soirées de
St Petersbourg,
220
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Ampère proposes, is founded upon a consideration of
the sciences themselves; and is, the author conceives,
in accordance with the conditions of natural classifi-
cations, as exhibited in Botany and other sciences. It
is of a more symmetrical kind, and exhibits more steps
of subordination, than that to which I have been led;
it includes also practical Art as well as theoretical Sci-
ence; and it is extended to moral and political as well
as physical Sciences. It will not be necessary for me
here to examine it in detail: but I may remark, that
it is throughout a dichotonous division, each higher
member being subdivided into two lower ones, and so
on. In this way, M. Ampère obtains sciences of the
First Order, each of which is divided into two sciences
of the Second, and four of the Third Order. Thus
Mechanics is divided into Cinematics, Statics, Dyna-
mics, and Molecular Mechanics; Physics is divided
into Experimental Physics, Chemistry, Stereometry, and
Atomology; Geology is divided into Physical Geogra-
phy, Mineralogy, Geonomy, and Theory of the Earth.
Without here criticizing these divisions or their prin-
ciple, I may observe that Cinematics, the doctrine of
motion without reference to the force which produces
it, is a portion of knowledge which our investigation
has led us also to see the necessity of erecting into
a separate science; and which we have termed Pure
Mechanism. Of the divisions of Geology, Physical
Geography, especially as explained by M. Ampère, is
certainly a part of the subject, both important and
tolerably distinct from the rest. Geonomy contains
what we have termed in the History, Descriptive Geo-
logy ;-the exhibition of the facts separate from the
inquiry into their causes; while our Physical Geology
agrees with M. Ampère's Theory of the Earth. Mine-
realogy appears to be placed by him in a different place
from that which it occupies in our scheme: but in
fact, he uses the term for a different science; he
applies it to the classification not of simple minerals,
but of rocks, which is a science auxiliary to geology,
and which has sometimes been called Petralogy. What
we have termed Mineralogy, M. Ampère unites with
REACTION AGAINST SENSATIONISTS. 221
Chemistry. “It belongs," he says, “to Chemistry,
and not to Mineralogy, to inquire how many atoms of
silicium and of oxygen compose silica; to tell us that
its primitive form is a rhombohedron of certain angles,
that it is called quartz, &c.; leaving, on one hand, to
Molecular Geometry the task of explaining the differ-
ent secondary forms which may result from the pri-
mitive form ; and on the other hand, leaving to Mine-
ralogy the office of describing the different varieties of
quartz, and the rocks in which they occur, according
as the quartz is crystallized, transparent, coloured,
amorphous, solid, or in sand.” But we may remark,
that by adopting this arrangement, we separate from
Mineralogy almost all the knowledge, and absolutely
all the general knowledge, which books professing to
treat of that science have. usually contained. The
consideration of Mineralogical Classifications, which,
as may be seen in the History of Science, is so curious
and instructive, is forced into the domain of Chemistry,
although many of the persons who figure in it were
not at all properly chemists. And we lose, in this
way, the advantage of that peculiar office which, in
our arrangement, Mineralogy fills; of forming a rigor-
ous transition from the sciences of classification to
those which consider the mathematical properties of
bodies; and connecting the external characters and
the internal constitution of bodies by means of a system
of important general truths. I conceive, therefore,
that our disposition of this science, and our mode of
applying the name, are far more convenient than those
of M. Ampère.
9. We have seen the reaction against the pure sen-
sational doctrines operating very powerfully in England
and in France. But it was in Germany that these
doctrines were most decidedly rejected; and systems
in extreme opposition to these put forth with confi-
dence, and received with applause. Of the authors
who gave this impulse to opinions in that country, Kant
10 Ampère, Essai, p. 210.
U
222
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
was the first, and by far the most important. I have
in the History of Ideas (b. iii. c. 3), endeavoured to ex-
plain how he was aroused, by the skepticism of Hume,
to examine wherein the fallacy lay which appeared to
invalidate all reasonings from effect to cause; and how
this inquiry terminated in a conviction that the foun-
dations of our reasonings on this and similar points were
to be sought in the mind, and not in the phenomena ;-
in the subject, and not in the object. The revolution
in the customary mode of contemplating human know-
ledge which Kant's opinions involved, was most com-
plete. He himself, with no small justice, compares 11
it with the change produced by Copernicus's theory
of the solar system. " Hitherto,” he says, “men have
assumed that all our knowledge must be regulated
by the objects of it; yet all attempts to make out
anything concerning objects à priori by means of our
conceptions,” (as for instance their geometrical proper-
ties) “must, on this foundation, be unavailing. Let
us then try whether we cannot make out something
more in the problems of metaphysics, by assuming
that objects must be regulated by our knowledge,
since this agrees better with that supposition, which
we are prompted to make, that we can know some-
thing of them d priori. This thought is like that of
Copernicus, who, when he found that nothing was to
be made of the phenomena of the heavens so long
as everything was supposed to turn about the spec-
tator, tried whether the matter might not be better
explained if he made the spectator turn, and left the
stars at rest. We may make the same essay in meta-
physics, as to what concerns our intuitive knowledge
respecting objects. If our apprehension of objects
must be regulated by the properties of the objects, I
cannot comprehend how we can possibly know any-
thing about them d priori. But if the object, as ap-
prehended by us, be regulated by the constitution of
our faculties of apprehension, I can readily conceive
11 Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, Pref. p. xv.
REACTION AGAINST SENSATIONISTS.
223
this possibility." From this he infers that our expe-
rience must be regulated by our conceptions.
Io. This view of the nature of knowledge soon
superseded entirely the doctrines of the Sensational
School among the metaphysicians of Germany. These
philosophers did not gradually modify and reject the
dogmas of Locke and Condillac, as was done in England
and France ; nor did they endeavour to ascertain
the extent of the empire of Ideas by a careful survey
of its several provinces, as we have been doing in
this series of works. The German metaphysicians
saw at once that Ideas and Things, the Subjective
and the Objective elements of our knowledge, were,
by Kant's system, brought into opposition and cor-
relation, as equally real and equally indispensable.
Seeing this, they rushed at once to the highest
and most difficult problem of philosophy,—to deter-
mine what this correlation is ;-to discover how Ideas
and Things are at the same time opposite and iden-
tical ;-how the world; while it is distinct from and
independent of us, is yet, as an object of our know-
ledge, governed by the conditions of our thoughts.
The attempts to solve this problem, taken in the widest
sense, including the forms which it assumes in Morals,
Politics, the Arts, and Religion, as well as in the
Material Sciences, have, since that time, occupied the
most profound speculators of Germany; and have given
rise to a number of systems, which, rapidly succeeding
each other, have, each in its day, been looked upon
as a complete solution of the problem. To trace the
characters of these various systems, does not belong
to the business of the present chapter: my task is
ended when I have shown, as I have now done, how
the progress of thought in the philosophical world,
followed from the earliest up to the present time, has
12 The sensational system never
acquired in Germany the ascendancy
which it obtained in England and
France; but I am compelled here to
pass over the history of philosophy
in Germany, except so far as it af-
fects ourselves.
224
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
led to that recognition of the co-existence and joint
necessity of the two opposite elements of our know-
ledge; and when I have pointed out processes adapted
to the extension of our knowledge, which a true view
of its nature has suggested or may suggest.
The latter portion of this task occupies the third
book of the Novum Organon Renovatum. With regard
sophy, I shall add something in a subsequent chapter:
and I shall also venture to trace further than I have
yet done, the bearing of the philosophy of science
upon the theological view of the universe and the
moral and religious condition of man.
CHAPTER XXI.
FURTHER ADVANCE OF THE SENSATIONAL SCHOOL.
M. AUGUSTE COMTE.
T SHALL now take the liberty of noticing the views
1 published by a contemporary writer; not that it
forms part of my design to offer any criticism upon
the writings of all those who have treated of those
subjects on which we are now employed; but because
we can more distinctly in this manner point out the
contrasts and ultimate tendencies of the several sys-
tens of opinion which have come under our survey:
and since from among these systems we have endea-
voured to extract and secure the portion of truth
which remains in each, and to reject the rest, we are
led to point out the errors on which our attention is
thus fixed, in recent as well as older writers.
M. Auguste Comte published in 1830 the first, and
in 1835 the second volume of his Cours de Philosophie
Positive; of which the aim is not much different from
that of the present work, since as he states (p. viii.)
such a title as the Philosophy of the Sciences would
describe a part of his object, and would be inappro-
priate only by excluding that portion (not yet pub-
lished) which refers to speculations concerning social
relations.
1. M. Comte on Three States of Science.--By em-
ploying the term Philosophie Positive, he wishes to
distinguish the philosophy involved in the present
state of our sciences from the previous forms of human
knowledge. For according to him, each branch of
knowledge passes, in the course of man's history,
through three different states; it is first theological,
then metaphysical, then positive. By the latter term
226
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
he implies a state which includes nothing but general
representations of facts;—phenomena arranged accord-
ing to relations of succession and resemblance. This
“positive philosophy” rejects all inquiry after causes,
which inquiry he holds to be void of sense' and inac-
cessible. All such conceptions belong to the “meta-
physical” state of science which deals with abstract
forces, real entities, and the like. Still more completely
does he reject, as altogether antiquated and absurd,
the “theological” view of phenomena. Indeed he
conceives” that any one's own consciousness of what
passes within himself is sufficient to convince him of
the truth of the law of the three phases through which
knowledge must pass. “Does not each of us,” he
says, “in contemplating his own history, recollect
that he has been successively a theologian in his in-
fancy, a metaphysician in his youth, and a physicist in
his ripe age? This may easily be verified for all men
who are up to the level of their time.”
It is plain from such statements, and from the whole
course of his work, that M. Comte holds, in their most
rigorous form, the doctrines to which the speculations
of Locke and his successors led; and which tended,
as we have seen, to the exclusion of all ideas except
those of number and resemblance. As M. Comte
refuses to admit into his philosophy the fundamental
idea of Cause, he of course excludes most of the other
ideas, which are, as we endeavoured to show, the
foundations of science; such as the ideas of Media by
which secondary qualities are made knowu to us; the
ideas of Chemical Attraction, of Polar Forces, and
the like. He would reduce all science to the mere
expression of laws of phenomena, expressed in formula
of space, time, and number; and would condemn as
unmeaning, and as belonging to an obsolete state of
science, all endeavours to determine the causes of
phenomena, or even to refer them to any of the other
ideas just mentioned.
ii. p. 14.
2 i. p. 7.
i M. AUGUSTE COMTE. 227
2. ·M. Comte rejects the Search of Causes. — In
a previous workI have shown, I trust. decisively,
that it is the genuine office of science to inquire
into the causes as well as the laws of phenomena;
- that such an inquiry cannot be avoided; and
that it has been the source of almost all the science
we possess. I need not here repeat the arguments
there urged; but I may make a remark or two upon
M. Comte's hypothesis, that all science is first “meta-
physical” and then “positive;” since it is in virtue
of this hypothesis that he rejects the investigation of
causes, as worthy only of the infancy of science. All
discussions concerning ideas, M. Comte would condemn
as “metaphysical,” and would consider as mere pre-
ludes to positive philosophy. Now I venture to assert,
on the contrary, that discussions concerning ideas, and
real discoveries, have in every science gone hand in
hand. There is no science in which the pretended
order of things can be pointed out. There is no science
in which the discoveries of the laws of phenomena,
when once begun, have been carried on independently
of discussions concerning ideas. There is no science
in which the expression of the laws of phenomena can
at this time dispense with ideas which have acquired
their place in science in virtue of metaphysical con-
siderations. There is no science in which the most
active disquisitions concerning ideas did not come
after, not before, the first discovery of laws of pheno-
mena. In Astronomy, the discovery of the pheno-
menal laws of the epicyclical motions of the heavens
led to assumptions of the metaphysical principle of
equable circular motions: Kepler's discoveries would
never have been made but for his metaphysical notions.
These discoveries of the laws of phenomena did not
lead immediately to Newton's theory, becarise a century
of metaphysical discussions was requisite as a prepa-
ration. Newton then discovered, not merely a law
of phenomena, but a cause; and therefore he was the
3 list. Ind. Sc. b. xi. C. vii,
Q2
228
PIIILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
greatest of discoverers. The same is the case in Op-
tics; the ancients possessed some share of our know-
ledge of facts; but meddled little with the metaphy-
sical reasonings of the subject. In modern times
when men began to inquire into the nature of light,
they soon extended their knowledge of its laws. When
this series of discoveries had come to a pause, a new
series of brilliant discoveries of laws of phenomena
went on, inseparably connected with a new series of
views of the nature and cause of light. In like man-
ner, the most modern discoveries in chemistry involve
indispensably the idea of polar forces. The metaphy-.
sics (in M. Comte's sense) of each subject advances in
a parallel line with the knowledge of physical laws.
The Explication of Conceptions inust go on, as we
have already shown, at the same rate as the Colligation
of Facts.
M. Comte will say that Newton's discovery of
gravitation only consists in exhibiting the astronomical
phenomena of the universe as one single fact under
different points of view. But this fact involves the
idea of force, that is, of cause. And that this idea
is not a mere modification of the ideas of time and
space, we have shown : if it were so, how could it
lead to the axiom that attraction is mutual, an indis-
pensable part of the Newtonian theory? M. Comte
says that we do not know what attraction is, since we
can only define it by identical phrases : but this is just
as true of space, or time, or motion; and is in fact
exactly the characteristic of a fundamental idea. We
do not obtain such ideas from definitions, but we possess
them not the less truly because we cannot define
them.
That M. Comte's hypothesis is historically false, is
obvious by such examples as I have mentioned. Meta-
physical discussions have been essential steps in the
progress of each science. If we arbitrarily reject all
these portions of scientific history as useless trifling,
4 P. 15.
5 P. 16.
M. AUGUSTE COMTE.
229
belonging to the first rude attempts at knowledge, we
shall not only distort the progress of things, but per-
vert the plainest facts. Of this we have an example
in M. Comte's account of Kepler's mechanical specu-
lations. We have seen, in the History of Physical
Astronomy, that Kepler's second law, (that the planets
describe areas about the sun proportional to the times.)
was proved by him, by means of calculations founded
on the observations of Tycho; but that the mechani-
cal reason of it was not assigned till a later period,
when it appeared as the first proposition of Newton's
Principia. It is plain from the writings of Kepler,
that it was impossible for him to show how this law
resulted from the forces which were in action; since
the forces which he considered were not those tending
to the centre, which really determine the property in
question, but forces exerted by the sun in the direction
of the planet's motion, without which forces Kepler
conceived that the motion could not go on. In short,
the state of mechanical science in Kepler's time was
such that no demonstration of the law could be given.
The terms in which such a demonstration must be
expressed had not at that time acquired a precise
significance; and it was in virtue of many subsequent
metaphysical discussions (as M. Comte would teim
them) that these terms became capable of expressing
sound mechanical reasoning. Kepler did indeed pre-
tend to assign what he called a "physical proof” of
his law, depending upon this, that the sun's force is
less at greater distances; a condition which does not
at all influence the result. Thus Kepler's reason for
his law proves nothing but the confusion of thought in
which he was involved on such subjects. Yet M. Comte
assigns to Kepler the credit of having proved this law
by sound mechanical reasoning, as well as established
it as a matter of factº. “This discovery by Kepler,"
6 M. Comte's statement is so en
tirely at variance with the fact that
I must quote it here. (Phil. Pos.
vol. i. p. 705.)
“Le second théorème général de
dynamique consiste dans le celébre
et important principe des aires, dont
le première idée est due à Kepler,
230
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERI.
he adds, “is the inore remarkable, inasmuch as it oc-
eurred before the science of dynamics had really been
created by Galileo.” We may remark that inasmuch
as M. Comte perceived this incongruity in the facts as
he stated them, it is the more remarkable that he did
not examine them more carefully.
3. Causes in Physics. The condemnation of the
inquiry into causes which is conveyed in M. Comte's
notion of the three stages of Science, he again ex-
presses more in detail, in stating? what he calls his
Fundamental theory of hypotheses. This “theory” is, that
we may employ hypotheses in our natural philosophy,
but these hypotheses must always be such as admit of
a positive verification. We must have no suppositions
concerning the agents by which effects are produced.
All such suppositions have an anti-scientific charac-
ter, and can only impede the real progress of physics.
There can be no use in the ethers and imaginary fluids
to which some persons refer the phenomena of heat,
light, electricity and magnetism. And in agreement
with this doctrine, M. Comte in his account of the
qui découvrit et démontra forte sim- sante de l'action sur le corps d'un force
plement cette propriété pour le cas dirigée sans cesse vers ce point.”
du mouvement d'une molecule u. There is not a trace of the above
nique, ou en d'autres terms, d'un propositions in the work De Stella
corps dont tous les points se meu- Martis, which contains Kepler's dis-
vent identiquement. Kepler établit, covery of his law, nor, I am con-
par les considérations les plus élé- vinced, in any other of Kepler's
mentaires, qui si la force accélératrice works. He is everywhere constant
totale dont une molecule est animée to his conceptions of the magnetic
tend constamment vers un point fixé, virtue residing in the sun, by means
le rayon vecteur du mobile décrit of which the sun, revolving on his
autour de ce point des aires égales en axis, carries the planets round with
temps egaux, de telle sorte que l'aire him. M. Comte's statement so exactly
décrite au bout d'un temps quel- expresses Newton's propositions, that
conque croît proportionellement à ce one is led to suspect some extraordi-
temps. Il fit voir en outre que reci- nary mistake, by which what should
proquement, si une semblable réla- have been said of the one was trans-
tion a été verifiée dans le mouve- ferred to the other.
ment d'un corps par rapport à un 7 Vol ü. p. 433.
certain point, c'est une preuve suffi- 8 Vol. ii, 640.
M. AUGUSTE COMTE.
231.
Science of Optics, condemns, as utterly unphiloso-
phical and absurd, both the theory of emission and
that of undulation.
To this we reply, that theory of one kind or other
is indispensable to the expression of the phenomena;
and that when the laws are expressed, and apparently
explained, by means of a theory, to forbid us to in-
quire whether it be really true or false, is a pedantic
and capricious limitation of our knowledge, to which
the intellect of man neither can nor should submit.
If any one holds the adoption of one or other of these
theories to be indifferent, let him express the laws of
phenomena of diffraction in terms of the theory of
emissionº. If any one rejects the doctrine of undula-
tion, let him point out some other way of connecting
double refraction with polarization. And surely no
man of science will contend that the beautiful branch
of science which refers to that connexion is not a
portion of our positive knowledge.
M. Comte's contempt for the speculations of the
undulationists seems to have prevented his acquainting
himself with their reasonings, and even with the laws
of phenomena on which they have reasoned, although
these form by far the most striking and beautiful
addition which Science has received in modern times.
He adduces, as an insuperable objection to the undu-
latory theory, a difficulty which is fully removed by
calculation in every work on the subject:—the ex-
istence of shadow 10. He barely mentions the subject of
diffraction, and Young's law of interferences ;-speaks
of Fresnel as having applied this principle to the
phenomena of coloured rings, “on which the ingenious
labours of Newton left much to desire;" as if Fresnel's
labours on this subject had been the supplement of
those of Newton: and after regretting that “this
principle of interferences has not yet been distinctly
9 I venture to offer this problem ;-
to express the laws of the phenomena
of diffraction without the hypothesis
of undulations;—as a challenge to
any one who holds such hypothesis
to be unphilosophical.
10 ü. p. 641.
232
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
disentangled from chemical conceptions on the nature
of light,” concludes his chapter. He does not even
mention the phenomena of dipolarization, of circular
and elliptical polarization, or of the optical properties
of crystals; discoveries of laws of phenomena quite as
remarkable as any which can be mentioned.
M. Comte's favourite example of physical research
is Thermotics, and especially Fourier's researches with
regard to heat. It is shown in the History of Ther-
motics, that the general phenomena of radiation re-
quired the assumption of a fluid to express them;
as appears in the theory of exchanges 12. And the ex-
planation of the principal laws of radiation, which
Fourier gives, depends upon the conception of material
molecular radiation. The flux of caloric, of which
Fourier speaks, cannot be conceived otherwise than as
implying a material flow. M. Comte apologizes 13 for
this expression, as too figurative, and says that it
merely indicates a fact. But what is the flow of a
current of fluid except a fact? And is it not evident
that without such expressions, and the ideas corre-
sponding to them, Fourier could neither have conveyed
nor conceived his theory?
In concluding this discussion it must be recollected,
that though it is a most narrow and untenable rule to
say that we will admit no agency of ethers and fluids
into philosophy; yet the reality of such agents is only
to be held in the way, and to the extent, which the
laws of phenomena indicate. It is not only allowable,
but inevitable to assume, as the vehicle of heat and
light, a medium possessing some of the properties of
more familiar kinds of matter. But the idea of such
a medium, which we possess, and on which we cannot
but reason, can be fully developed only by an assi-
duous study of the cases in which it is applicable. It
may be, that as science advances, all our knowledge
may converge to one general and single aspect of the
11 ii. p. 673.
12 Hist. Ind. Sc. ii. 489, b. X. c. i.
18 ii. p. 561.
M. AUGUSTE COMTE.
233
universe. We abandon and reject this hope, if we
refuse to admit those ideas which must be our step-
ping-stones in advancing to such a point: and we no
less frustrate such an expectation, if we allow ourselves
to imagine that from our present position we can stride
at once to the summit.
4. Causes in other Sciences.-—But if it is, in the
sciences just mentioned, impracticable to reduce our
knowledge to laws of phenomena alone, without refer-
ring to causes, media, and other agencies; how much
more plainly is it impossible to confine our thoughts
to phenomena, and to laws of succession and resem-
blance, in other sciences, as chemistry, physiology, and
geology? Who shall forbid us, or why should we be
forbidden, to inquire whether chemical and galvanic
forces are identical; whether irritability is a peculiar
vital power; whether geological causes have been uni-
form or paroxysmal? To exclude such inquiries, would
be to secure ourselves from the poison of error by
abstaining from the banquet of truth :-it would be to
attempt to feed our minds with the meagre diet of
space and number, because we may find too delightful
a relish in such matters as cause and end, symmetry
and affinity, organization and development.
Thus M. Comte's arrangement of the progress of
science as successively metaphysical and positive, is
contrary to history in fact, and contrary to sound phi-
losophy in principle. Nor is there any better founda-
tion for his statement that theological views are to be
found only in the rude infantine condition of human
knowledge, and vanish as science advances. Even in
material sciences this is not the case. We have shown
in the chapter on Final Causes, that physiologists have
been directed in their remarks by the conviction of a
purpose in every part of the structure of animals; and
that this idea, which had its rise after the first obser-
vations, has gone on constantly gaining strength and
clearness, so that it is now the basis of a large portion
of the science. We have seen, too, in the Book on the
palæetiological sciences, that the researches of that class
do by no means lead us to reject an origin of the series
234
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
of events, nor to suppose this origin to be included in
the series of natural laws. Science has not at all
shown any reason for denying either the creation or
the purpose of the universe.
This is true of those aspects of the universe which
have become the subjects of rigorous science: but how
small a portion of the whole do they form! Especially
how minute a proportion does our knowledge bear to
our ignorance, if we admit into science, as M. Comte
advises, only the laws of phenomena! Even in the
best explored fields of science, how few such laws do
we know! Meteorology, climate, terrestrial magnetism,
the colours and other properties of bodies, the con-
ditions of musical and articulate sound, and a thou-
sand other facts of physics, are not defined by any
known laws. In physiology we may readily convince
ourselves how little we know of laws, since we can
hardly study one species without discovering some un-
guessed property, or apply the microscope without
seeing some new structure in the best known organs.
And when we go on to social and moral and political
matters, we may well doubt whether any one single
rigorous rule of phenomena has ever been stated, al-
though op such subjects man's ideas have been busily
and eagerly working ever since his origin. What a
wanton and baseless assumption it would be, then, to
reject those suggestions of a Governor of the universe
which we derive from man's moral and spiritual na-
ture, and from the institutions of society, because we
fancy we see in the small field of our existing “positive
knowledge” a tendency to exclude “theological views!”
Because we can explain the motion of the stars by a
general Law which seems to imply no hyperphysical
agency, and can trace a few more limited laws in
other properties of matter, we are exhorted to reject
convictions irresistibly suggested to us by our bodies
and our souls, by history and antiquities, by conscience
and human law.
5. M. Comte's practical philosophy. — It is not
merely as a speculative doctrine that M. Comte urges
the necessity of our thus following the guidance of
M. AUGUSTE COMTE.
235
<spositive philosophy.” The fevered and revolutionary
condition of human society at present arises, according
to him", from the simultaneous employment of three
kinds of philosophy radically incompatible ;-theolo-
gical, metaphysical, and positive philosophy. The
remedy for the evil is to reject the two former, and to
refer everything to that positive philosophy, of which
the destined triumph cannot be doubtful. In like
manner, our European education "5, still essentially
theological, metaphysical, and literary, must be re-
placed by a positive education, suited to the spirit of
our epoch.
With these practical consequences of M. Comte's
philosophy we are not here concerned: but the notice
of them may serve to show how entirely the rejection
of the theological view pervades his system, and how
closely this rejection is connected with the principles
which lead him also to reject the fundamental ideas of
the sciences as we have presented them.
6. M. Comte on Hypotheses. — In the detail of
M. Comte's work, I do not find any peculiar or novel
remarks on the induction by which the sciences are
formed; except we may notice, as such, his permission
of hypotheses to the inquirer, already referred to.
“There can only be," he says, “two general modes
fitted to reveal to us, in a direct and entirely rational
manner, the true law of any phenomenon ;—either the
immediate analysis of this phenomenon, or its exact
and evident relation to some more extended law, pre-
viously established;—in a word, induction, or deduc-
tion. But both these ways would certainly be insuf-
ficient, even with regard to the simplest phenomenon,
in the eyes of any one who fully comprehends the
essential difficulties of the intimate study of nature, if
we did not often begin by anticipating the result, and
making a provisory supposition, at first essentially
conjectural, even with respect to some of the notions
which constitute the final object of inquiry. Hence
14 i. 50.
15 i. 41.
16 zi. 433.
236
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
the introduction, which is strictly indispensable, of
hypotheses in natural philosophy." We have already
seen that the "permissio intellectus" had been noticed
as a requisite step in discovery, as long before as the
time of Bacon.
7. M. Comte's Classification of Sciences.--I do not
think it necessary to examine in detail M. Comte's
views of the philosophy of the different sciences; but
it may illustrate the object of the present work, to
make a remark upon his attempt to establish a distinc-
tion between physical and chemical science. This dis-
tinction he makes to consist in three points ?;-that
Physics considers general and Chemistry special pro-
perties;—that Physics considers masses and Chemistry
molecules ;—that in Physics the mode of arrangement
of the molecules remains constant, while in Chemistry
this arrangement is necessarily altered. M. Comte
however allows that these lines of distinction are vague
and insecure; for, among many others, magnetism, a
special property, belongs to physics, and breaks down
his first criterion; and molecular attractions are a con-
stant subject of speculation in physics, so that the
second distinction cannot be insisted on. To which
we may add that the greater portion of chemistry does
not attend at all to the arrangement of the molecules,
so that the third character is quite erroneous. The
real distinction of these branches of science is, as we
have seen, the fundamental ideas which they employ.
Physics deals with relations of space, time, and num-
ber, media, and scales of qualities, according to intens-
ity and other differences; while chemistry has for its
subject elements and attractions as shown in compo-
sition; and polarity, though in different senses, belongs
to both. The failure of this attempt of M. Comte at dis-
tinguishing these provinces of science by their objects,
may be looked upon as an illustration of the impossi-
bility of establishing a philosophy of the sciences on
any other ground than the ideas which they involve.
17 Phil. Pos. ii. 392-398.
M. AUGUSTE COMTE.
237
We have thus traced to its extreme point, so far as
the nature of science is concerned, one of those two
antagonistic opinions, of which the struggle began in
the outset of philosophy, and has continued during the
whole of her progress ;-namely, the pinions which
l'espectively make our sensations and our ideas the
origin of our knowledge. The former, if it be consist-
ent with itself, must consider all knowledge of causes
as impossible, since no sensation can give us the idea
of cause. And when this opinion is applied to science,
it reduces it to the mere investigation of laws of phe-
nomena, according to relations of space, time, and
number. I purposely abstain, as far as possible, from
the consideration of the other consequences, not strictly
belonging to the physical sciences, which were drawn
from the doctrine that all our ideas are only trans-
formed sensations. The materialism, the atheism, the
sensualist morality, the anarchical polity, which some
of the disciples of the Sensational School erected upon
the fundamental dogmas of their sect, do not belong to
our present subject, and are matters too weighty to be
treated of as mere accessories.
The above Remarks were written before I had seen
the third volume of M. Comte's work, or the subse-
quent volumes. But I do not find, in anything which
those volumes contain, any ground for altering what I
have written. Indeed they are occupied altogether
with subjects which do not come within the field of my
present speculations.
CHAPTER XXII.
MR. MILL'S Logic'.
. THE History of the Inductive Sciences was pub-
I lished in 1837, and the Philosophy of the Induc-
tive Sciences in 1840. In 1843 Mr. Mill published his
System of Logic, in which he states that without the
aid derived from the facts and ideas in my volumes,
the corresponding portion of his own would most pro-
bably not have been written, and quotes parts of what
I have said with commendation. He also, however,
dissents from me on several important and funda-
mental points, and argues against what I have said
thereon. I conceive that it may tend to bring into a
clearer light the doctrines which I have tried to estab-
lish, and the truth of them, if I discuss some of the
differences between us, which I shall proceed to do?
Mr. Mill's work has had, for a work of its abstruse
character, a circulation so extensive, and admirers so
numerous and so fervent, that it needs no commenda-
tion of mine. But if my main concern at present had
not been with the points in which Mr. Mill differs
from me, I should have had great pleasure in pointing
out passages, of which there are many, in which Mr.
Mill appears to me to have been very happy in pro-
moting or in expressing philosophical truth.
There is one portion of his work indeed which
tends to give it an interest of a wider kind than be-
[ A System of Logic, Ratiocinative
and Inductive, being a connected view
of the Principles of Evidence, and of
the Methods of Scientific Investiga
tion. By John Stuart Mill.)
2 These Remarks were published
in 1849, under the title Of Induction,
with especial reference to Mr. J. .
Mill's System of Logic.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
239
longs to that merely scientific truth to which I pur-
posely and resolutely confined my speculations in the
works to which I have referred. Mr. Mill has intro-
duced into his work a direct and extensive considera-
tion of the modes of dealing with moral and political
as well as physical questions; and I have no doubt
that this part of his book has, for many of his readers,
a more lively interest than any other. Such a com-
prehensive scheme seems to give to doctrines respect-
ing science a value and a purpose which they cannot
have, so long as they are restricted to mere material
sciences. I still retain the opinion, however, upon
which I formerly acted, that the philosophy of science
is to be extracted from the portions of science which
are universally allowed to be most certainly estab-
lished, and that those are the physical sciences. I am
very far from saying, or thinking, that there is no
such thing as Moral and Political Science, or that no
method can be suggested for its promotion; but I
think that by attempting at present to include the
Moral Sciences in the same formulæ with the Phy-
sical, we open far more controversies than we close;
and that in the moral as in the physical sciences, the
first step towards showing how truth is to be disco-
vered, is to study some portion of it which is assented
to so as to be beyond controversy.
I. What is Induction ?-1. Confining myself, then,
to the material sciences, I shall proceed to offer my
remarks on Induction with especial reference to Mr.
Mill's work. And in order that we may, as I have
said, proceed as intelligibly as possible, let us begin
by considering what we mean by Induction, as a mode
of obtaining truth; and let us note whether there is
any difference between Mr. Mill and me on this sub-
ject.
“For the purposes of the present inquiry,” Mr. Mill
says (i. 3473), “Induction may be defined the opera-
.
3 My references are throughout the volume and the page of Mr. Mill's
· (except when otherwise expressed) to first dition of his Logic.
240
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
tion of discovering and forming general propositions :"
meaning, as appears by the context, the discovery of
them from particular facts. He elsewhere (i. 370)
terms it “generalization from experience:” and again
he speaks of it with greater precision as the inference
of a more general proposition from less general ones.
2. Now to these definitions and descriptions I
assent as far as they go; though, as I shall have to
remark, they appear to me to leave unnoticed a fea-
ture which is very important, and which occurs in all
cases of Induction, so far as we are concerned with it.
Science, then, consists of general propositions, inferred
from particular facts, or from less general propositions,
by Induction; and it is our object to discern the na-
ture and laws of Induction in this sense. That the
propositions are general, or are more general than the
facts from which they are inferred, is an indispensable
part of the notion of Induction, and is essential to any
discussion of the process, as the mode of arriving at
Science, that is, at a body of general truths.
3. I am obliged therefore to dissent from Mr. Mill
when he includes, in his notion of Induction, the pro-
cess by which we arrive at individual facts from other
facts of the same order of particularity.
Such inference is, at any rate, not Induction alone;
if it be Induction at all, it is Induction applied to an
example.
For instance, it is a general law, obtained by In-
duction from particular facts, that a body falling ver-
tically downwards from rest, describes spaces propor-
tional to the squares of the times. But that a par-
ticular body will fall through 16 feet in one second
and 64 feet in two seconds, is not an induction simply,
it is a result obtained by applying the inductive law
to a particular case.
But further, such a process is often not induction
at all. That a ball striking another ball directly will
communicate to it as much momentum as the striking
ball itself loses, is a law established by induction : but
if, from habit or practical skill, I make one billiard-
ball strike another, so as to produce the velocity which
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
241
I wish, without knowing or thinking of the general
law, the term Induction cannot then be rightly ap-
plied. If I know the law and act upon it, I have in
my mind both the general induction and its particular
application. But if I act by the ordinary billiard-
player's skill, without thinking of momentum or law,
there is no Induction in the case.
4. This distinction becomes of importance, in re-
ference to Mr. Mill's doctrine, because he has extended
his use of the term Induction, not only to the cases in
which the general induction is consciously applied to
a particular instance; but to the cases in which the
particular instance is dealt with by means of expe-
rience, in that rude sense in which experience can be
asserted of brutes; and in which, of course, we can in
no way imagine that the law is possessed or under-
stood, as a general proposition. He has thus, as I
conceive, overlooked the broad and essential difference
between speculative knowledge and practical action;
and has introduced cases which are quite foreign to
the idea of science, alongside with cases from which
we may hope to obtain some views of the nature of
science and the processes by which it must be formed.
5. Thus (ii. 232) he says, “This inference of one
particular fact from another is a case of induction.
It is of this sort of induction that brutes are capable.”
And to the same purpose he had previously said (i.
251), “He [the burnt child who shuns the fire] is not
generalizing: he is inferring a particular from parti-
culars. In the same way also, brutes reason... not
only the burnt child, but the burnt dog, dreads the
fire.”
6. This confusion, (for such it seems to me,) of
knowledge with practical tendencies, is expressed more
in detail in other places. Thus he says (i. 118), “I
cannot dig the ground unless I have an idea of the
ground and of a spade, and of all the other things I
am operating upon.”
7. This appears to me to be a use of words which
can only tend to confuse our idea of knowledge by ob-
242
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
It seems to me quite false to say that I cannot dig the
ground, unless I have an idea of the ground and of my
spade. Are we to say that we cannot walk the ground,
unless we have an idea of the ground, and of our feet,
and of our shoes, and of the muscles of our legs? Are
we to say that a mole cannot dig the ground, unless
he has an idea of the ground and of the suout and
paws with which he digs it? Are we to say that a
pholas cannot perforate a rock, unless he have an idea
of the rock, and of the acid with which he corrodes it?
8. This appears to me, as I have said, to be a line
of speculation which can lead to nothing but confusion.
The knowledge concerning which I wish to inquire is
human knowledge. And in order that I may have
any chance of success in the inquiry, I find it neces-
sary to single out that kind of knowledge which is
especially and distinctively human. Hence, I pass by,
in this part of my investigation, all the knowledge, if
it is to be so called, which man has in no other way
than brutes have it ;-all that merely shows itself in
action. For though action may be modified by habit,
and habit by experience, in animals as well as in men,
such experience, so long as it retains that merely prac-
tical form, is no part of the materials of science.
Knowledge in a general form, is alone knowledge for
that purpose; and to that, therefore, I must confine
my attention ; at least till I have made some progress
in ascertaining its nature and laws, and am thus pre-
pared to compare such knowledge,hunar Tonowledge
properly so called, with mere animal tendencies to
action ; or even with practical skill which does not
include, as for the inost part practical skill does not
include, speculative knowledge.
9. And thus, I accept Mr. Mill's definition of In-
duction only in its first and largest form; and reject,
as useless and mischievous for our purposes, his exten-
sion of the term to the practical influence which expe-
rience of one fact exercises upon a creature dealing
with similar facts. Such influence cannot be resolved
into ideas and induction, without, as I conceive, mak-
ing all our subsequent investigation vague and hete-
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
243
rogeneous, indefinite and inconclusive. If we must
speak of animals as learning from experience, we may
at least abstain from applying to them terms which
imply that they learn, in the same way in which men
learn astronomy from the stars, and chemistry from
the effects of mixture and heat. And the same may
be said of the language which is to be used concerning
what men learn, when their learning merely shows
itself in action, and does not exist as a general thought.
Induction must not be applied to such cases. Induc-
tion must be confined to cases where we have in our
minds general propositions, in order that the sci-
ences, which are our most instructive examples of the
process we have to consider, may be, in any definite
and proper sense, Inductive Sciences.
10. Perhaps some persons may be inclined to say
that this difference of opinion, as to the extent of
meaning which is to be given to the term Induction,
is a question merely of words; a matter of definition
only. This is a mode in which men in our time often
seem inclined to dispose of philosophical questions;
thus evading the task of forming an opinion upon such
questions, while they retain the air of looking at the
subject from a more comprehensive point of view.
But as I have elsewhere said, such questions of defini-
tion are never questions of definition merely. A pro-
position is always implied along with the definition ;
and the truth of the proposition depends upon the
settlement of the definition. This is the case in the
we mean that kind of Induction by which the sciences
now existing among men have been constructed. On
this account it is, that we cannot include, in the mean-
ing of the term, mere practical tendencies or practical
habits; for science is not constructed of these. No
accumulation of these would make up any of the ac-
knowledged sciences. The elements of such sciences
are something of a kind different from practical habits.
The elements of such sciences are principles which we
know; truths which can be contemplated as being
true. Practical habits, practical skill, instincts and
R 2
244
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
the like, appear in action, and in action only. Such
endowments or acquirements show themselves when
the occasion for action arrives, and then, show them-
selves in the act; without being put, or being capable
of being put, in the form of truths contemplated by the
intellect. But the elements and materials of Science
are necessary truths contemplated by the intellect. It
is by consisting of such elements and such materials,
that Science is Science. Hence a use of the term In-
duction which requires us to obliterate this distinction,
must make it impossible for us to arrive at any con-
sistent and intelligible view of the nature of Science,
and of the mental process by which Sciences come into
being. We must, for the purpose which Mr. Mill and
I have in common, retain his larger and more philo-
sophical definition of Induction,—that it is the infer-
ence of a more general proposition from less general
ones.
II. Perhaps, again, some persons may say, that
practical skill and practical experience lead to science,
and may therefore be included in the term Induction,
which describes the formation of science. But to this
we reply, that these things lead to science as occasions
only, and do not form part of science; and that sci-
ence begins then only when we look at the facts in a
general point of view. This distinction is essential to
the philosophy of science. The rope-dancer may, by
his performances, suggest, to himself or to others, pro-
perties of the center of gravity; but this is so, because
man has a tendency to speculate and to think of gene-
ral truths, as well as a tendency to dance on a rope on
special occasions, and to acquire skill in such dancing
by practice. The rope-dancer does not dance by In-
duction, any more than the dancing dog does. To
apply the terms Science and Induction to such cases,
carries us into the regions of metaphor; as when we
call birds of passage "wise meteorologists,” or the bee
“a natural chemist, who turns the flower-dust into
honey.” This is very well in poetry: but for our pur-
poses we must avoid recognizing these cases as really
belonging to the sciences of meteorology and chemis-
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
try, -as really cases of Induction. Induction for us
is general propositions, contemplated as such, derived
from particulars.
Science may result from experience and observation
by Induction; but Induction is not therefore the same
thing as experience and observation. Induction is
experience or observation consciously looked at in a
general form. This consciousness and generality are
necessary parts of that knowledge which is science.
And accordingly, on the other hand, science cannot
result from mere Instinct, as distinguished from Rea-
son; because Instinct by its nature is not conscious
and general, but operates blindly and unconsciously in
particular cases, the actor not seeing or thinking of
the rule which he obeys.
12. A little further on I shall endeavour to show
that not only a general thought, but a general word or
phrase is a requisite element in Induction. This doc-
trine, of course, still more decidedly excludes the case
of animals, and of mere practical knowledge in man.
A burnt child dreads the fire; but reason must be
unfolded, before the child learns to understand the
words “fire will hurt you.” The burnt dog never
thus learns to understand words. And this difference
points to an entirely different state of thought in the
two cases: or rather, to a difference between a state of
rational thought on the one hand, and of mere prac-
tical instinct on the other.
13. Besides this difference of speculative thought
and practical instinct which thus are, as appears to me,
confounded in Mr. Mill's philosophy, in such a way as
tends to destroy all coherent views of human know-
ledge, there is another set of cases to which Mr. Mill
applies the term Induction, and to which it appears to
me to be altogether inapplicable. He employs it to
describe the mode in which superstitious men, in igno-
rant ages, were led to the opinion that striking natu-
ral events presaged or accompanied calamities. Thus
he says (i. 389), “The opinion so long prevalent that
à comet or any other unusual appearance in the
heavenly regions was the precursor of calamities to
246
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
mankind, or at least to those who witnessed it; the be-
lief in the oracles of Delphi and Dodona; the reliance
on astrology, or on the weather-prophecies in almanacs ;
were doubtless inductions supposed to be grounded on
experience;" and he speaks of these insufficient induc-
tions being extinguished by the stronger inductions
subsequently obtained by scientific inquiry. And in
like manner, he says in another place (i. 367), “Let us
now compare different predictions: the first, that
eclipses will occur whenever one planet or satellite is
so situated as to cast its shadow upon another : the
second, that they will occur whenever some great
calamity is impending over mankind.”
14. Now I cannot see how anything but confusion
can arise from applying the term Induction to super-
stitious fancies like those here mentioned. They are
not imperfect truths, but entire falsehoods. Of that,
Mr. Mill and I are agreed: how then can they ex-
emplify the progress towards truth? They were not
collected from the facts by seeking a law of their
occurrence; but were suggested by an imagination of
the anger of superior powers shown by such deviations
from the ordinary course of nature. If we are to speak
of inductions to any purpose, they must be such induc-
tions as represent the facts, in some degree at least.
It is not meant, I presume, that these opinions are in
any degree true: to what purpose then are they ad-
duced ? If I were to hold that my dreams predict or
conform to the motions of the stars or of the clouds,
would this be an induction? It would be so, as much
one as those here so denominated : yet what but con-
fusion could arise from classing it among scientific
truths? Mr. Mill himself has explained (ii. 389) the way
in which such delusions as the prophecies of almanac-
makers, and the like, obtain credence; namely, by the
greater effect which the positive instances produce on
ordinary minds in comparison with the negative, when
the rule has once taken possession of their thoughts.
And this being, as he says, the recognized explanation
of such cases, why should we not leave them to their
due place, and not confound and perplex the whole of
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
247
our investigation by elevating them to the rank of
“inductions”? The very condemnation of such opinions
is that they are not at all inductive. When we have
made any progress in our investigation of the nature
of science, to attempt to drive us back to the weari-
some discussion of such elementary points as these, is
to make progress hopeless.
II. Induction or Description ?-15. In the cases
hitherto noticed, Mr. Mill extends the term Induction,
as I think, too widely, and applies it to cases to which
it is not rightly applicable. I have now to notice a
case of an opposite kind, in which he does not apply it
where I do, and condemns me for using it in such
a case. I had spoken of Kepler's discovery of the
Law, that the planets move round the sun in ellipses,
as an example of Induction. The separate facts of any
planet (Mars, for instance,) being in certain places at
certain times, are all included in the general proposi-
tion which Kepler discovered, that Mars describes an
ellipse of a certain form and position. This appears to
me a very simple but a very distinct example of the
operation of discovering general propositions; general,
that is, with reference to particular facts; which opera-
tion Mr. Mill, as well as myself, says is Induction. But
Mr. Mill denies this operation in this case to be Induc-
tion at all (i. 357). I should not have been prepared
for this denial by the previous parts of Mr. Mill's book,
for he had said just before (i. 350), “such facts as the
magnitudes of the bodies of the solar system, their
distances from each other, the figure of the earth and
its rotation... are proved indirectly, by the aid of in-
ductions founded on other facts which we can more
easily reach.” If the figure of the earth and its rota-
tion are proved by Induction, it seems very strange,
and is to me quite incomprehensible, how the figure of
the earth's orbit and its revolution (and of course, of
the figure of Mars's orbit and his revolution in like
manner,) are not also proved by Induction. No, says
Mr. Mill, Kepler, in putting together a number of
places of the planet into one figure, only performed an
act of description. “This descriptive operation,” he
248
PHILOSOrdub
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
adds (i. 359), “Mr. Whewell, by an aptly chosen ex-
pression, has termed Colligation of Facts.” He goes
on to commend my observations concerning this pro-
cess, but says that, according to the old and received
meaning of the term, it is not Induction at all.
16. Now I have already shown that Mr. Mill him-
self, a few pages earlier, had applied the term Induction
to cases undistinguishable from this in any essential
circumstance. And even in this case, he allows that
Kepler did really perform an act of Induction (i. 358),
"namely, in concluding that, because the observed
places of Mars were correctly represented by points in
an imaginary ellipse, therefore Mars would continue to
revolve in that same ellipse; and even in concluding
that the position of the planet during the time which
had intervened between the two observations must
have coincided with the intermediate points of the
curve.” Of course, in Kepler's Induction, of which I
speak, I include all this; all this is included in speak-
ing of the orbit of Mars: a continuous line, a periodical
motion, are implied in the term orbit. I am unable to
see what would remain of Kepler's discovery, if we
take from it these conditions. It would not only not
be an induction, but it would not be a description, for
it would not recognize that Mars moved in an orbit.
Are particular positions to be conceived as points in a
curve, without thinking of the intermediate positions
as belonging to the same curve? If so, there is no law
at all, and the facts are not bound together by any
intelligible tie.
In another place (ii. 209) Mr. Mill returns to his
distinction of Description and Induction; but without
throwing any additional light upon it, so far as I can
see.
17. The only meaning which I can discover in this
attenipted distinction of Description and Induction is,
that when particular facts are bound together by their
relation in space, Mr. Mill calls the discovery of the
connexion Description, but when they are connected
by other general relations, as time, cause and the like,
Mr. Mill terms the discovery of the connexion Induc-
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
249
tion. And this way of making a distinction, would
fall in with the doctrine of other parts of Mr. Mill's
book, in which he ascribes very peculiar attributes to
space and its relations, in comparison with other Ideas,
(as I should call them). But I cannot see any ground
for this distinction, of connexion according to space
and other connexions of facts.
To stand upon such a distinction, appears to me to
be the way to miss the general laws of the formation
of science. For example: The ancients discovered
that the planets revolved in recurring periods, and
thus connected the observations of their motions ac-
cording to the Idea of Time. Kepler discovered that
they revolved in ellipses, and thus connected the ob-
servations according to the Idea of Space. Newton
discovered that they revolved in virtue of the Sun's
attraction, and thus connected the motions according
to the Idea of Force. The first and third of these dis-
coveries are recognized on all hands as processes of
Induction. Why is the second to be called by a dif-
ferent name? or what but confusion and perplexity
can arise from refusing to class it with the other two?
It is, you say, Description. But such Description is a
kind of Induction, and must be spoken of as Induction,
if we are to speak of Induction as the process by which
Science is formed: for the three steps are all, the
second in the same sense as the first and third, in
co-ordination with them, steps in the formation of
astronomical science.
18. But, says Mr. Mill (i. 363), “it is a fact surely
that the planet does describe an ellipse, and a fact
which we could see if we had adequate visual organs
and a suitable position.” To this I should reply: “Let
it be so; and it is a fact, surely, that the planet does
move periodically: it is a fact, surely, that the planet
is attracted by the sun. Still, therefore, the asserted
distinction fails to find a ground.” Perhaps Mr. Mill
would remind us that the elliptical form of the orbit is
a fact which we could see if we had adequate visual
organs and a suitable position: but that force is a
thing which we cannot see. But this distinction also
250
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
will not bear handling. Can we not see a tree blown
down by a storm, or a rock blown up by gunpowder?
Do we not here see force :—see it, that is, by its effects,
the only way in which we need to see it in the case
of a planet, for the purposes of our argument? Are
not such operations of force, Facts which may be
the objects of sense? and is not the operation of the
sun's Force a Fact of the same kind, just as much as
the elliptical form of orbit which results from the
action? If the latter be surely a Fact," the former
is a Fact no less surely.
19. In truth, as I have repeatedly had occasion to
remark, all attempts to frame an argument by the
exclusive or emphatic appropriation of the term Fact
to particular cases, are necessarily illusory and incon-
clusive. There is no definite and stable distinction
between Facts and Theories; Facts and Laws; Facts
and Inductions. Inductions, Laws, Theories, which
are true, are Facts. Facts involve Inductions. It is
a fact that the moon is attracted by the earth, just as
much as it is a Fact that an apple falls from a tree.
That the former fact is collected by a more distinct
and conscious Induction, does not make it the less
a Fact. That the orbit of Mars is a Fact-a true
Description of the path-does not make it the less
a case of Induction.
20. There is another argument which Mr. Mill
employs in order to show that there is a difference
between mere colligation which is description, and in-
duction in the more proper sense of the term. He
notices with commendation a remark which I had
made (i. 364), that at different stages of the progress
of science the facts had been successfully connected by
means of very different conceptions, while yet the later
conceptions have not contradicted, but included, so far
as they were true, the earlier: thus the ancient Greek
representation of the motions of the planets by means
of epicycles and eccentrics, was to a certain degree of
accuracy true, and is not negatived, though superseded,
by the modern representation of the planets as describ-
ing ellipses round the sun. And he then reasons that
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
251
this, which is thus true of Descriptions, cannot be true
of Inductions. He says (i. 367), “Different descrip-
tions therefore may be all true: but surely not different
explanations." He then notices the various explana-
tions of the motions of the planets—the ancient doc-
trine that they are moved by an inherent virtue; the
Cartesian doctrine that they are moved by impulse and
by vortices; the Newtonian doctrine that they are
governed by a central force; and he adds, “Can it be
said of these, as was said of the different descriptions,
that they are all true as far as they go? Is it not
true that one only can be true in any degree, and that
the other two must be altogether false ?”
21. And to this questioning, the history of science
compels me to reply very distinctly and positively, in
the way which Mr. Mill appears to think extrava-
gant and absurd. I am obliged to say, Undoubtedly,
all these explanations may be true and consistent with
each other, and would be so if each had been followed
out so as to show in what manner it could be made
consistent with the facts. And this was, in reality,
in a great measure done*. The doctrine that the
heavenly bodies were moved by vortices was succes-
sively modified, so that it came to coincide in its
results with the doctrine of an inverse-quadratic centri-
petal force, as I have remarked in the History'. When
this point was reached, the vortex was merely a
machinery, well or ill devised, for producing such a
centripetal force, and therefore did not contradict the
doctrine of a centripetal force. Newton himself does
not appear to have been averse to explaining gravity
by impulse. So little is it true that if the one theory be
true the other must be false. The attempt to explain
gravity by the impulse of streams of particles flowing
through the universe in all directions, which I have men-
tioned in the Philosophy, is so far from being incon-
4 On this subject see an Essay On the Transformation of Hypotheses,
given in the Appendix.
5 B. vii. c. ii. sect. 3.
B. iii. c. ix. art. 7.
252
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
sistent with the Newtonian theory, that it is founded
entirely upon it. And even with regard to the doctrine,
that the heavenly bodies move by an inherent virtue;
if this doctrine had been maintained in any such way
that it was brought to agree with the facts, the in-
herent virtue must have had its laws determined; and
then, it would have been found that the virtue had a
reference to the central body; and so, the “inherent
virtue" must have coincided in its effect with the
Newtonian force; and then, the two explanations
would agree, except so far as the word “inherent”
was concerned. And if such a part of an earlier theory
as this word inherent indicates, is found to be unten-
able, it is of course rejected in the transition to later
and more exact theories, in Inductions of this kind,
as well as in what Mr. Mill calls Descriptions. There
is therefore still no validity discoverable in the dis-
tinction which Mr. Mill attempts to draw between
“descriptions" like Kepler's law of elliptical orbits,
and other examples of induction.
22. When Mr. Mill goes on to compare what he
calls different predictions—the first, the true explana-
tion of eclipses by the shadows which the planets and
satellites cast upon one another, and the other, the
belief that they will occur whenever some great cala-
mity is impending over mankind, I must reply, as I
have stated already, (Art. 17), that to class such super-
stitions as the last with cases of Induction, appears to
me to confound all use of words, and to prevent, as
far as it goes, all profitable exercise of thought. What
possible advantage can result from comparing (as if
they were alike) the relation of two descriptions of a
phenomenon, each to a certain extent true, and there-
fore both consistent, with the relation of a scientific
truth to a false and baseless superstition ?
23. But I may make another remark on this
example, so strangely introduced. If, under the in-
fluence of fear and superstition, men may make such
mistakes with regard to laws of nature, as to imagine
that eclipses portend calamities, are they quite secure
from mistakes in description? Do not the very per-
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
253
'sons who tell us how eclipses predict disasters, also
describe to us fiery swords seen in the air, and armies
fighting in the sky ? So that even in this extreme case,
at the very limit of the rational exercise of human
powers, there is nothing to distinguish Description
from Induction.
I shall now leave the reader to judge whether this
feature in the history of science,—that several views
which appear at first quite different are yet all true,
which Mr. Mill calls a curious and interesting remark
of mine, and which he allows to be “strikingly true"
of the Inductions which he calls Descriptions, (i. 364)
is, as he says, “unequivocally false” of other Induc-
tions. And I shall confide in having general assent
with me, when I continue to speak of Kepler's Induc-
tion of the elliptical orbits.
I now proceed to another remark.
III. In Discovery a new Conception is introduced.-
24. There is a difference between Mr. Mill and me
in our view of the essential elements of this Induction
of Kepler, which affects all other cases of Induction,
and which is, I think, the most extensive and im-
portant of the differences between us. I must there-
fore venture to dwell upon it a little in detail.
I conceive that Kepler, in discovering the law of
Mars's motion, and in asserting that the planet moved
in an ellipse, did this ;-he bound together particular
observations of separate places of Mars by the notion,
or, as I have called it, the conception, of an ellipse,
which was supplied by his own mind. Other persons,
and he too, before he made this discovery, had present
to their minds the facts of such separate successive posi-
tions of the planet; but could not bind them. together
rightly, because they did not apply to them this con-
ception of an ellipse. To supply this conception, re-
quired a special preparation, and a special activity in
the mind of the discoverer. He, and others before
him, tried other ways of connecting the special facts,
none of which fully succeeded. To discover such a
connexion, the mind must be conversant with certain
relations of space, and with certain kinds of figures.
254
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
To discover the right figure was a matter requiring
research, invention, resource. To hit upon the right
conception is a difficult step; and when this step is
once made, the facts assume a different aspect from
what they had before: that done, they are seen in a
new point of view; and the catching this point of
view, is a special mental operation, requiring special
endowments and habits of thought. Before this, the
facts are seen as detached, separate, lawless; after-
wards, they are seen as connected, simple, regular; as
parts of one general fact, and thereby possessing innu-
merable new relations before unseen. Kepler, then,
I say, bound together the facts by superinducing upon
them the conception of an ellipse; and this was an
esseutial element in his Induction.
25. And there is the same essential element in
all Inductive discoveries. In all cases, facts, before
detached and lawless, are bound together by a new
thought. They are reduced to law, by being seen in
a new point of view. To catch this new point of
view, is an act of the mind, springing from its pre-
vious preparation and habits. The facts, in other
discoveries, are brought together according to other
relations, or, as I have called them, Ideas ;—the
Ideas of Time, of Force, of Number, of Resemblance,
of Elementary Composition, of Polarity, and the like.
But in all cases, the mind performs the operation by
an apprehension of some such relations; by singling
out the one true relation; by combining the apprehen-
sion of the true relation with the facts; by applying to
them the Conception of such a relation.
26. In previous writings, I have not only stated
this view generally, but I have followed it into de-
tail, exemplifying it in the greater part of the History
of the principal Inductive Sciences in succession. I
have pointed out what are the Conceptions which have
been introduced in every prominent discovery in those
sciences; and have noted to which of the above Ideas,
or of the like Ideas, each belongs. The performance
of this task is the office of the greater part of my
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. For that work
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
255
is, in reality, no less historical than the History which
preceded it. The History of the Inductive Sciences is
the history of the discoveries, mainly so far as con-
cerns the Facts which were brought together to form
sciences. The Philosophy is, in the first ten Books,
the history of the Ideas and Conceptions, by means of
which the facts were connected, so as to give rise to
scientific truths. It would be easy for me to give a
long list of the Ideas and Conceptions thus brought
into view, but I may refer any reader who wishes to
see such a list, to the Tables of Contents of the History,
and of the first ten Books of the Philosophy.
27. That these Ideas and Conceptions are really
distinct elements of the scientific truths thus obtained,
I conceive to be proved beyond doubt, not only by
considering that the discoveries never were made, nor
could be made, till the right Conception was obtained,
and by seeing how difficult it often was to obtain this
element; but also, by seeing that the Idea and the
Conception itself, as distinct from the Facts, was, in
almost every science, the subject of long and obstinate
controversies ;-controversies which turned upon the
possible relations of Ideas, much more than upon the
actual relations of Facts. The first ten Books of the
Philosophy to which I have referred, contain the his-
tory of a great number of these controversies. These
controversies make up a large portion of the history
of each science; a portion quite as important as the
study of the facts; and a portion, at every stage of
the science, quite as essential to the progress of truth.
Men, in seeking and obtaining scientific knowledge,
have always shown that they found the formation of
right conceptions in their own minds to be an essen-
tial part of the process.
28. Moreover, the presence of a Conception of the
mind as a special element of the inductive process,
and as the tie by which the particular facts are bound
together, is further indicated, by there being some
special new tern or phrase introduced in every in-
duction; or at least some term or phrase thence-
forth steadily applied to the facts, which had not been
256
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
applied to them before; as when Kepler asserted that
Mars moved round the sun in an elliptical orbit, or
when Newton asserted that the planets gravitate to-
wards the sun; these new terms, elliptical orbit, and
gravitate, mark the new conceptions on which the
inductions depend. I have in the Philosophy? further
illustrated this application of "technical terms,” that
is, fixed and settled terms, in every inductive disco-
very; and have spoken of their use in enabling men
to proceed from each such discovery to other disco-
veries more general. But I notice these terms here,
for the purpose of showing the existence of a concep-
tion in the discoverer's mind, corresponding to the
term thus introduced; which conception, the term is
intended to convey to the minds of those to whom the
discovery is communicated.
29. But this element of discovery,-right concep-
tions supplied by the mind in order to bind the facts
together, -Mr. Mill denies to be an element at all. He
says, of Kepler's discovery of the elliptical orbit (i.
363), “It superadded nothing to the particular facts
which it served to bind together;" yet he adds, “ex-
cept indeed the knowledge that a resemblance existed
between the planetary orbit and other ellipses;" that
is, except the knowledge that it was an ellipse ;-
precisely the circumstance in which the discovery con-
sisted. Kepler, he says, “asserted as a fact that the
planet moved in an ellipse. But this fact, which
Kepler did not add to, but found in the motion of
the planet... was the very fact, the separate parts of
which had been separately observed; it was the sum
of the different observations.”
30. That the fact of the elliptical motion was not
merely the sum of the different observations, is plain
from this, that other persons, and Kepler himself be-
fore his discovery, did not find it by adding together
the observations. The fact of the elliptical orbit was
not the sum of the observations merely; it was the
7 B. 1. c. ii.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
257
sum of the observations, seen under a new point of
view, which point of view Kepler's mind supplied.
Kepler found it in the facts, because it was there, no
doubt, for one l'eason; but also, for another, because
he had, in his mind, those relations of thought which
enabled him to find it. We may illustrate this by a
familiar analogy. We too find the law in Kepler's
book; but if we did not understand Latin, we should
not find it there. We must learn Latiu in order to
find the law in the book. In like manner, a disco-
verer must know the language of science, as well as
look at the book of nature, in order to find scientific
truth. All the discussions and controversies respect-
ing Ideas and Conceptions of which I have spoken,
may be looked upon as discussions and controversies
respecting the grammar of the language in which na-
ture speaks to the scientific mind. Man is the Inter-
preter of Nature; not the Spectator merely, but the
Interpreter. The study of the language, as well as
the mere sight of the characters, is requisite in order
that we may read the inscriptions which are written
on the face of the world. And this study of the lan-
and derivations of the relations of phenomena, is to be
pursued by examining Ideas, as well as mere pheno-
mena;—by tracing the formation of Conceptions, as
well as the accumulation of Facts. And this is what
I have tried to do in the books already referred to.
31. Mr. Mill has not noticed, in any considerable
degree, what I have said of the formation of the Con-
ceptions which enter into the various sciences; but he
has, in general terms, denied that the Conception is
anything different from the facts themselves. “If,”
he says (i. 301), “the facts are rightly classed under
the conceptions, it is because there is in the facts
themselves, something of which the conception is a
copy." But it is a copy which cannot be made by a
person without peculiar endowments; just as a per-
son cannot copy an ill-written inscription, so as to
make it convey sense, unless he understand the lan-
guage. “Conceptions,” Mr. Mill says (ii. 217), “ do not
258
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
develope themselves from within, but are impressed
from without.” But what comes from without is not
enough: they must have both origins, or they cannot
make knowledge. - The conception,” he says again
(ii. 221), “is not furnished by the mind till it has
been furnished to the mind.” But it is furnished to
the mind by its own activity, operating according to
its own laws. No doubt, the conception may be
formed, and in cases of discovery, must be formed, b.y
the suggestion and excitement which the facts them-
selves produce; and must be so moulded as to agree
with the facts. But this does not make it superfluous
to examine, out of what materials such conceptions are
formed, and how they are capable of being moulded so
as to express laws of nature; especially, when we see
how large a share this part of discovery-the examina-
tion how our ideas can be modified so as to agree with
nature-holds, in the history of science.
32. I have already (Art. 28) given, as evidence
duction, the constant introduction in such cases, of a
new fixed term or phrase. Mr. Mill (ii. 282) notices
this introduction of a new phrase in such cases as
important, though he does not appear willing to allow
that it is necessary. Yet the necessity of the concep-
tion at least, appears to result from the considerations
which he puts forward. “What darkness," he says,
" would have been spread over geometrical demonstra-
tion, if wherever the word circle is used, the definition
of a circle was inserted instead of it.” “If we want
to make a particular combination of ideas permanent
in the mind, there is nothing which clenches it like a
name specially devoted to express it.” In my view,
the new conception is the nail which connects, the
previous notions, and the name, as Mr. Mill says,
clenches the junction.
33. I have above (Art. 30) referred to the diffi-
culty of getting hold of the right conception, as a
proof that induction is not a mere juxtaposition of
facts. Mr. Mill does not dispute that it is often diffi-
cult to hit upon the right conception. He says (i. 360),
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
259
" that a conception of the mind is introduced, is in-
deed most certain, and Mr.Whewell has rightly stated
elsewhere, that to hit upon the right conception is
often a far more difficult, and more meritorious achieve-
ment, than to prove its applicability when obtained.
But,” he adds, “a conception implies and corresponds
to something conceived; and although the conception
itself is not in the facts, but in our mind, it must be a
conception of something which really is in the facts."
But to this I reply, that its being really in the facts,
does not help us at all towards knowledge, if we can-
not see it there. As the poet says,
It is the mind that sees: the outward eyes
Present the object, but the mind descries.
And this is true of the sight which produces know-
ledge, as well as of the sight which produces pleasure
and pain, which is referred to in the Tale.
34. Mr. Mill puts his view, as opposed to mine, in
various ways, but, as will easily be understood, the
answers which I have to offer are in all cases nearly
to the same effect. Thus, he says (ii. 216), “the tardy
development of several of the physical sciences, for
example, of Optics, Electricity, Magnetism, and the
higher generalizations of Chemistry, Mr. Whewell
ascribes to the fact that mankind had not yet pos-
sessed themselves of the idea of Polarity, that is, of
opposite properties in opposite directions. But what
was there to suggest such an idea, until by a separate
examination of several of these different branches of
knowledge it was shown that the facts of each of them
did present, in some instances at least, the curious
phenomena of opposite properties in opposite direc-
tions?" But on this I observe, that these facts did
not, nor do yet, present this conception to ordinary
minds. The opposition of properties, and even the
opposition of directions, which are thus apprehended
by profound cultivators of science, are of an abstruse
and recondite kind; and to conceive any one kind of
polarity in its proper generality, is a process which
few persons hitherto appear to have mastered; still
less, have men in general come to conceive of them all
S 2
260
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
as modifications of a general notion of Polarity. The
description which I have given of Polarity in general,
“opposite properties in opposite directions,” is of itself
a very imperfect account of the manner in which cor-
responding antitheses are involved in the portions of
science into which Polar relations enter. In excuse
of its imperfection, I may say, that I believe it is the
first attempt to define Polarity in general; but yet,
the conception of Polarity has certainly been strongly
and effectively present in the minds of many of the
sagacious men who have discovered and unravelled
polar phenomena. They attempted to convey this
conception, each in his own subject, sometimes by
various and peculiar expressions, sometimes by imagi-
nary mechanism by which the antithetical results were
produced; their mode of expressing themselves being
often defective or imperfect, often containing what
was superfluous; and their meaning was commonly
very imperfectly apprehended by most of their hearers
and readers. But still, the conception was there, gra-
dually working itself into clearness and distinctness,
and in the mean time, directing their experiments, and
forming an essential element of their discoveries. So
far would it be from a sufficient statement of the case
to say, that they conceived polarity because they saw
it;—that they saw it as soon as it came into view ;-
and that they described it as they saw it.
35. The way in which such conceptions acquire
clearness and distinctness is often by means of Discus-
sions of Definitions. To define well a thought which
already enters into trains of discovery, is often a diffi-
cult matter. The business of such definition is a part
of the business of discovery. These, and other re-
marks connected with these, which I had made in the
Philosophy, Mr. Mill has quoted and adopted (ii. 242).
They appear to me to point very distinctly to the doc-
trine to which he refuses his assent,—that there is a
special process in the mind, in addition to the mere
observation of facts, which is necessary at every step
in the progress of knowledge. The Conception must
be formed before it can be defined. The Definition
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
261
:
gives the last stamp of distinctness to the Conception;
and enables us to express, in a compact and lucid
form, the new scientific propositions into which the
new Conception enters.
36. Since Mr. Mill assents to so much of what has
been said in the Philosophy, with regard to the process
of scientific discovery, how, it may be asked, would he
express these doctrines so as to exclude that which he
thinks erroneous? If he objects to our saying that
when we obtain a new inductive truth, we connect
phenomena by applying to them a new Conception
which fits them, in what terms would he describe the
process? If he will not agree to say, that in order to
discover the law of the facts, we must find an appro-
priate Conception, what language would he use instead
of this? This is a natural question; and the answer
cannot fail to throw light on the relation in which his
views and mine stand to each other.
Mr. Mill would say, I believe, that when we obtain
a new inductive law of facts, we find something in
which the facts resenable each other; and that the busi-
ness of making such discoveries is the business of dis-
covering such resemblances. Thus, he says (of me,)
(ii. 211), “bis Colligation of Facts by means of appro-
priate Conceptions, is but the ordinary process of find-
ing by a comparison of phenomena, in what consists
their agreement or resemblance.” And the Methods
of experimental Inquiry which he gives (i. 450, &c.),
proceed upon the supposition that the business of dis-
covery may be thus more properly described.
37. There is no doubt that when we discover a law
of nature by induction, we find some point in which
all the particular facts agree. All the orbits of the
planets agree in being ellipses, as Kepler discovered ;
all falling bodies agree in being acted on by a uniform
force, as Galileo discovered; all refracted rays agree in
having the sines of incidence and refraction in a con-
stant ratio, as Snell discovered; all the bodies in the
universe agree in attracting each other, as Newton
discovered; all chemical compounds agree in being
constituted of elements in definite proportions, as
262
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Dalton discovered. But it appears to me a most scanty,
vague, and incomplete account of these steps in sci-
ence, to say that the authors of them discovered some-
thing in which the facts in each case agreed. The
point in which the cases agree, is of the most diverse
kind in the different cases-in some, a relation of
space, in others, the action of a force, in others, the
mode of composition of a substance;-and the point
of agreement, visible to the discoverer alone, does not
come even into his sight, till after the facts have been
connected by thoughts of his own, and regarded in
points of view in which he, by his mental acts, places
them. It would seem to me not much more inappro-
priate to say, that an officer, who disciplines his men
till they move together at the word of command, does
so by finding something in which they agree. If the
power of consentaneous motion did not exist in the in-
dividuals, he could not create it: but that power being
there, he finds it and uses it. Of course I am aware
that the parallel of the two cases is not exact; but in
the one case, as in the other, that in which the par-
ticular things are found to agree, is something formed
in the mind of him who brings the agreement into
view.
IV. Mr. Mill's Four Methods of Inquiry.-38. Mr.
Mill has not only thus described the business of scien-
tific discovery; he has also given rules for it, founded
on this description. It may be expected that we
should bestow some attention upon the methods of
inquiry which he thus proposes. I presume that they
are regarded by his admirers as among the most valu-
able parts of his book; as certainly they cannot fail to
be, if they describe methods of scientific inquiry in
such a manner as to be of use to the inquirer.
Mr. Mill enjoins four methods of experimental in-
quiry, which he calls the Method of Agreement, the
Method of Difference, the Method of Residues, and the
Method of Concomitant Variations. They are all
8 B. iii. c. vii.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
263
described by formulæ of this kind :-Let there be,
in the observed facts, combinations of antecedents,
ABC, BC, ADE, &c. and combinations of corre-
sponding consequents, abc, bc, ade, &c.; and let the
object of inquiry be, the consequence of some cause A,
or the cause of some consequence a. The Method of
Agreement teaches us, that when we find by experi-
ment such facts as abc the consequent of ABC, and
ade the consequent of ADE, then a is the consequent
of A. The Method of Difference teaches us that
when we find such facts as abc the consequent of ABC,
and bc the consequent of BC, then a is the consequent
of A. The Method of Residues teaches us, that if abc
be the consequent of ABC, and if we have already as-
certained that the effect of A is a, and the effect of B
is b, then we may infer that the effect of C is c. The
Method of Concomitant Variations teaches us, that if
a phenomenon a varies according as another phenome-
non A varies, there is some connexion of causation
direct or indirect, between A and a.
39. Upon these methods, the obvious thing to re-
mark is, that they take for granted the very thing
which is most difficult to discover, the reduction of the
phenomena to formulæ such as are here presented to
us. When we have any set of complex facts offered to
us; for instance, those which were offered in the cases
of discovery which I have mentioned,—the facts of the
planetary paths, of falling bodies, of refracted rays, of
cosmical motions, of chemical analysis; and when, in
any of these cases, we would discover the law of na-
ture which governs them, or, if any one chooses so to
term it, the feature in which all the cases agree, where
are we to look for our A, B, C and a, b, c? Nature
does not present to us the cases in this form; and how
are we to reduce them to this form ? You say, when
we find the combination of ABC with abc and ABD
with abd, then we may draw our inference. Granted :
but when and where are we to find such combinations?
Even now that the discoveries are made, who will
point out to us what are the A, B, C and a, b, c ele-
ments of the cases which have just beeh enumerated ?
264
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Who will tell us which of the methods of inquiry
those historically real and successful inquiries exem-
plify? Who will carry these formula through the
history of the sciences, as they have really grown up;
and show us that these four methods have been opera-
tive in their formation; or that any light is thrown
upon the steps of their progress by reference to these
formula?
40. Mr. Mill's four methods have a great resem-
blance to Bacon's “Prerogatives of Instances;" for
example, the Method of Agreement to the Instantice
Ostensivce; the Method of Differences to the Instantiæ
Absentice in Proximo, and the Instantice Crucis; the
Method of Concomitant Variations to the Instantice
Migrantes. And with regard to the value of such
methods, I believe all study of science will convince
us more and more of the wisdom of the remarks which
Sir John Herschel has made upon them°.
“It has always appeared to us, we must confess,
that the help which the classification of instances
under their different titles of prerogative, affords to
inductions, however just such classification may be in
itself, is get more apparent than real. The force of
the instance must be felt in the mind before it can be
referred to its place in the system; and before it can
be either referred or appreciated it must be known;
and when it is appreciated, we are ready enough to
weave our web of induction, without greatly troubling
ourselves whence it derives the weight we acknow-
ledge it to have in our decisions....No doubt such in-
stances as these are highly instructive; but the difi-
culty in physics is to find such, not to perceive their
force when found.”
V. His Examples.-41. If Mr. Mill's four methods
had been applied by him in his book to a large body
of conspicuous and undoubted examples of discovery,
well selected and well analysed, extending along the
whole history of science, we should have been better
9 Discourse, Art. 192.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
265
able to estimate the value of these methods. Mr. Mill
has certainly offered a number of examples of his
methods; but I hope I may say, without offence, that
they appear to me to be wanting in the conditions
which I have mentioned. As I have to justify myself
for rejecting Mr. Mill's criticism of doctrines which I
have put forward, and examples which I have adduced,
I may, I trust, be allowed to offer some critical re-
marks in return, bearing upon the examples which he
has given, in order to illustrate his doctrines and
precepts.
42. The first remark which I have to make is,
that a large proportion of his examples (i. 480, &c.)
is taken from one favourite author; who, however
great his merit may be, is too recent a writer to have
had his discoveries confirmed by the corresponding
investigations and searching criticisms of other la-
bourers in the same field, and placed in their proper
and permanent relation to established truths; these
alleged discoveries being, at the same time, principally
such as deal with the most complex and slippery por-
tions of science, the laws of vital action. Thus Mr.
Mill has adduced, as examples of discoveries, Prof.
Liebig's doctrine—that death is produced by certain
metallic poisons through their forming indecomposable
compounds; that the effect of respiration upon the
blood consists in the conversion of peroxide of iron
into protoxide that the antiseptic power of salt arises
from its attraction for moisture—that chemical action
is contagious; and others. Now supposing that we
have no doubt of the truth of these discoveries, we
must still observe that they cannot wisely be cited,
in order to exemplify the nature of the progress
of knowledge, till they have been verified by other
chemists, and worked into their places in the general
scheme of chemistry ; especially, since it is tolerably
certain that in the process of verification, they will
be modified and more precisely defined. Nor can I
think it judicious to take so large a proportion of our
examples from a region of science in which, of all
parts of our material knowledge, the conceptions both of
266
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
ordinary persons, and even of men of science themselves,
are most loose and obscure, and the genuine principles
most contested; which is the case in physiology. It
would be easy, I think, to point out the vague and
indeterminate character of many of the expressions in
which the above examples are propounded, as well as
their doubtful position in the scale of chemical gene-
ralization; but I have said enough to show why I
cannot give much weight to these, as cardinal exam-
ples of the method of discovery; and therefore I shall
not examine in detail how far they support Mr. Mill's
methods of inquiry.
43. Mr. Liebig supplies the first and the majority
of Mr. Mill's examples in chapter IX. of his Book on
Induction. The second is an example for which Mr.
Mill states himself to be indebted to Mr. Alexander
Bain; the law established being this, that (i. 487)
electricity cannot exist in one body without the simul-
taneous excitement of the opposite electricity in some
neighbouring body, which Mr. Mill also confirms by
reference to Mr. Faraday's experiments on voltaic
wires.
I confess I am quite at a loss to understand what
there is in the doctrine here ascribed to Mr. Bain
which was not known to the electricians who, from
the time of Franklin, explained the phenomena of the
Leyden vial. I may observe also that the mention of
an “electrified atmosphere” implies a hypothesis long
obsolete. The essential point in all those explanations
was, that each electricity produced by induction the
opposite electricity in neighbouring bodies, as I have
tried to make apparent in the Historylo. Faraday has,
more recently, illustrated this universal coexistence of
opposite electricities with his usual felicity.
But the conjunction of this fact with voltaic pheno-
mena, implies a non-recognition of some of the simplest
doctrines of the subject. “Since," it is said (i. 488),
“common or machine electricity, and voltaic electricity
10 B. xi. c. xi.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
267.
may be considered for the present purpose to be iden-
tical, Faraday wished to know, &c." I think Mr.
Faraday would be much astonished to learn that he
considered electricity in equilibrium, and electricity in
the form of a voltaic current, to be, for any purpose,
identical. Nor do I conceive that he would assent to
the expression in the next page, that “from the nature
of a voltaic charge, the two opposite currents necessary
to the existence of each other are both accommodated
in one wire.” Mr. Faraday has, as it appears to me,
studiously avoided assenting to this hypothesis.
44. The next example is the one already so co-
piously dwelt upon by Sir John Herschel, Dr. Wells's
researches on the production of Dew. I have already
said" that “this investigation, although it has some-
times been praised as an original discovery, was in fact
only resolving the phenomenon into principles already
discovered;" namely, the doctrine of a constituent ten-
perature of vapour, the different conducting power of
different bodies, and the like. And this agrees in
substance with what Mr. Mill says (i. 497); that the
discovery, when made, was corroborated by deduction
from the known laws of aqueous vapour, of conduc-
tion, and the like. Dr. Wells's researches on Dew
tended much in this country to draw attention to the
general principles of Atmology; and we may see, in
this and in other examples which Mr. Mill adduces,
that the explanation of special phenomena by means
of general principles, already established, has, for com-
mon minds, a greater charm, and is more complacently
dwelt on, than the discovery of the general principles
themselves.
45. The next example, (i. 502) is given in order to
illustrate the Method of Residues, and is the discovery
by M, Arago that a disk of copper affects the vibra-
tions of the magnetic needle. But this apparently de-
tached fact affords little instruction compared with the
singularly sagacious researches by which Mr. Faraday
11 Phil. b. xiii. c. ix. art. 7.
268
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
discovered the cause of this effect to reside in the
voltaic currents which the motion of the magnetic
needle developed in the copper. I have spoken of this
discovery in the History. Mr. Mill however is
quoting Sir John Herschel in thus illustrating the
Method of Residues. He rightly gives the Pertur-
bations of the Planets and Satellites as better exam-
ples of the method 13.
46. In the next chapter (c. x.) Mr. Mill speaks of
Plurality of causes and of the Intermixture of effects,
and gives examples of such cases. He here teaches
(i. 517) that chemical synthesis and analysis, (as when
oxygen and hydrogen compose water, and when water
is resolved into oxygen and hydrogen,) is properly
transformation, but that because we find that the
weight of the compound is equal to the sum of the
weights of the elements, we take up the notion of
chemical composition. I have endeavoured to show 14
that the maxim, that the sum of the weights of the
elements is equal to the weight of the compound, was,
historically, not proved from experiment, but assumed
in the reasonings upon experiments.
47. I have now made my remarks upon nearly all
the examples which Mr. Mill gives of scientific in-
quiry, so far as they consist of knowledge which has
really been obtained. I may mention, as points which
appear to me to interfere with the value of Mr. Mill's
references to examples, expressions which I cannot
reconcile with just conceptions of scientific truth; as
when he says (i. 523), “some other force which inz-
pinges on the first force;" and very frequently indeed,
of the “tangential force," as co-ordinate with the cen-
tripetal force.
When he speaks (ii. 20, Note) of " the doctrine now
universally received that the earth is a great natural
magnet with two poles," he does not recognize the
recent theory of Gauss, so remarkably coincident with
12 B. xiii. c. viii.
13 Given also in the Phil. Ind. Sc. b. xiii. c. vii. sect. 17.
14 Ibid. b. vi. c. iv.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
269
a vast body of facts 15. Indeed in his statement, he
rejects no less the earlier views proposed by Halley,
theorized by Euler, and confirmed by Hansteen, wbich
show that we are compelled to assume at least four
poles of terrestrial magnetism; which I had given an
account of in the first edition of the History.
There are several other cases which he puts, in
which, the knowledge spoken of not having been yet
acquired, he tells us how he would set about acquiring
it; for instance, if the question were (i. 526) whether
mercury be a cure for a given disease; or whether the
brain be a voltaic pile (ii. 21); or whether the moon
be inhabited (ii. 100); or whether all crows are black
(ii. 124); I confess that I have no expectation of any
advantage to philosophy from discussions of this kind.
48. I will add also, that I do not think any light
can be thrown upon scientific methods, at present, by
grouping along with such physical inquiries as I have
been speaking of, speculations concerning the human
mind, its qualities and operations. Thus he speaks
(i. 508) of human characters, as exemplifying the
effect of plurality of causes; of (i. 518) the phenomena
of our mental nature, which are analogous to chemical
rather than to dynamical phenomena; of (i. 518) the
reason why susceptible persons are imaginative; to
which I may add, the passage where he says (i. 444),
“let us take as an example of a phenomenon which
we have no means of fabricating artificially, a human
mind.” These, and other like examples, occur in the
part of his work in which he is speaking of scientific
inquiry in general, not in the Book on the Logic of
the Moral Sciences; and are, I think, examples more
likely to lead us astray than to help our progress, in
discovering the laws of Scientific Inquiry, in the or-
dinary sense of the term.
VI. Mr. Mill against Hypothesis.—-49. I will
now pass from Mr. Mill's methods, illustrated by such
examples as those which I have been considering, to
15 See Hist. Ind. Sc. b. xii, note D, in the second edition.
270
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
the views respecting the conditions of Scientific In-
duction to which I have been led, by such a survey as
I could make, of the whole history of the principal
Inductive Sciences; and especially, to those views to
which Mr. Mill offers his objections 16.
Mr. Mill thinks that I have been too favourable to
the employment of hypotheses, as means of discovering
scientific truth; and that I have countenanced a lax-
ness of method, in allowing hypotheses to be esta-
blished, merely in virtue of the accordance of their
results with the phenomena. I believe I should be
as cautious as Mr. Mill, in accepting mere hypotheti-
cal explanations of phenomena, in any case in which
we had the phenomena, and their relations, placed
before both of us in an equally clear light. I have
not accepted the Undulatory theory of Heat, though
recommended by so many coincidences and analogies .
But I see some grave reasons for not giving any great
weight to Mr. Mill's admonitions ;—reasons drawn
16 There are some points in my doc- (b. xvi. C. vi.) I have spoken of the
trines on the subject of the Classifi- doctrine of Circular Progression pro-
catory Sciences to which Mr. Mill pounded by Mr. Macleay, and have
objects, (ii. 314, &c.), but there is said, "so far as this view negatives a
nothing which I think it necessary mere lincar progression in nature,
to remark here, except one point which would place each genus in con-
After speaking of Classification of tact with the preceding and succeed-
organized beings in general, Mr. Mill ing ones, and so far as it requires us
notices (ii. 321) as an additional sub- to attend to the more varied and
ject, the arrangement of natural ramified resemblances, there can be
groups into a Natural Series; and he no doubt that it is supported by the
says, that "all who have attempted result of all the attempts to form
a theory of natural arrangement, in- natural systems.” And with regard
cluding among the rest Mr. Whewell, to the difference between Cuvier and
have stopped short of this: all except M. de Blainville, to which Mr. Mill
M. Comte.” On this I have to ob- refers (ü. 321), I certainly cannot
serve, that I stopped short of, or think that M. Comte's suffrage can
rather passed by, the doctrine of a add any weight to the opinion of
Series of organized beings, because I either of those great naturalists.
thought it bad and narrow philoso- 17 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. x. note (VA) in
phy: and that I sufficiently indi- the second edition.
cated that I did this. In the History
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
271
from the language which he uses on the subject, and
which appears to me inconsistent with the conditions
of the cases to which he applies it. Thus, when he
says (ii. 22) that the condition of a hypothesis account-
ing for all the known phenomena is often fulfilled
equally well by two conflicting hypotheses," I can
only say that I know of no such case in the history of
Science, where the phenomena are at all numerous
and complicated; and that if such a case were to oc-
cur, one of the hypotheses might always be resolved
into the other. When he says, that “this evidence
(the agreement of the results of the hypothesis with
the phenomena) cannot be of the smallest value, be-
cause we cannot have in the case of such an hypothe-
sis the assurance that if the hypothesis be false it
must lead to results at variance with the true facts,”
we must reply, with due submission, that we have, in
the case spoken of, the most complete evidence of this;
for any change in the hypothesis would make it inca-
pable of accounting for the facts. When he says that
“if we give ourselves the license of inventing the
causes as well as their laws, a person of fertile imagi-
nation might devise a hundred modes of accounting
for any given fact;" I reply, that the question is about
accounting for a large and complex series of facts, of
which the laws have been ascertained : and as a test
of Mr. Mill's assertion, I would propose as a challenge
to any person of fertile imagination to devise any one
other hypothesis to account for the perturbations of
the moon, or the coloured fringes of shadows, besides
the hypothesis by which they have actually been ex-
plained with such curious completeness. This challenge
has been repeatedly offered, but never in any degree
accepted; and I entertain no apprehension that Mr.
Mill's supposition will ever be verified by such a per-
formance.
50. I see additional reason for mistrusting the
precision of Mr. Mill's views of that accordance of
phenomena with the results of a hypothesis, in several
others of the expressions which he uses (ii. 23). He
speaks of a hypothesis being a “plausible explanation
272
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
of all or most of the phenomena;" but the case which
we have to consider is where it gives an exact repre-
sentation of all the phenomena in which its results
can be traced. He speaks of its being certain that
the laws of the phenomena are “in some measure
analogous” to those given by the hypothesis; the case
to be dealt with being, that they are in every way
identical. He speaks of this analogy being certain,
from the fact that the hypothesis can be “ for a moment
tenable ;” as if any one had recommended a hypothesis
which is tenable only while a small part of the facts
are considered, when it is inconsistent with others
which a fuller examination of the case discloses. I
have nothing to say, and have said nothing, in favour
of hypotheses which are not tenable. He says there
are many such "harmories running through the laws
of phenomena in other respects radically distinct ;"
and he gives as an instance, the laws of light and
heat. I have never alleged such harmonies as grounds
of theory, unless they should amount to identities;
and if they should do this, I have no doubt that the
most sober thinkers will suppose the causes to be of
the same kind in the two harmonizing instances. If
chlorine, iodine and brome, or sulphur and phosphorus,
have, as Mr. Mill says, analogous properties, I should
call these substances analogous : but I can see no
temptation to frame an hypothesis that they are iden-
ticat (which he seems to fear), so long as Chemistry
proves them distinct. But any hypothesis of an analogy
in the constitution of these elements (suppose, for in-
stance, a resemblance in their atomic form or compo-
sition) would seem to me to have a fair claim to trial;
and to be capable of being elevated from one degree
of probability to another by the number, variety, and
exactitude of the explanations of phenomena which it
should furnish.
VII. Against prediction of Facts.--51. These ex-
pressions of Mr. Mill have reference to a way in which
hypotheses may be corroborated, in estimating the
value of which, it appears that he and I differ. “It
seems to be thought,” he says (ii. 23), “ that an hypo-
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
273
thesis of the sort in question is entitled to a more
favourable reception, if, besides accounting for the
facts previously known, it has led to the anticipation
and prediction of others which experience afterwards
verified.” And he adds, “ Such predictions and their
fulfilment are indeed well calculated to strike the
ignorant vulgar;" but it is strange, he says, that any
considérable stress should be laid upon such a coinci-
dence by scientific thinkers. However strange it may
seem to him, there is no doubt that the most scientific
thinkers, far more than the ignorant vulgar, have
allowed the coincidence of results predicted by theory
with fact afterwards observed, to produce the strongest
effects upon their conviction; and that all the best-
established theories have obtained their permanent
place in general acceptance in virtue of such coinci-
dences, more than of any other evidence. It was not
the ignorant vulgar alone, who were struck by the
return of Halley's comet, as an evidence of the New-
tonian theory. Nor was it the ignorant vulgar, who
were struck with those facts which did so much strike
men of science, as curiously felicitous proofs of the
undulatory theory of light, the production of dark-
ness by two luminous rays interfering in a special
manner; the refraction of a single ray of light into
a conical pencil; and other complex yet precise results,
predicted by the theory and verified by experiment.
It must, one would think, strike all persons in propor-
tion to their thoughtfulness, that when Nature thus
does our bidding, she acknowledges that we have
learnt her true language. If we can predict new facts
which we have not seen, as well as explain those which
we have seen, it must be because our explanation is
not a mere formula of observed facts, but a truth of
a deeper kind. Mr. Mill says, “If the laws of the
propagation of light agree with those of the vibrations
of an elastic fluid in so many respects as is necessary
to make the hypothesis a plausible explanation of all
or most of the phenomena known at the time, it is
nothing strange that they should accord with each
other in one respect more." Nothing strange, if the
274
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
theory be true; but quite unaccountable, if it be not.
If I copy a long series of letters of which the last
half-dozen are concealed, and if I guess those aright,
as is found to be the case when they are afterwards
uncovered, this must be because I have made out the
import of the inscription. To say, that because I have
copied all that I could see, it is nothing strange that
I should guess those which I cannot see, would be
absurd, without supposing such a ground for guessing.
The notion that the discovery of the laws and causes
of phenomena is a loose hap-hazard sort of guessing,
which gives “plausible” explanations, accidental co-
incidences, casual "harmonies," laws, “in some mea-
sure analogous” to the true ones, suppositions "tenable”
for a time, appears to me to be a misapprehension of
the whole nature of science; as it certainly is inappli-
cable to the case to which it is principally applied by
Mr. Mill.
52. There is another kind of evidence of theories,
very closely approaching to the verification of untried
predictions, and to which, apparently, Mr. Mill does
not attach much importance, since he has borrowed
the term by which I have described it, Consilience,
but has applied it in a different manner (ii. 530,
563, 590). I have spoken, in the Philosophy 18, of
the Consilience of Inductions, as one of the Tests of
Hypotheses, and have exemplified it by many instances;
for example, the theory of universal gravitation, ob-
tained by induction from the motions of the planets,
was found to explain also that peculiar motion of
the spheroidal earth which produces the Precession
of the Equinoxes. This, I have said, was a striking
and surprising coincidence which gave the theory a
stamp of truth beyond the power of ingenuity to
counterfeit. I may compare such occurrences to a
case of interpreting an unknown character, in which
two different inscriptions, deciphered by different
persons, had given the same alphabet. We should,
18 B. xi. C. v. art. 11.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
275
in such a case, believe with great confidence that the
alphabet was the true one; and I will add, that I
believe the history of science offers no example in
which a theory supported by such consiliences, had
been afterwards proved to be false.
53. Mr. Mill accepts (ii. 21) a rule of M. Comte's,
that we may apply hypotheses, provided they are capa-
ble of being afterwards verified as facts. I have a
much higher respect for Mr. Mill's opinion than for
M. Comte's 19; but I do not think that this rule will be
found of any value. It appears to me to be tainted
with the vice which I have already noted, of throwing
the whole burthen of explanation upon the unex-
plained word fact- unexplained in any permanent
and definite opposition to theory. As I have said,
the Newtonian theory is a fact. Every true theory
is a fact. Nor does the distinction become more clear
by Mr. Mill's examples. “The vortices of Descartes
would have been,” he says, “a perfectly legitimate
hypothesis, if it had been possible by any mode of
explanation which we could entertain the hope of
possessing, to bring the question whether such vortices
exist or not, within the reach of our observing facul-
ties.” But this was possible, and was done. The free
19 I have given elsewhere (see last discovery of his is a mere assump-
chapter) reasons why I cannot assign tion. I conceive that I have shown
to M. Comte's Philosophie Positive that his representation of the history
any great value as a contribution to of science is erroneous, both in its
the philosophy of science. In this details and in its generalities. His
judgment I conceive that I am sup- distinction of the three stages of sci-
ported by the best philosophers of ences, the theological, metaphysical,
our time. M. Comte owes, I think, and positive, is not at all supported
much of the notice which has been by the facts of scientific history.
given to him to his including, as Mr. Real discoveries always involve what
Mill does, the science of society and he calls metaphysics; and the doc-
of human nature in his scheme, trine of final causes in physiology,
and to his boldness in dealing with the main element of science which
these. He appears to have been re- can properly be called theological,
ceived with deference as a mathe- is retained at the end, as well as the
matician: but Sir John Herschel has beginning of the science, by all ex-
shown that & supposed astronomical cept a peculiar school.
T 2
276
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
passage of comets through the spaces in which these
vortices should have been, convinced men that these
vortices did not exist. In like manner Mr. Mill re-
jects the hypothesis of a luminiferous ether, “because
it can neither be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, or touched.”
It is a strange complaint to make of the vehicle of
light, that it cannot be heard, smelt, or tasted. Its
vibrations can be seen. The fringes of shadows for
instance, show its vibrations, just as the visible lines
of waves near the shore show the undulations of the
sea. Whether this can be touched, that is, whe-
ther it resists motion, is hardly yet clear. I am far
from saying there are not difficulties on this point,
with regard to all theories which suppose a medium.
But there are no more difficulties of this kind in the
undulatory theory of light, than there are in Fourier's
theory of heat, which M. Comte adopts as a model of
scientific investigation; or in the theory of voltaic
currents, about which Mr. Mill appears to have no
doubt; or of electric atmospheres, which, though gene-
rally obsolete, Mr. Mill appears to favour; for though
it had been said that we feel such atmospheres, no one
had said that they have the other attributes of matter.
VIII. Newton's Vera Causa.—54. Mr. Mill con-
ceives (ii. 17) that his own rule concerning hypotheses
coincides with Newton's Rule, that the cause assumed
must be a vera causa. But he allows that “Mr.
Whewell... has had little difficulty in showing that his
(Newton's) conception was neither precise nor consis-
tent with itself.” He also allows that “Mr. Whewell
is clearly right in denying it to be necessary. that
the cause assigned should be a cause already known;
else how could we ever become acquainted with new
causes?” These points being agreed upon, I think that
a little further consideration will lead to the conviction
that Newton's Rule of philosophizing will best become
a valuable guide, if we understand it as asserting that
when the explanation of two or more different kinds
of phenomena (as the revolutions of the planets, the
fall of a stone, and the precession of the equinoxes,
lead us to the same cause, such a coincidence gives a
277
reality to the cause. We have, in fact, in such a case,
a Consilience of Inductions.
55. When Mr. Mill condemns me (ii. 24) (using,
however, expressions of civility which I gladly ac-
knowledge,) for having recognized no mode of Induc-
tion except that of trying hypothesis after hypothesis
until one is found which fits the phenomena, I must
beg to remind the readers of our works, that Mr. Mill
himself allows (i. 363) that the process of finding a
conception which binds together observed facts “is
tentative, that it consists of a succession of guesses,
many being rejected until one at last occurs fit to be
chosen." I must remind them also that I have given
a Section upon the Tests of Hypotheses, to which I
have just referred, -that I have given various methods
of Induction, as the Method of Gradation, the Method
of Natural Classification, the Method of Curves, the
Method of Means, the Method of Least Squares, the
Method of Residues: all which I have illustrated by
conspicuous examples from the. History of Science;
besides which, I conceive that what I have said of the
Ideas belonging to each science, and of the construc-
tion and explication of conceptions, will point out in
each case, in what region we are to look for the In-
ductive Element in order to make new discoveries.
I have already ventured to say, elsewhere, that the
methods which I have given, are as definite and prac-
tical as any others which have been proposed, with the
great additional advantage of being the methods by
which all great discoveries in science have really been
made.
IX. Successive Generalizations.----56. There is one
feature in the construction of science which Mr. Mill
notices, but to which he does not ascribe, as I conceive,
its due importance: I mean, that process by which we
not only ascend from particular facts to a general law,
but when this is done, ascend from the first general
law to others more general; and so on, proceeding to
the highest point of generalization. This character of
the scientific process was first clearly pointed out by
Bacon, and is one of the most noticeable instances of

PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
his philosophical sagacity. “There are,” he says, “two
ways, and can be only two, of seeking and finding
truth. The one from sense and particulars, takes a
flight to the most general axioms, and from these
principles and their truth, settled once for all, invents
and judges of intermediate axioms. The other method
collects axioms from sense and particulars, ascending
continuously and by degrees, so that in the end it
arrives at the most general axioms :" meaning by
axioms, laws or principles. The structure of the
most complete sciences consists of several such steps,
--floors, as Bacon calls them, of successive generaliza-
tion; and thus this structure may be exhibited as
a kind of scientific pyramid. I have constructed this
pyramid in the case of the science of Astronomy 20 :
and I am gratified to find that the illustrious Hum-
boldt approves of the design, and speaks of it as
executed with complete success. The capability of
being exhibited in this form of successive generali-
zations, arising from particulars upward to some very
general law, is the condition of all tolerably perfect
sciences; and the steps of the successive generalizations
are commonly the most important events in the history
of the science.
57. Mr. Mill does not reject this process of ge-
neralization; but he gives it no conspicuous place,
making it only one of three modes of reducing a law
of causation into other laws. “There is," he says
(i. 555), “the subsumption of one law under another;...
the gathering up of several laws into one more general
law which includes them all. He adds afterwards,
that the general law is the sum of the partial ones
(i. 557), an expression which appears to me inadequate,
for reasons which I have already stated. The general
law is not the mere sum of the particular laws. It is,
as I have already said, their amount in a new point of
20 I have also, in the same place,
given the Inductive Pyramid for the
science of Optics. These Pyramids
are necessarily inverted in their form,
in order that, in reading in the ordi-
nary way, we may proceed to the
vertex. Phil. Ind. Sc. b. xi. c. vi.
21 Cosmos, vol ü. note 35.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
279
view. A new conception is introduced ; thus, Newton
did not merely add together the laws of the motions
of the moon and of the planets, and of the satellites,
and of the earth; he looked at them altogether as the
result of a universal force of mutual gravitation; and
therein consisted his generalization. And the like
might be pointed out in other cases.
58. I am the more led to speak of Mr. Mill as not
having given due importance to this process of suc-
cessive generalization, by the way in which he speaks
in another place (ii. 525) of this doctrine of Bacon.
He conceives Bacon “to have been radically wrong
when he enunciates, as a universal rule, that induction
should proceed from the lowest to the middle prin-
ciples, and from those to the highest, never reversing
that order, and consequently, leaving no room for the
discovery of new principles by way of deduction 22 at
all."
59. I conceive that the Inductive Table of As-
tronomy, to which I have already referred, shows that
in that science, the most complete which has yet ex-
isted,—the history of the science has gone on, as to its
general movement, in accordance with the view which
Bacon's sagacity enjoined. The successive generaliza-
tions, so far as they were true, were made by successive
generations. I conceive also that the Inductive Table of
Optics shows the same thing; and this, without taking
for granted the truth of the Undulatory Theory; for
with regard to all the steps of the progress of the
science, lower than that highest one, there is, I con-
ceive, no controversy.
60. Also, the Science of Mechanics, although Mr.
Mill more especially refers to it, as a case in which the
22 The reader will probably recol- as when from the most general prin-
lect that as Induction means the in- ciples of Geometry or of Mechanics,
ference of general propositions from we prove some less general theorem;
particular cases, Deduction means the for instance, the number of the possi-
inference by the application of gene ble regular solids, or the principle of
ral propositions to particular cases, vis viva.
and by combining such applications;
280
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
highest generalizations (for example the Laws of Mo-
tion) were those earliest ascertained with any scientific
exactness, will, I think, on a more careful examination
of its history, be found remarkably to confirm Bacon's
view. For, in that science, we have, in the first place,
very conspicuous examples of the vice of the method
pursued by the ancients in flying to the highest gene-
ralizations first; as when they made their false distinc-
tions of the laws of natural and violent motions, and of
terrestrial and celestial motions. Many erroneous laws
of motion were asserted through neglect of facts or
want of experiments. And when Galileo and bis school
had in some measure succeeded in discovering some of
the true laws of the motions of terrestrial bodies, they
did not at once assert them as general: for they did
not at all apply those laws to the celestial motions.
As I have remarked, all Kepler's speculations respect-
ing the causes of the motions of the planets, went upon
the supposition that the First Law of terrestrial Motion
did not apply to celestial bodies; but that, on the con-
trary, some continual force was requisite to keep up,
as well as to originate, the planetary motions. Nor
did Descartes, though he enunciated the Laws of
Motion with more generality than his predecessors,
(but not with exactness,) venture to trust the planets
to those laws; on the contrary, he invented his ma-
chinery of Vortices in order to keep up the motions
of the heavenly bodies. Newton was the first who
extended the laws of terrestrial motion to the celestial
spaces; and in doing so, he used all the laws of the
celestial motions which had previously been discovered
by more limited inductions. To these instances, I may
add the gradual generalization of the third Law of mo-
tion by Huyghens, the Bernoullis, and Herman, which
I have described in the History23 as preceding that
Period of Deduction, to which the succeeding narrative24
is appropriated. In Mechanics, then, we have a cardi-
nal example of the historically gradual and successive
23
B. vi. C. V.
24 C vi.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
281
áscent of science from particulars to the most general
laws.
61. The Science of Hydrostatics may appear to
offer a more favourable example of the ascent to the
most general laws, without going through the inter-
mediate particular laws; and it is true, with reference
to this science, as I have observed , that it does exhibit
the peculiarity of our possessing the most general
principles on which the phenomena depend, and from
which many cases of special facts are explained by
deduction; while other cases cannot be so explained,
from the want of principles intermediate between the
highest and the lowest. And I have assigned, as the
reason of this peculiarity, that the general principles
of the Mechanics of Fluids were not obtained with
reference to the science itself, but by extension from
the sister science of the Mechanics of Solids. The
two sciences are parts of the same Inductive Pyramid;
and having reached the summit of this Pyramid on
one side, we are tempted to descend on the other from
the highest generality to more narrow laws. Yet even
in this science, the best part of our knowledge is
mainly composed of inductive laws, obtained by in-
ductive.examination of particular classes of facts. The
mere mathematical investigations of the laws of waves,
for instance, have not led to any results so valuable as
the experimental researches of Bremontier, Emy, the
Webers, and Mr. Scott Russell. And in like manner
in Acoustics, the Mechanics of Elastic Fluids, the
deductions of mathematicians made on general princi-
ples have not done so much for our knowledge, as
the cases of vibrations of plates and pipes examined
experimentally by Chladni, Savart, Mr. Wheatstone
and Mr. Willis. We see therefore, even in these
sciences, no reason to slight the wisdom which exhorts
us to ascend from particulars to intermediate laws,
rather than to hope to deduce these latter better from
the more general laws obtained once for all.
23 Hist. b. vi. c. vi. sect. 13.
26 Hist. Ind. Sc. b. viü.
282
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
62. Mr. Mill himself indeed, notwithstanding that
he slights Bacon's injunction to seek knowledge by
proceeding from less general to more general laws,
has given a very good reason why this is commonly
necessary and wise. He says (ii. 526), “Before we
attempt to explain deductively, from more general laws,
any new class of phenomena, it is desirable to have
gone as far as is practicable in ascertaining the em-
pirical laws of these phenomena; so as to compare the
results of deduction, not with one individual instance
after another, but with general propositions expressive
of the points of agreement which have been found
among many instances. For," he adds with great
justice, “if Newton had been obliged to verify the
theory of gravitation, not by deducing from it Kepler's
laws, but by deducing all the observed planetary posi-
tions which had served Kepler to establish those laws,
the Newtonian theory would probably never have
emerged from the state of an hypothesis.” To which
we may add, that it is certain, from the history of the
subject, that in that case the hypothesis would never
have been framed at all.
X. Mr. Mill's Hope from Deduction.--63. Mr.
Mill expresses a hope of the efficacy of Deduction,
rather than Induction, in promoting the future pro-
gress of Science; which hope, so far as the physical
sciences are concerned, appears to me at variance with
all the lessons of the history of those sciences. He
says (i. 579), “that the advances henceforth to be
expected even in physical, and still more in mental and
social science, will be chiefly the result of deduction,
is evident from the general considerations already
adduced :" these considerations being, that the phe-
nomena to be considered are very complex, and are
the result of many known causes, of which we have
to disentangle the results.
64. I cannot but take a very different view from
this. I think that any one, looking at the state of
physical science, will see that there are still a vast
mass of cases, in which we do not at all know the
causes, at least, in their full generality; and that the
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
283
knowledge of new causes, and the generalization of
the laws of those already known, can only be obtained
by new inductive discoveries. Except by new In-
ductions, equal, in their efficacy for grouping together
phenomena in new points of view, to any which have
yet been performed in the history of science, how are
we to solve such questions as those which, in the
survey of what we already know, force themselves
upon our minds? Such as, to take only a few of
the most obvious examples-What is the nature of
the connexion of heat and light? How does heat
produce the expansion, liquefaction and vaporization
of bodies? What is the nature of the connexion
between the optical and the chemical properties of
light? What is the relation between optical, crystal-
line and chemical polarity? What is the connexion
between the atomic constitution and the physical quali-
ties of bodies? What is the tenable definition of a
mineral species? What is the true relation of the
apparently different types of vegetable life (monoco-
tyledons, dicotyledons, and cryptogamous plants)?
What is the relation of the various types of animal
life (vertebrates, articulates, radiates, &c.)? What is
the number, and what are the distinctions of the Vital
Powers? What is the internal constitution of the
earth ? These, and many other questions of equal
interest, no one, I suppose, expects to see solved by
deduction from principles already known. But we
can, in many of them, see good hope of progress by
and careful experiments and observations.
65. With such questions before us, as have now
been suggested, I can see nothing but a most mischiev-
ous narrowing of the field and enfeebling of the spirit
of scientific exertion, in the doctrine that “Deduction
is the great scientific work of the present and of future
ages;” and that “A revolution is peaceably and pro-
gressively effecting itself in philosophy the reverse of
that to which Bacon has attached his name." I trust,
on the contrary, that we have many new laws of
nature still to discover; and that our race is destined
284
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
to obtain a sight of wider truths than any we yet dis-
cern, including, as cases, the general laws we now
know, and obtained from these known laws as they
must be, by Induction.
66. I can see, however, reasons for the compara-
tively greater favour with which Mr. Mill looks upon
Deduction, in the views to which he has mainly directed
his attention. The explanation of remarkable pheno-
mena by known laws of Nature, bas, as I have already
said, a greater charm for many minds than the dis-
covery of the laws themselves. In the case of such
explanations, the problem proposed is more definite,
and the solution more obviously complete. For the
process of induction includes a mysterious step, by
which we pass from particulars to generals, of which
step the reason always seems to be inadequately ren-
dered by any words which we can use; and this step
to most minds is not demonstrative, as to few is it
given to perform it on a great scale. But the process
of explanation of facts by known laws is deductive, and
has at every step a force like that of demonstration,
producing a feeling peculiarly gratifying to the clear
intellects which are most capable of following the
process. We may often see instances in which this
admiration for deductive skill appears in an extrava-
gant measure; as when men compare Laplace with
Newton. Nor should I think it my business to argue
against such a preference, unless it were likely to leave
us too well satisfied with what we know already, to
chill our hope of scientific progress, and to prevent our
making any further strenuous efforts to ascend, higher
than we have yet done, the mountain-chain which
limits human knowledge.
67. But there is another reason which, I conceive,
operates in leading Mr. Mill to look to Deduction as
the principal means of future progress in knowledge,
and which is a reason of considerable weight in the
subjects of research which, as I conceive, he mainly
has in view. In the study of our own minds and of
the laws which govern the history of society, I do not
think that it is very likely that we shall hereafter
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
285
arrive at any wider principles than those of which we
already possess some considerable knowledge; and this,
for a special reason; namely, that our knowledge in
such cases is not gathered by mere external observation
of a collection of external facts; but acquired by atten-
tion to internal facts, our own emotions, thoughts, and
springs of action; facts are connected by ties existing
in our own consciousness, and not in mere observed
juxtaposition, succession, or similitude. How the
character, for instance, is influenced by various causes,
(an example to which Mr. Mill repeatedly refers, ii.
518, &c.), is an inquiry which may perhaps be best
conducted by considering what we know of the influ-
ence of education and habit, government and occupa-
tion, hope and fear, vanity and pride, and the like,
upon men's characters, and by tracing the various
effects of the intermixture of such influences. Yet
even here, there seems to be room for the discovery of
laws in the way of experimental inquiry: for instance,
what share race or family has in the formation of
character; a question which can hardly be solved to
any purpose in any other way than by collecting and
classing instances. And in the same way, many of
the principles which regulate the material wealth of
states, are obtained, if not exclusively, at least most
clearly and securely, by induction from large surveys
of facts. Still, however, I am quite ready to admit
that in Mental and Social Science, we are much less
likely than in Physical Science, to obtain new truths
by any process which can be distinctively termed In-
duction; and that in those sciences, what may be called
Deductions from principles of thought and action of
which we are already conscious, or to which we assent
when they are felicitously picked out of our thoughts
and put into words, must have a large share; and I
may add, that this observation of Mr. Mill appears to
me to be important, and, in its present connexion, new.
XI. Fundamental opposition of our doctrines.
68. I have made nearly all the remarks which I
now think it of any consequence to make upon Mr.
Mill's Logic, so far as it bears upon the doctrines con-
tained in my History and Philosophy. And yet there
286
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
remains still untouched one great question, involving
probably the widest of all the differences between him
and me. I mean the question whether geometrical
axioms, (and, as similar in their evidence to these, all
axioms,) be truths derived from experience, or be néces-
sary truths in some deeper sense. This is one of the
fundamental questions of philosophy; and all persons
who take an interest in metaphysical discussions, kuow
that the two opposite opinions have been maintained
with great zeal in all ages of speculation. To me it
appears that there are two distinct elements in our
knowledge, Experience, without, and the Mind, with-
in. Mr. Mill derives all our knowledge from Experi-
ence alone. In a question thus going to the root of all
knowledge, the opposite arguments must needs cut deep
on both sides. Mr. Mill cannot deny that our know-
ledge of geometrical axioms and the like, seems to be
necessary. I cannot deny that our knowledge, axiomatic
as well as other, never is acquired without experience.
69. Perhaps ordinary readers may despair of fol-
lowing our reasonings, when they find that they can
only be made intelligible by supposing, on the one
hand, a person who thinks distinctly and yet has never
seen or felt any external object; and on the other
hand, a person who is transferred, as Mr. Mill supposes
(ii. 117), to “distant parts of the stellar regions where
the phenomena may be entirely unlike those with
which we are acquainted,” and where even the axiom,
that every effect must have a cause, does not hold good.
Nor, in truth, do I think it necessary here to spend
many words on this subject. Probably, for those who
take an interest in this discussion, most of the argu-
ments on each side have already been put forwards with
sufficient repetition. I have, in an “Essay on the
Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy," and in some
accompanying “Remarks,” printed” at the end of the
what has been said on this subject, both by Mr. Mill,
and by the author of a very able critique on my His-
27 Reprinted in the Appendix to this volume.
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
287
tory and Philosophy which appeared in the Quarterly
Review in 1841: and I will not here attempt to revive
the general discussion.
70. Perhaps I may be allowed to notice, that in
one part of Mr. Mill's work where this subject is
treated, there is the appearance of one of the parties
to the controversy pronouncing judgment in his own
cause. This indeed is a temptation which it is especi-
ally difficult for an author to resist, who writes a
treatise upon Fallacies, the subject of Mr. Mill's fifth
Book. In such a treatise, the writer has an easy way
of disposing of adverse opinions by classing them as
“Fallacies," and putting them side by side with opini-
ons universally acknowledged to be false. In this way,
Mr. Mill has dealt with several points which are still,
as I conceive, matters of controversy (ii. 357, &c.)
71. But undoubtedly, Mr. Mill has given his
argument against my opinions with great distinct-
ness in another place (i. 319). In order to show
that it is merely habitual association which gives
to an experimental truth the character of a neces-
sary truth, he quotes the case of the laws of motion,
which were really discovered from experiment, but are
now looked upon as the only conceivable laws; and
especially, what he conceives as “the reductio ad ab-
surdum of the theory of inconceivableness," an opinion
which I had ventured to throw out, that if we could
conceive the Composition of bodies distinctly, we might
be able to see that it is necessary that the modes of
their composition should be definite. I do not think
that readers in general will see anything absurd in
the opinion, that the laws of Mechanics, and even the
laws of the Chemical Composition of bodies, may de-
pend upon principles as necessary as the properties of
space and number; and that this necessity, though not
at all perceived by persons who have only the ordinary
obscure and confused notions on such subjects, may be
evident to a mind which has, by effort and discipline,
rendered its ideas of Mechanical Causation, Elementary
Composition and Difference of Kind, clear and precise.
It may easily be, I conceive, that while such necessary
288
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.

principles are perceived to be necessary only by a few
minds of highly cultivated insight, such principles as
the axioms of Geometry and Arithmetic may be per-
ceived to be necessary by all minds which have any
habit of abstract thought at all : and I conceive also,
that though these axioms are brought into distinct
view by a certain degree of intellectual cultivation,
they may still be much better described as conditions
of experience, than as results of experience :-as laws
of the mind and of its activity, rather than as facts
impressed upon a mind merely passive.
XII. Absurdities in Mr. Mill's Logic. —-72. I
will not pursue the subject further : only, as the ques-
tion has arisen respecting the absurdities to which
each of the opposite doctrines leads, I will point out
opinions connected with this subject, which Mr. Mill
has stated in various parts of his book.
He holds (i. 317) that it is merely from habit that
we are unable to conceive the last point of space or
the last instant of time. He holds (ii. 360) that it is
strange that any one should rely upon the à priori
evidence that space or extension is infinite, or that no-
thing can be made of nothing. He holds (i. 304) that
the first law of motion is rigorously true, but that the
axioms respecting the lever are only approximately true.
He holds (ii. I10) that there may be sidereal firma-
ments in which events succeed each other at random,
without obeying any laws of causation ; although one
might suppose that even if space and cause are both to
have their limits, still they might terminate together :
and then, even on this bold supposition, we should no
where have a world in which events were casual. He
holds (ii. III) that the axiom, that every event must
have a cause, is established by means of an “induction
by simple enumeration :" and in like manner, that
the principles of number and of geometry are proved
by this method of simple enumeration alone. He
ascribes the proof (i. 162) of the axiom, “ things which
are equal to the same are equal to each other," to the
fact that this proposition has been perpetually found
true and never false. He holds (i. 338) that “In all
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
289
propositions concerning numbers, a condition is in-
plied, without which none of them would be true; and
that condition is an assumption which may be false.
The condition is that I=1."
73. Mr. Mill further holds (i. 309), that it is a
characteristic property of geometrical forms, that they
are capable of being painted in the imagination with a
distinctness equal to reality :—that our ideas of forms
exactly resemble our sensations: which, it is implied,
is not the case with regard to any other class of our
ideas;-that we thus may have mental pictures of all
possible combinations of lines and angles, which are
as fit subjects of geometrical experimentation as the
realities themselves. He says, that “we know that
the imaginary lines exactly resemble real ones ;” and
that we obtain this knowledge respecting the character-
istic property of the idea of space by experience; though
it does not appear how we can compare our ideas with
the realities, since we know the realities only by our
ideas; or why this property of their resemblance should
be confined to one class of ideas alone.
74. I have now made such remarks as appear to
me to be necessary, on the most important parts of
Mr. Mill's criticism of my Philosophy. I hope I have
avoided urging any thing in a contentious manner; as
I have certainly written with no desire of controversy,
but only with a view to offer to those who may be will-
ing to receive it, some explanation of portions of my
previous writings. I have already said, that if this
had not have been my especial object, I could with
pleasure have noted the passages of Mr. Mill's Logic
which I admire, rather than the points in which we
differ. I will in a very few words refer to some of
these points, as the most agreeable way of taking leave
of the dispute.
I say then that Mr. Mill appears to me especially
instructive in his discussion of the nature of the proof
which is conveyed by the syllogism; and that his
doctrine, that the force of the syllogism consists in an
inductive assertion, with an interpretation added to it,
solves very happily the difficulties which baffle the
290
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
other theories of this subject. I think that this doctrine
of his is made still more instructive, by his excepting
from it the cases of Scriptural Theology and of Positive
Law (i. 260), as cases in which general propositions,
not particular facts, are our original data. I consider
also that the recognition of Kinds (i. 166) as classes in
which we have, not a finite but an inexhaustible body
of resemblances among individuals, and as groups
made by nature, not by mere definition, is very valu-
able, as stopping the inroad to an endless train of false
philosophy. I conceive that he takes the right ground
in his answer to Hume's argument against miracles
(ii. 183): and I admire the acuteness with which he
has criticized Laplace's tenets on the Doctrine of
Chances, and the candour with which he has, in the
second edition, acknowledged oversights on this sub-
ject made in the first. I think that much, I may
almost say all, which he says on the subject of Lan-
guage, is very philosophical ; for instance, what he
says (ii. 238) of the way in which words acquire their
meaning in common use. I especially admire the acute-
ness and force with which he has shown (ii. 255) how
moral principles expressed in words degenerate into
formulas, and yet how the formula cannot be rejected
without a moral loss. This "perpetual oscillation in
spiritual truths," as he happily terms it, has never,
I think, been noted in the same broad manner, and
is a subject of most instructive contemplation. And
though I have myself refrained from associating moral
and political with physical science in my study of the
subject, I see a great deal which is full of promise
for the future progress of moral and political know-
ledge in Mr. Mill's sixth Book, “On the Logic of the
Moral and Political Sciences.” Even his arrangement
of the various methods which have been or may be
followed in the Social Science,"_" the Chemical or
Experimental Method,” “the Geometrical or Abstract
Method," "the Physical or Concrete Deductive Me-
thod," "the Inverse Deductive or Historical Method,"
though in some degree fanciful and forced, abounds
with valuable suggestions; and his estimate of “the
MR. MILL'S LOGIC.
291
interesting philosophy of the Bentham school,” the
main example of “the geometrical method,” is in-
teresting and philosophical. On some future occasion,
I may, perhaps, venture into the region of which Mr.
Mill has thus essayed to map the highways: for it
is from no despair either of the great progress to be
made in such truth as that here referred to, or of
the effect of philosophical method in arriving at such
truth, that I have, in what I have now written, con-
fined myself to the less captivating but more definite
part of the subject.
U
2
CHAPTER XXIII.
POLITICAL ECONOMY AS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE.
(Moral Sciences.)-1. BOTH M. Comte and Mr. Mill,
in speaking of the methods of advancing science, aim, as
I have said, at the extension of their methods to moral
subjects, and aspire to suggest means for the augmen-
tation of our knowledge of ethical, political, and social
truths. I have not here ventured upon a like exten-
sion of my conclusions, because I wished to confine my
views of the philosophy of discovery to the cases in
which all allow that solid and permanent discoveries
have been made. Moreover in the case of moral spe-
culations, we have to consider not only observed exter-
nal facts and the ideas by which they are colligated,
but also internal facts, in which the instrument of
observation is consciousness, and in which observations
and ideas are mingled together, and act and react in a
peculiar manner. It may therefore be doubted whether
the methods which have been effectual in the discovery
of physical theories will not require to be greatly mo-
dified, or replaced by processes altogether different,
when we would make advances in ethical, political, or
social knowledge. In ethics, at least, it seems plain
that we must take our starting-point not without but
within us. Our mental powers, our affections, our rea-
son, and any other faculties which we have, must be the
basis of our convictions. And in this field of know-
ledge, the very form of our highest propositions is dif-
ferent from what it is in the physical sciences. In
Physics we examine what is, in a form more or less
general: in Ethics we seek to determine what ought
to be, as the highest rule, which is supreme over all
POLITICAL ECONOMY. 293
others. In this case we cannot expect the methods of
physical discovery to aid us.
But others of the subjects which I have mentioned,
though strongly marked and influenced by this ethical
element, are still of a mixed character, and require
also observation of external facts of human, individual,
and social conduct, and generalizations derived from
such observations. The facts of political constitutions
and social relations in communities of men, and the
histories of such communities, afford large bodies of
materials for political and social science; and it seems
not at all unlikely that such science may be governed,
in its formation and progress, by laws like those which
govern the physical sciences, and may be steered clear
of errors and directed towards truths by an attention
to the forms which error and truth have assumed in
the most stable and certain sciences. The different
forms of society, and the principal motives which ope-
rate upon men regarded in masses, may be classified
as facts; and though our consciousness of what we our-
selves are and the affections which we ourselves feel
are always at work in our interpretations of such facts,
yet the knowledge which we thus obtain may lead us
to bodies of knowledge which we may call Sciences,
and compare with the other sciences as to their form
and maxims.
(Political Economy.) -2. Among such bodies of
knowledge, I may notice as a specimen, the science of
Political Economy, and may compare it with other
sciences in the respects which have been referred to.
M. Comte has given a few pages to the discussion of
this science of Political Economy?; but what he has
said amounts only to a few vague remarks on Adam
Smith and Destutt de Tracy; his main object being, to
it would seem, to introduce his usual formula, and to
condemn all that has hitherto been done (with which
there is no evidence that he is adequately acquainted)
as worthless, because it is “theological," "metaphysi-
cal,” “ literary,” and not “positive."
1 Phil. Pos. t. iv. p. 264.
294
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Mr. Mill has much more distinctly characterized the
plan and form of Political Economy in his system'.
He regards this science as that which deals with the
results which take place in buman society in conse-
quence of the desire of wealth. He explains, however,
that it is only for the sake of convenience that one of
the motives which operate upon man is thus insulated
and treated as if it were the only one:—that there are
other principles, for instance, the principles on which
the progress of population depends, which co-operate
with the main principle, and materially modify its re-
sults: and he gives reasons why this mode of simplify-
ing the study of social phenomena tends to promote
the progress of systematic knowledge.
Instead of discussing these reasons, I will notice the
way in which the speculations of political economists
have exemplified tendencies to error, and corrections
of those tendencies, of the same nature as those
which we have already noticed in speaking of other
sciences.
(Wages, Profits, and Rent.)-3. We may regard as
one of the first important steps in this science, Adam
Smith's remark, that the value or price of any article
bought and sold consists of three elements, Wages, Profits,
and Rent. Some of the most important of subsequent
speculations were attempts to determine the laws of each
of these three elements. At first it might be supposed
that there ought to be added to them a fourth element,
Materials. But upon consideration it will be seen that
materials, as an element of price, resolves itself into
wages and rent; for all materials derive their value
from the labour which is bestowed upon them. The
iron of the ploughshare costs just what it costs to sink
the mine, dig up and smelt the iron. The wood of the
frame costs what it costs to cut down the tree, together
with the rent of the ground on which it grows.
(Premature Generalizations.)-4. But what deter-
mines Wages ?--The amount of persons seeking work,
3 Logic, b. vi. C. 3.
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
295
that is, speaking loosely, the population; and the amount
of money which is devoted to the payment of wages.
And what determines the population? It was l'eplied,
the means of subsistence. And how does the popu-
lation tend to increase ?-In a geometrical ratio. And
how does the subsistence tend to increase?—At most in
an arithmetical ratio. And hence it was inferred that
the population tends constantly to run beyond the
means of subsistence, and will be limited by a threat-
ened deficiency of these means. And the wages paid
must be such as to form this limit. And therefore the
wages paid will always be such as just to keep up the
population in its ordinary state of progress. Here
wan one general proposition which was gathered from
summary observations of society.
Again: as to Rent: Adam Smith had treated Rent
as if it were a monopoly price—the result of a mono-
poly of the land by the landowners. But subsequent
writers acutely remarked that land is of various de-
grees of fertility, and there is some land which barely
pays the cultivator, if cultivating it he pay no rent.
And rent can be afforded for other land only in so far
as it is better than this bad land. And thus, there
was obtained another general proposition; that the
Rent of good land was just equal to the excess of its
produce over the worst cultivable land.
Now these two propositions are examples of a hasty
and premature generalization, like that from which
the sweeping physical systems of antiquity were de-
rived. They were examples of that process which
Francis Bacon calls anticipation; in which we leap at
once from a few facts to propositions of the highest
generality; and supposing these to be securely esta-
blished, proceed to draw a body of conclusions from
them, and thus frame a system.
And what is the sounder and wiser mode of pro-
ceeding in order to obtain a science of such things?
We must classify the facts which we observe, and take
care that we do not ascribe to the facts in our inime-
diate neighbourhood or specially under our notice, a
generality of prevalence which does not belong to
296
PIIILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
them. We must proceed by the ladder of Induction,
and be sure we have obtained the narrower generaliza-
tions, before we aspire to the widest.
(Correction of them by Induction. Rent.)-5. For in-
stance; in the case of the latter of the above two pro-
positions—that Rent is the excess of the produce of
good soils over the worst--that is the case in England
and Scotland; but is it the case in other countries?
Let us see. Why is it the case in England? Because
if the rent demanded for good land were more than the
excess of the produce over bad land, the farmer would
prefer the bad land as more gainful. If the rent de-
manded for good land were less than the excess, the
bad land would be abandoned by the farmer.
But all this goes upon the supposition that the far-
mer can remove from good land to bad, or from bad to
good, or apply his capital in some other way than
farming, according as it is more gainful. This is true
in England; but is it true all over the world?
By no means. It is true in scarcely any other part
of the world. In almost every other part of the world
the cultivator is bound to the land, so that he cannot
remove himself and his capital from it; and cannot,
because he is not satisfied with his position upon it,
seek and find a position and a subsistence elsewhere.
On the contrary, he is bound by the laws and customs
of the country, by constitution, history and character,
so that he cannot, or can only with great difficulty,
change his plan and mode of life. And thus over
great part of the world the fundamental supposition on
which rests the above generalization respecting Rent is
altogether false.
An able political economist? has taken the step,
which as we have said, sound philosophy would have
prescribed : he has classified the states of society which
exist or have existed on the earth, as they bear on this
point, the amount of Rent. He has classified the
modes in which the produce is, in different countries
8 Jones, On Rent, 1833.
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
297
and different stages of society, divided between the
cultivator and the proprietor: and he finds that the na-
tural divisions are these: -Serf Rents, that is, labour
rents paid by the Cultivator to the Landowner, as in
Russia: Métayer Rents, where the produce is divided be-
tween the Cultivator and the Landowner, as in Central
Europe: Ryot Rents, where a portion of the produce is
paid to the Sovereign as Landlord, as in India: Cottier
Rents, where a money-rent is paid by a Cultivator who
raises his own subsistence from the soil; and I'armers'
Rents, where a covenanted Rent is paid by a person
employing labourers. In this last case alone is it true
that the Rent is equal to the excess of good over bad
soils.
The error of the conclusion, in this case, arises from
assuming the mobility of capital and labour in cases in
which it is not moveable: which is much as if mecha-
nicians had reasoned respecting rigid bodies, supposing
them to be fluid bodies.
But the error of method was in not classifying the
facts of societies before jumping to a conclusion which
was to be applicable to all societies.
(Wages.)—6. And in like manner there is an error of
the same kind in the assertion of the other general
principles :—that wages are determined by the capital
which is forthcoming for the payment of wages; and
that population is determined in its progress by wages.
For there is a vast mass of population on the surface
of the earth which does not live upon wages: and
though in England the greater part of the people lives
upon wages, in the rest of the world the part that
does so is small. And in this case, as in the other,
we must class these facts as they exist in different
nations, before we can make assertions of any wide
generality.
Mr. Jones* classed the condition of labourers in dif-
ferent countries in the same inductive manner in which
he classed the tenure of land. He pointed out that
4 Literary Remains, 1859.
298
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
there are three broad distinct classes of them: Unhired
Labourers, who cultivate the ground which they oc-
cupy, and live on self-produced wages; Paid Depench-
ants, who are paid out of the revenue or income of
their employers, as the military retainers and domestic
artizans of feudal times in Europe, and the greater
part of the people of Asia at the present day; and
Hired Labourers, who are paid wages from capital.
This last class, though taken as belonging to the
normal condition of society by many political econo-
mists, is really the exceptional case, taking the world
at large; and no propositions concerning the structure
and relations of ranks in society can have any wide
generality which are founded on a consideration of
this case alone.
(Population.)—7. And again : with regard to the pro-
position that the progress of population depends merely
on the rate of wages, a very little observation of dif-
ferent communities, and of the same communities at
different times, will show that this is a very rash and
hasty generalization. When wages rise, whether or
not population shall undergo a corresponding increase
depends upon many other circumstances besides this
single fact of the increase of wages. The effect of a
rise of wages upon population is affected by the form
of the wages, the time occupied by the change, the
institutions of the society under consideration, and
other causes: and a due classification of the conditions
of the society according to these circumstances, is re-
quisite in order to obtain any general proposition con-
cerning the effect of a rise or fall of wages upon the
progress of the population.
And thus those precepts of the philosophy of dis-
covery which we have repeated so often, which are so
simple, and which seem so obvious, have been neg-
lected or violated in the outset of Political Economy
as in so many other sciences :-namely, the precepts
that we must classify our facts before we generalize,
and seek for narrower generalizations and inductions
before we aim at the widest. If these maxims had
been obeyed, they would have saved the earlier specu-
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
299
lators on this subject from some splendid errors; but,
on the other hand, it may be said, that if these earlier
speculators had not been thus bold, the science could
not so soon have assumed that large and striking form
which made it so attractive, and to which it probably
owes a large part of its progress.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY?.
I. Science is the Idealization of Facts.
I. I HAVE spoken, a few chapters back, of the Reac-
tion against the doctrines of the Sensational School in
England and France. In Germany also there was a
Reaction against these doctrines ;-but there, this move-
ment took a direction different from its direction in
other countries. Omitting many other names, Kant,
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel may be regarded as the
writers who mark, in a prominent manner, this Ger-
manic line of speculation. The problem of philosophy,
in the way in which they conceived it, may best be ex-
plained by reference to that Fundamental Antithesis of
which I had occasion to speak in the History of Scientific
Ideas? And in order to characterize the steps taken
by these modern German philosophers, I must return
to what I have said concerning the Fundamental
Antithesis.
This Antithesis, as I have there remarked, is stated
in various ways:as the Antithesis of Thoughts and
Things; of Ideas and Sensations ; of Theory and Facts;
of Necessary Truth and Experience; of the Subjective
and Objective elements of our knowledge; and in other
phrases. I have further remarked that the elements
thus spoken of, though opposed, are inseparable. We
cannot have the one without the other. We cannot
have thoughts without thinking of Things : we can-
not have things before us without thinking of them.
1 The substance of this and the
next chapter was printed as a com-
munication to the Cambridge Phil.
Soc. in 1840.
? Or in the earlier editions, in the
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.
MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
301
Further, it has been shown, I conceive, that our
knowledge derives from the former of these two ele-
ments, namely our Ideas, its form and character of
knowledge ; our ideas being the necessary Forms of
knowledge, while the Matter of our knowledge in each
case is supplied by the appropriate perception or out-
ward experience.
Thus our Ideas of Space and Time are the neces-
sary Forms of our geometrical and arithmetical know-
ledge; and no sensations or experience are needed as
the matter of such knowledge, except in so far as sen-
sation and experience are needed to evoke our Ideas in
any degree. And hence these sciences are sometimes
called Formal sciences. All other Sciences involve,
along with the experience and observation appropriate
to each, a development of the ideal conditions of know-
ledge existing in our minds; and I have given the
history, both of this development of ideas and of the
matter derived from experience, in two former works,
the History of Scientific Ideas, and the History of the
Inductive Sciences. I have there traced this history
through the whole body of the physical sciences.
But though Ideas and Perceptions are thus separate
elements in our philosophy, they cannot in fact be
distinguished and separated, but are different aspects
of the same thing. And the only way in which we can
approach to truth is by gradually and successively, in
one instance after another, advancing from the percep-
tion to the idea; from the fact to the theory.
2. I would now further observe, that in this pro-
gression from fact to theory, we advance (when the
theory is complete and completely possessed by the
mind) from the apprehension of truths as actual to
the apprehension of them as necessary; and thus Facts
which were originally observed merely as Facts become
the consequences of theory, and are thus brought with-
in the domain of Ideas. That which was a part of the
objective world becomes also a part of the subjective
world; a necessary part of the thoughts of the theorist.
And in this way the progress of true theory is the
Idealization of Facts.
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PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.“
Thus the Progress of Science consists in a per-
petual reduction of Facts to Ideas. Portions are per-
petually transferred from one side to another of the
Fundamental Antithesis: namely, from the Objective
to the Subjective side. The Centre or Fulcrum of the
Antithesis is shifted by every movement which is
made in the advance of science, and is shifted so that
the ideal side gains something from the real side.
3. I will proceed to illustrate this Proposition a
little further. Necessary Truths belong to the Sub-
jective, Observed Facts to the Objective side of our
knowledge. Now in the progress of that exact
speculative knowledge which we call Science, Facts
which were at a previous period merely Observed
Facts, come to be known as Necessary Truths; and
the attempts at new advances in science generally
introduce the representation of known truths of fact,
as included in higher and wider truths, and therefore,
so far, necessary.
We may exemplify this progress in the history
of the science of Mechanics. Thus the property of the
lever, the inverse proportion of the weights and arms,
was known as a fact before the time of Aristotle, and
known as no more; for he gives many fantastical and
inapplicable reasons for the fact. But in the writings
of Archimedes we find this fact brought within the
domain of necessary truth. It was there transferred
from the empirical to the ideal side of the Funda-
mental Antithesis ; and thus a progressive step was
made in science. In like manner, it was at first
taken by Galileo as a mere fact of experience, that in
a falling body, the velocity increases in proportion to
the time; but his followers have seen in this the
necessary effect of the uniform force of gravity. In
like manner, Kepler's empirical Laws were shown by
Newton to be necessary results of a central force
attracting inversely as the square of the distance.
And if it be still, even at present, doubtful whether
this is the necessary law of a central force, as some
philosophers have maintained that it is, we cannot
doubt that if now or hereafter, those philosophers
MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
303
could establish their doctrine as certain, they would
make an important step in science, in addition to
those already made.
And thus, such steps in science are made, whenever
empirical facts are discerned to be necessary laws; or,
if I may be allowed to use a briefer expression, when-
ever facts are idealized.
4. In order to show how widely this statement is
applicable, I will exemplify it in some of the other
sciences.
In Chemistry, not to speak of earlier steps in
the science, which might be presented as instances of
the same general process, we may remark that the
analyses of various compounds into their elements,
according to the quantity of the elements, form a vast
multitude of facts, which were previously empirical
only, but which are reduced to a law, and therefore
to a certain kind of ideal necessity, by the discovery
of their being compounded according to definite and
multiple proportions. And again, this very law of
definite proportions, which may at first be taken as
a law given by experience only, it has been attempted
to make into a necessary truth, by asserting that
bodies must necessarily consist of atoms, and atoms
must necessarily combine in definite small numbers.
And however doubtful this Atomic Theory may at
present be, it will not be questioned that any chemical
philosopher who could establish it, or any other
Theory which would produce an equivalent change
in the aspect of the science, would make a great
scientific advance. And thus, in this Science also,
the Progress of Science consists in the transfer of
facts from the empirical to the necessary side of
the antithesis; or, as it was before expressed, in the
idealization of facts.
5. We may illustrate the same process in the
Natural History Sciences. The discovery of the
principle of Morphology in plants was the reduction
of a vast mass of Facts to an Idea ; as Schiller said
to Göthe when he explained the discovery; although
the latter, cherishing a horror of the term Idea,
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PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
which perhaps is quite as common in England as in
Germany, was extremely vexed at being told that he
possessed such furniture in his mind. The applications
of this Principle to special cases, for instance, to
Euphorbia by Brown, to Reseda by Lindley, have
been attempts to idealize the facts of these special
cases.
6. We may apply the same view to steps in
Science which are still under discussion ;—the question
being, whether an advance has really been made in
science or not. For instance, in Astronomy, the
Nebular Hypothesis has been propounded, as an
explanation of many of the observed phenomena of
the Universe. If this Hypothesis could be conceived
ever to be established as a true Theory, this must be
done by its taking into itself, as necessary parts of
the whole Idea, many Facts which have already been
observed ; such as the various form of nebulæ ;-many
Facts which it must require a long course of years to
observe, such as the changes of nebulæ from one form
to another ;-and many facts which, so far as we can
at present judge, are utterly at variance with the Idea,
such as the motions of satellites, the relations of the
material elements of planets, the existence of vegetable
and animal life upon their surfaces. But if all these
Facts, when fully studied, should appear to be in-
cluded in the general Idea of Nebular Condensation
according to the Laws of Nature, the Facts SO
idealized would undoubtedly constitute a very remark-
able advance in science. But then, we are to recollect
that we are not to suppose that the Facts will agree
with the Idea, merely because the Idea, considered by
itself, and without carefully attending to the Facts, is
a large and striking Idea. And we are also to re-
collect that the Facts may be compared with another
Idea, no less large and striking; and that if we take
into our account, (as, in forming an Idea of the Course
of the Universe, we must do,) not only vegetable and
animal, but also human life, this other Idea appears
likely to take into it a far larger portion of the known
Facts, than the Idea of the Nebular Hypothesis.
MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
305
The other Idea which I speak of is the Idea of Man
as the principal Object in the Creation; to whose
sustenance and development the other parts of the
Universe are subservient as means to an end ; and
although, in our attempts to include all known Facts
in this Idea, we again meet with many difficulties,
and find many trains of Facts which have no apparent
congruity with the Idea ; yet we may say that,
taking into account the Facts of man's intellectual
and moral condition, and his history, as well as
the mere Facts of the material world, the diffi-
culties and apparent incongruities are far less
when we attempt to idealize the Facts by reference
to this Idea, of Man as the End of Creation, than ac-
cording to the other Idea, of the World as the
result of Nebular Condensation, without any conceiv-
able End or Purpose. I am now, of course, merely
comparing these two views of the Universe, as sup-
posed steps in science, according to the general notion
which I have just been endeavouring to explain, that
a step in science is some Idealization of Facts.
7. Perhaps it will be objected, that what I have
said of the Idealization of Facts, as the manner in
which the progress of science goes on, amounts to
no more than the usual expressions, that the progress
of science consists in reducing Facts to Theories.
And to this I reply, that the advantage at which I
aim, by the expression which I have used, is this, to
remind the reader, that Fact and Theory, in every
subject, are not marked by separate and prominent
features of difference, but only by their present
opposition, which is a transient relation. They are
related to each other no otherwise than as the poles
of the fundamental antithesis: the point which
separates those poles shifts with every advance of
science; and then, what was Theory becomes Fact.
As I have already said elsewhere, a true Theory is a
Fact; a Fact is a familiar Theory. If we bear this
in mind, we express the view on which I am now
insisting when we say that the progress of science
consists in reducing Facts to Theories. But I think
306
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
that speaking of Ideas as opposed to Facts, we express
more pointedly the original Antithesis, and the
subsequent identification of the Facts with the Idea.
The expression appears to be simple and apt, when
we say, for instance, that the Facts of Geography are
identified with the Idea of globular Earth ; the Facts
of Planetary Astronomy with the Idea of the Helio-
centric system; and ultimately, with the Idea of Uni-
versal Gravitation.
8. We may further remark, that though by suc-
cessive steps in science, successive Facts are reduced
to Ideas, this process can never be complete. How-
ever the point may shift which separates the two
poles, the two poles will always remain. However
far the ideal element may extend, there will always
be something beyond it. However far the phenomena
may be idealized, there will always remain some
which are not idealized, and which are mere pheno-
mena. This also is implied by making our expressions
refer to the fundamental antithesis : for because the
antithesis is fundamental, its two elements will
always be present; the objective as well as the
subjective. And thus, in the contemplation of the
universe, however much we understand, there must
always be something which we do not understand ;
however far we may trace necessary truths, there
must always be things which are to our apprehension
arbitrary : however far we may extend the sphere of
our internal world, in which we feel power and see
light, it must always be surrounded by our external
world, in which we see no light, and only feel resist-
ance. Our subjective being is inclosed in an objective
shell, which, though it seems to yield to our efforts,
continues entire and impenetrable beyond our reach,
and even enlarges in its extent while it appears to
give up to us a portion of its substance.
II. Successive German Philosophies.
9. The doctrine of the Fundamental Antithesis
of two elements of which the union is involved in all
MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
307
knowledge, and of which the separation is the task of
all philosophy, affords us a special and distinct mode
of criticizing the philosophies which have succeeded
each other in the world ; and we may apply it to the
German Philosophies of which we have spoken.
The doctrine of the Fundamental Antithesis is briefly
this :
That in every act of knowledge (1) there are two
opposite elements which we may call Ideas and Percep-
tions; but of which the opposition appears in various
other antitheses; as Thoughts and Things, Theories
and Facts, Necessary Truths and Experiential Truths;
and the like : (2) that our knowledge cerives from the
former of these elements, namely our Ideas, its form
and character as knowledge, Oill Ideas of space and
time being the necessary forms, for instance, of our
geometrical and arithmetical Ionowledge; (3) and in
like manner, all our other knowledge involving a
development of the ideal conditions of knowledge exist-
ing in our minds : (4) but that though ideas and per-
ceptions are thus separate elements in our philosophy,
they cannot, in fact, be distinguished and separated,
but are different aspects of the same thing ; (5) that the
only way in which we can approach to truth is by
gradually and successively, in one instance after
another, advancing from the perception to the idea;
from the fact to the theory ; from the apprehension of
truths cos actual to the apprehension of them as necessary.
(6) This successive and various progress from fact to
theory constitutes the history of science; (7) and this
progress, though always leading US nearer to that
central unity of which both the idea and the fact are
emanations, can never lead us to that point, nor to any
measurable proximity to it, or definite comprehension
of its place and nature.
10. Now the doctrine being thus stated, successive
sentences of the statement contain successive steps of
German philosophy, as it has appeared in the series of
celebrated authors whom I have named.
Ideas, and Perceptions or Sensations, being regarded
as the two elements of our knowledge, Locke, or at
X 2
308
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
least the successors of Locke, had rejected the former
element, Ideas, and professed to resolve all our know-
ledge into Sensation. After this philosophy had pre-
vailed for a time, Kant exposed, to the entire conviction
of the great body of German speculators, the untenable
nature of this account of our knowledge. He taught
(one of the first sentences of the above statement)
that (2) Our knowledge derives from our Ideas its forn
and character as lonowledge ; our Ideas of space and
time being, for instance, the necessary forms of our geo-
metrical and arithmetical knowledge. Fichte carriect
still further this view of our knowledge, as derived
from our Ideas, or froin its nature as knowledge ; and
held that (3) all our knowledge is a development of the
ideal conditions of knowledge existing in our minds
(one of our next following sentences). But when the
ideal element of our knowledge was thus exclusively
dwelt upon, it was soon seen that this ideal system
no more gave a complete explanation of the real nature
of knowledge, than the old sensational doctrine had
done. Both elements, Ideas and Sensations, must be
taken into account. And this was attempted by
Schelling, who, in his earlier works, taught (as we
have also stated above) that (4) Ideas and Facts are
different aspects of the same thing :-this thing, the
central basis of truth in which both elements are in-
volved and identified, being, in Schelling's language,
the Absolute, while each of the separate elements is
subjected to conditions arising from their union. But
this Absolute, being a point inaccessible to us, and
inconceivable by us, as our philosophy teaches (as
above), cannot to any purpose be made the basis of
our philosophy: and accordingly this Philosophy of
the Absolute has not been more permanent than its
predecessors. Yet the philosophy of Hegel, which
still has a wide and powerful sway in Gerinany, is,
in the main, a development of the same principle as
that of Schelling ;--the identity of the idea and the
fact; and Hegel's Identity-System, is rather a more
methodical and technical exposition of Schelling's
Philosophy of the Absolute than a new system. But
MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
309
Hegel traces the manifestation of the identity of the
idea and fact in the progress of human knowledge ;
and thus in some measure approaches to our doctrine
(above stated), that (5) the way in which we approach
to truth is by gradually and successively, in one instance
after another, that is, historically, advancing from the
perception to the idea, from the fact to the theory : while
at the same time Hegel has not carried out this view
in any comprehensive or complete manner, so as to
show that this process constitutes the history of
science : and as with Schelling, his system shows an
entire want of the conviction (above expressed as
part of our doctrine), () that we can never, in our
speculations reach or approach to the central unity
of which both idea and fact are emanations.
11. This view of the relation of the Sensational
School, of the Schools of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and
Hegel, and of the fundamental defects of all, may be
further illustrated. It will, of course, be understood
that our illustration is given only as a slight and im-
perfect sketch of these philosophies; but their relation
may perhaps become more apparent by the very brevity
with which it is stated; and the object of the present
chapter is not the detailed criticism of systems, but
this very relation of systems to each other.
The actual and the ideal, the external and the in-
ternal elements of knowledge, were called by the
Germans the objective and the subjective elements re-
spectively. The forms of knowledge and especially
space and time, were pronounced by Kant to be
essentially subjective ; and this view of the nature
of knowledge, more fully unfolded and extended to
all knowledge, became the subjective ideality of Fichte.
But the subjective and the objective are, as we
kave said, in their ultimate and supreme form, one;
and hence we are told of the subjective-objective, a
phrase which has also been employed by Mr.
Coleridge. Fichte had spoken of the subjective ele-
ment as the Me, (das Ich); and of the objective
element as the Not-me, (das Nicht-Ich); and has
deduced the Not-me from the Me. Schelling, on the
and hence we has also
been of the sube obj
310
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
contrary, laboured with great subtlety to deduce
the Me from the Absolute which includes both. And
this Absolute, or Subjective-objective, is spoken of by
Schelling as unfolding itself into endless other anti-
theses. It was held that from the assumption of such
a principle might be deduced and explained the oppo-
sitions which, in the contemplation of nature, present
themselves at every step, as leading points of general
philosophy :-for example, the opposition of matter as
passive and active, as dead and organized, as uncon-
scious or conscious; the opposition of individual and
species, of will and moral rule. And this antithetical
development was carried further by Hegel, who taught
that the Absolute Idea developes itself so as to assume
qualities, limitations, and seeming oppositions, and
then completes the cycle of its development by return-
ing into unity.
12. That there is, in the history of Science, much
which easily lends itself to such a formula, the views
which I have endeavoured to expound, show and ex-
emplify in detail. But yet the attempts to carry this
view into detail by conjecture—by a sort of divination
_with little or no attention to the historical progress
and actual condition of knowledge, (and such are those
which have been made by the philosophers whom I
have mentioned,) have led to arbitrary and baseless
views of almost every branch of knowledge. Such
oppositions and differences as are found to exist in
nature, are assumed as the representatives of the
elements of necessary antitheses, in a manner in which
scientific truth and inductive reasoning are altogether
slighted. Thus, this peculiar and necessary anti-
thetical character is assumed to be displayed in
attraction and repulsion, in centripetal and centrifugal
forces, in a supposed positive and negative electricity,
in a supposed positive and negative magnetism ; in
still more doubtful positive and negative elements of
light and heat; in the different elements of the atmo-
sphere, which are, quite groundlessly, assumed to have a
peculiar antithetical character : in animal and veget-
able life : in the two sexes : in gravity and light,
MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
311
These and many others, are given by Schelling, as
instances of the radical opposition of forces and ele-
ments which necessarily pervades all nature. I con-
ceive that the heterogeneous and erroneous principles
involved in these views of the material world show us
how unsafe and misleading is the philosophical as-
sumption on which they rest. And the Triads of
Hegel, consisting of Thesis, Antithesis, and Union, are
still more at variance with all sound science. Thus
we are told that matter and motion are determined as
inertia, impulsion, fall; that Absolute Mechanics de-
termines itself as centripetal force, centrifugal force,
universal gravitation. Light, it is taught, is a secon-
dary determination of matter. Light is the most
intimate element of nature, and might be called the
Me of nature : it is limited by what we may call
negative light, which is darkness.
13. In these rash and blind attempts to construct
physical science à priori, we may see how imperfect
the Hegelian doctrines are as a complete philosophy.
In the views of moral and political subjects the results
of such a scheme are naturally less obviously absurd,
and may often be for a moment striking and attrac-
tive, as is usually the case with attempts to reduce
history to a formula. Thus we are told that the
State appears under the following determinations:-first
as one, substantial, self-included: next, varied, indivi-
dual, active, disengaging itself from the substantial and
motionless unity : next, as two principles, altogether
distinct, and placed front to front in a marked and
active opposition : then, arising out of the ruins of the
preceding, the idea appears afresh, one, identical,
harmonious. And the East, Greece, Rome, Germany,
are declared to be the historical forms of these succes-
sive determinations. Whatever amount of real his-
torical colour there may be for this representation, it
will hardly, I think, be accepted as evidence of a pro-
found political philosophy; but on such parts of the
subject I shall not here dwell.
14. I may observe that in the series of philosophi-
cal systems now described, the two elements of the
312
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Fundamental Antithesis are alternately dwelt upon
in an exaggerated degree, and then confounded. The
Sensational School could see in human knowledge
nothing but facts : Kant and Fichte fixed their atten-
tion almost entirely upon ideas : Schelling and Hegel
assume the identity of the two, (a point we never can
reach,) as the origin of their philosophy. The exter-
nal world in Locke's school was all in all. In the
speculations of Kant this external world became a dim
and unknown region. Things were acknowledged to
be something in themselves, but what, the philosopher
see, Kant acknowledged a noumenon which we think
of; but this assumption, for such it is, exercises no
influence upon his philosophy.
15. We may for the sake of illustration imagine to
ourselves each system of philosophy as a Drama in
which Things are the Dramatis Personce and the Idea
which governs the system is the Plot of the drama.
In Kant's Drama, Things in themselves are merely a
kind of 'Mute Personages,' kwoa apóowma, which stand
on the stage to be pointed at and talked about, but
which do not tell us anything, or enter into the action
of the piece. Fichte carries this further, and if we go
on with the same illustration, we may say that he makes
the whole drama into a kind of Monologue; in which
the author tells the story, and merely names the
persons who appear. If we would still carry on the
image, we may say that Schelling, going upon the prin-
ciple that the whole of the drama is merely a progress
to the Denouement, which denouement contains the
result of all the preceding scenes and events, starts
with the last scene of the piece; and bringing all the
characters on the stage in their final attitudes, would
elicit the story from this. While the true mode of
proceeding is, to follow the drama Scene by Scene,
learning as much as we can of the Action and the
Characters, but knowing that we shall not be allowed
to see the Denouement, and that to do so is probably
not the lot of our species on earth. So far as any
philosopher has thus followed the historical progress of
MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
313
the grand spectacle offered to the eyes of speculative
man, in which the Phenomena of Nature are the
Scenes, and the Theory of them the Plot, he has taken
the course by which knowledge really has made its ad-
vances. But those who have partially done this, have
often, like Hegel, assumed that they had divined the
whole course and end of the story, and have thus
criticised the scenes and the characters in a spirit
quite at variance with that by which any real insight
into the import of the representation can be obtained.
If it be asked which position we can assign, in this
dramatic illustration, to those who hold that all our
knowledge is derived from facts only, and who reject
the supposition of ideas; we may say that they look
on with a belief that the drama has no plot, and that
these scenes are improvised without connexion or pur-
pose.
16. I will only offer one more illustration of the
relative position of these successive philosophies. Kant
compares the change which he introduced into philoso-
phy to the change which Copernicus introduced into
astronomical theory. When Copernicus found that
nothing could be made of the phenomena of the hea-
vens so long as everything was made to turn round
the spectator, he tried whether the matter might not
be better explained if he made the spectator turn, and
left the stars at rest. So Kant conceives that our
experience is regulated by our own faculties, as the
phenomena of the heavens are regulated by our own
motions. But accepting and carrying out this illus-
tration, we may say that Kant, in explaining the phe-
nomena of the heavens by means of the motions of the
earth, has almost forgotten that the planets have their
own proper motions, and has given us a system which
hardly explains anything besides broadest appearances,
such as the annual and daily motions of the sun; and
that Fichte appears as if he wished to deduce all the
motions of the planets, as well as of the sun, from the
conditions of the spectator;—while Schelling goes to
the origin of the system, like Descartes, and is not
content to show how the bodies move, without also
314
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY,
proving that from some assumed original condition,
all the movements and relations of the system must
necessarily be what they are. It may be that a theory
which explains how the planets, with their orbits and
accompaniments, have come into being, may offer itself
to bold speculators, like those who have framed and
produced the nebular hypothesis. But I need not
remind my readers either how precarious such a
hypothesis is; or, that if it be capable of being con-
sidered probable, its proofs must gradually dawn upon
us, step by step, age after age : and that a system of
doctrine which assumes such a scheme as a certain
and fundamental truth, and deduces the whole of
astronomy from it, must needs be arbitrary, and liable
to the gravest error at every step. Such a precarious
and premature philosophy, at best, is that of Schelling
and Hegel ; especially as applied to those sciences in
which, by the past progress of all sure knowledge, we
are taught what the real cause and progress of know-
ledge is : while at the same time we may allow that all
these forms of philosophy, since they do recognize the
condition and motion of the spectator, as a necessary
element in the explanation of the phenomena, are a
large advance upon the Ptolemaic scheme-the view of
those who appeal to phenomena alone as the source of
our knowledge, and say that the sun, the moon, and the
planets move as we see them move, and that all further
theory is imaginary and fantastical.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS AS IT EXISTS IN THE
MORAL WORLD.
I. W E have hitherto spoken of the Fundamental
VV Antithesis as the ground of our speculations
concerning the material world, at least mainly. We
have indeed been led by the physical sciences, and es-
pecially by Biology, to the borders of Psychology. We
have had to consider not only the mechanical effects of
muscular contraction, but the sensations which the
nerves receive and convey the way in which sensa-
tions become perceptions; the way in which perceptions
determine actions. In this manner we have been led
to the subject of volition or will', and this brings us
to a new field of speculation, the moral nature of man;
and this moral nature is a matter not only of specula-
tive but of practical interest. On this subject I shall
make only a few brief remarks.
2. Even in the most purely speculative view, the
moral aspect of mau's nature differs from the aspect of
the material universe, in this respect, that in the
moral world, external events are governed in some
measure by the human will. When we speculate
concerning the laws of material nature, we suppose
that the phenomena of nature follow a course and
order which we may perhaps, in some measure, dis-
cover and understand, but which we cannot change
or control. But when we consider man as an agent,
we suppose him able to determine some at least of
the events of the external world; and thus, able to
determine the actions of other men, and to lay down
1 Phil. of Biol. c. V.
316
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
laws for them. He cannot alter the properties of
fire and metals, stones and fluids, air and light; but he
can use fire and steel so as to compel other men's actions ;
stone-walls and ocean-shores so as to control other
men's motions; gold and gems so as to have a hold on
other men's desires; articulate sounds and intelligible
symbols so as to direct other men's thoughts and move
their will. There is an external world of Facts; and
in this, the Facts are such as he makes them by his
Acts.
3. But besides this, there is also, standing over
against this external world of Facts, an internal world
of Ideas. The Moral Acts without are the results of
Moral Ideas within. Men have an Idea of Justice, for
instance, according to which they are led to external
acts, as to use force, to make a promise, to perform a
contract, as individuals; or to make war and peace, to
enact laws and to execute them, as a nation.
4. Some such internal moral Idea necessarily ex-
ists, along with all properly human actions. Man feels
not only pain and anger, but indignation and the senti-
ment of wrong, which feelings imply a moral idea of
right and wrong. Again, what he thinks of as wrong,
he tries to prevent; what he deems right, he attempts
to realize. The Idea gives a character to the Act;
the Act embodies the Idea. In the moral world as in
the natural world, the Antithesis is universal and in-
separable. It is an Antithesis of inseparable elements.
In human action, there is ever involved the Idea of
what is right, and the external Act in which this idea
is in some measure embodied.
5. But the moral Ideas, such as that of Justice,
of Rightness, and the like, are always embodied in-
completely in the world of external action. Although
men's actions are to a great extent governed by the
Ideas of Justice, Rightness and the like; (for it must
be recollected that we include in their actions, laws,
and the enforcement of laws;) yet there is a large
portion of human actions which is not governed by such
ideas : (actions which result from mere. desire, and
violations of law). There is a perpetual Antithesis of
THE ANTITHESIS IN MORALS.
317
Ideas and Facts, which is the fundamental basis of
moral as of natural philosophy. In the former as in
the latter subject, besides what is ideal, there is an
Actual which the ideal does not include. This Actual
is the region in which the results of mere desire, of
caprice, of apparent accident, are found. It is the
region of history, as opposed to justice; it is the
region of what is, as distinct from what ought to be.
6. Now what I especially wish here to remark, is
this ;—that the progress of man as a moral being con-
sists in a constant extension of the Idea into the region
of Facts. This progress consists in making human
actions conform more and more to the moral Ideas of
Justice, Rightness, and the like; including in human
actions, as we have said, Laws, the enforcement of
Laws, and other collective acts of bodies of men. The
History of Man as Man consists in this extension of
moral Ideas into the region of Facts. It is not that
the actual history of what men do has always consisted
in such an extension of moral Ideas; for there has
ever been, in the actual doings of men, a large portion
of facts which had no moral character; acts of desire,
deeds of violence, transgressions of acknowledged law,
and the like. But such events are not a part of the
genuine progress of humanity. They do not belong to
the history of man as man, but to the history of man
as brute. On the other hand, there are events which
belong to the history of man as man, events which
belong to the genuine progress of humanity; such as
the establishment of just laws; their enforcement;
their improvement by introducing into them a fuller
measure of moral Ideas. By such means there is a
constant progress of man as a moral being. By this
realization of moral Ideas there is a constant progress
of Humanity.
7. I have made this reflection, because it appears
to me to bring into view an analogy between the Pro-
gress of Science and the Progress of Man, or of Hu-
manity, in the sense in which I have used the term.
In both these lines of Progress, Facts are more and
more identified with Ideas. In both, there is a funda-
318
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
mental Antithesis of Ideas and Facts, and progress
consists in a constant advance of the point which
separates the two elements of this Antithesis. In
both, Facts are constantly won over to the domain of
Ideas. But still, there is a difference in the two cases;
for in the one case the Facts are beyond our control.
We cannot make them other than they are ; and all
that we can do, if we can do that, is to shape our Ideas
so that they shall coincide with the Facts, and still
have the manifest connexion which belongs to them as
Ideas. In the other case, the Facts are, to a certain
extent, in our power. They are what we make them,
for they are what we do. In this case, the Facts ought
to come towards the Ideas, rather than the Ideas
towards the Facts. As we called the former process
the Idealization of Facts, we may call this the Realiza-
tion of Ideas; and the analogy which I have here
wished to bring into view may be expressed by saying,
that the Progress of Physical Science consists in a
constant successive Idealization of Physical Facts; and
the Progress of man's Moral Being is a constant suc-
cessive Realization of Moral Ideas.
8. Thus the necessary co-existence of an objective
and a subjective element belongs not only to human
knowledge, as was before explained, but also to human
action. The objective and the subjective element are
inseparable in this case as in the other. We have al-
ways the Fact of Positive Law, along with the Idea of
Absolute Justice ; the Facts of Gain or Loss, along
with the Idea of Rights. The Idea of Justice is in-
separable from historical facts, for justice gives to each
his own, and history determines what that is. We
cannot even conceive justice without society, or society
without law, and thus in the moral and in the natural
world the fundamental antithesis is inseparable, even
in thought. The two elements must always subsist; for
however far the moral ideas be realized in the world,
there will always remain much in the world which is
not conformable to moral ideas, even if it were only
through its necessary dependence on an unmoral and
immoral past. As in the physical world so in the
THE ANTITHESIS IN MORALS.
319
moral, however much the ideal sphere expands, it is
surrounded by a region which is not conformable to
the idea, although in one case the expansion takes
place by educing ideas out of facts, in the other, by
producing facts from ideas.
I shall hereafter venture to pursue further this
train of speculation, but at present I shall make some
remarks on writers who may be regarded as the suc-
cessors amongst ourselves of these German schools of
Philosophy.
CHAPTER XXVI.
OF THE “ PHILOSOPHY OF THE INFINITE."
TN the last Chapter but one I stated that Schelling
I propounded a Philosophy of the Absolute, the Abso-
lute being the original basis of truth in which the two
opposite elements, Ideas and Facts, are identified, and
that Hegel also founded his philosophy on the Identity
of these two elements. These German philosophies
appear to me, as I have ventured to intimate, of small
or no value in their bearing on the history of actual
science. I have in the history of the sciences noted
instances in which these writers seem to me to miscon-
ceive altogether the nature and meaning of the facts of
scientific history; as where? Schelling condemns New-
ton's Opticks as a fabric of fallacies: and where? Hegel
says that the glory due to Kepler has been unjustly
transferred to Newton. As it appears to me important
that English philosophers should form a just estimate
of Hegel's capacity of judging and pronouncing on this
subject, I will print in the Appendix a special discus-
sion of what he has said respecting Newton's dis-
covery of the law of gravitation.
Recently attempts have been made to explain to
English readers these systems of German philosophy,
and in these attempts there are some points which may
deserve our notice as to their bearing on the philosophy
of science. I find some difficulty in discussing these
attempts, for they deal much with phrases which ap-
pear to me to offer no grasp to man's power of reason.
What, for instance, is the Absolute, which occupies a
i Hist. Ind. Sc. b. ix. c. ii.
2 Ibid. b. vii. c. ii.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE INFINITE.
321
prominent place in these expositions? It is, as I have
stated, in Schelling, the central basis of truth in which
things and thoughts are united and identified. To at-
tempt to reason about such an “Absolute" appears to
me to be an entire misapprehension of the power of rea-
son. Again; one of the most eminent of the expositors
has spoken of each system of this kind as a Philosophy
of the Unconditioned. But what, we must ask, is the
Unconditioned ? That which is subject to no con-
ditions, is subject to no conditions which distinguish it
from any thing else, and so, cannot be a matter of
thought. But again; this Absolute or Unconditioned is
(if I rightly understand) said to be described also by
various other names; unity, identity, substance, absolute
cause, the infinite, pure thought, &c. As each of these
terms expresses some condition on which the name fixes
our thoughts, I cannot understand why they should any
of them be called the Unconditioned; and as they ex-
press very different thoughts, I cannot understand why
they should be called by the same name. From specu-
lations starting from such a point, I can expect nothing
but confusion and perplexity; nor can I find that any-
thing else has come of them. They appear to me more
barren, and more certain to be barren, of any results
which have any place in our real knowledge, than the
most barren speculations of the schoolmen of the mid-
dle ages: which indeed they much resemble in all their
features—their acuteness, their learning, their ambi-
tious aim, and their actual failure.
2. But leaving the Absolute and the Uncondition-
ed, as notions which cannot be dealt with by our reason
without being something entirely different from their
definitions, we may turn for a moment to another no-
tion which is combined with them by the expositors of
whom I speak, and which has some bearing upon our
positive science, because it enters into the reasonings of
mathematics : I mean the notion of Infinite. Some of
those who hold that we can know nothing concerning
8 Sir W. Hamilton's Note on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned.
322
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
the Absolute and the Unconditioned, which they
pretend to prove, though concerning such words I do
not conceive that anything can be true or false,) hold
also that the Infinite is in the same condition ;-that
we can know nothing concerning what is Infinite;-
therefore, I presume, nothing concerning infinite space,
infinite time, infinite number, or infinite degrees.
To disprove this doctrine, it might be sufficient to
point out that there is a vast mass of mathematical
science which includes the notion of infinites, and
leads to a great body of propositions concerning Infi-
nites. The whole of the infitesimal calculus depends
upon conceiving finite magnitudes divided into an in-
finite number of parts: these parts are infinitely small,
and of these parts there are other infinitesimal parts
infinitely smaller still, and so on, as far as we please
to go. And even those methods which shun the term
infinite, as Newton's method of Ultimate Ratios, the
method of Iudivisibles, and the method of Exhaustions
of the ancient geometers, do really involve the notion
of infinite; for they imply a process continued without
limit.
3. But perhaps it will be more useful to point out
the fallacies of the pretended proofs that we can know
nothing concerning Tufinity and infinite things.
The argument offered is, that of infinity we have no
notion but the negation of a limit, and that from this
negative notion no positive result can be deduced.
But to this I reply: It is not at all true that our
notion of what is infinite is merely that it is that which
has no limit. We must ask further that what? that
space? that time? that number?--And if that space,
that what kind of space? That line? that surface?
that solid space?-And if that line, that line bounded
at one end, or not? If that surface, that surface
bounded on one, or on two, or on three sides? or on
none? However any of these questions are answered,
we may still have an infinite space. Till they are
answered, we can assert nothing about the space; not
because we can assert nothing about infinites; but
because we are not told what kind of infinite we are
talking of.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE INFINITE.
323
In reality the definition of an Infinite Quantity is
not negative merely, but contains a positive part as
well. We assume a quantity of a certain kind which
may be augmented by carrying onward its limits in
one or more directions: this is a finite quantity of a
given kind. We then-when we have thus positively
determined the kind of the quantity-suppose the
limit in one or more directions to be annihilated, and
thus we have an infinite quantity. But in this infinite
quantity there remain the positive properties from
the negation of a limit; and the positive properties
joined with the negative property may and do supply
grounds of reasoning respecting the infinite quantity.
4. This is lore so elementary to mathematicians
that it appears almost puerile to dwell upon it; but this
seems to have been overlooked, in the proof that we can
have no knowledge concerning infinites. In such proof
it is assumed as quite evident, that all infinites are
equal. Yet, as we have seen, infinites may differ infi-
nitely among themselves, both in quantity and in kind.
A German writer is quoted for an “ingenious” proof
of this kind. In his writings, the opponent is supposed
to urge that a line BAC may be made infinite by
carrying the extremity C infinitely to the right, and
again infinite by carrying the extremity B infinitely to
the left; and thus the line infinitely extended both
ways would be double of the line infinite on one side
only. The supposed reply to this is, that it cannot be
so, because one infinite is equal to another: and more-
over that what is bounded at one end A, cannot be
infinite : both which assumptions are without the
smallest ground. That one infinite quantity may be
double of another, is just as clear and certain as that
one finite quantity may. For instance, if one leaf of
the book which the reader has before him were pro-
duced infinitely upwards it would be an infinite space,
though bounded at the bottom and at both sides. If
4 Werenfels in Mr. Mansel's Bampton Lectures, lect. ii. Note 15.
Y 2
324
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
the other leaf were in like manner produced infinitely
upwards it would in like manner be infinite; and the
two together, though each infinite, would be double of
either of them.
5. As I have said, infinite quantities are conceived
by conceiving finite quantities increased by the transfer
of a certain limit, and then by negativing this limit
altogether. And thus an infinite number is conceiv-
ed by assuming the series 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, up
to a limit, and then removing this limit altogether.
And this shows the baselessness of another argument
quoted from Werenfele. The opponent asks, Are there
in the infinite line an infinite number of feet? Then
in the double line there must be twice as many; and
thus the former infinite number did not contain all the
(possible) unities ; (numerus infinitus non omnes habet
unitates, sed præter eum concipi possunt totidem uni-
tates, quibus ille careat, eique possunt addi). To which
I reply, that the definition of an infinite number is not
that it contains all possible unities : but thism that
the progress of numeration being begun according to
a certain law, goes on without limit. And accordingly
it is easy to conceive how one infinite number may be
larger than another infinite number, in any proportion.
If, for instance, we take, instead of the progression of
the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. and the progression of
the square numbers I, 4, 9, 16, &c. any term of the
latter series will be greater than the corresponding term
of the other series in a ratio constantly increasing, and
the infinite term of the one, infinitely greater than the
corresponding infinite term of the other.
6. In the same manner we form a conception of in-
on, after the nature of time, without limit; or by going
back in thought from the present to a past time, and
by continuing this retrogression without limit. And
thus we have time infinite a parte ante and a parte
post, as the phrase used to run; and time infinite both
ways includes both, and is the most complete notion of
eternity.
7. Perhaps those who thus maintain that we cannot
PHILOSOPHY OF THE INFINITE.
325
conceive anything infinite, mean that we cannot form
to ourselves a definite image of anything infinite. And
this of course is true. We cannot form to ourselves an
image of anything of which one of the characteristics
is that it is, in a certain way, unlimited. But this im-
possibility does not prevent our reasoning about infinite
quantities; combining as elements of our reasoning, the
absence of a limit with other positive characters.
8. One of the consequences which is drawn by the
assertors of the doctrine that we cannot know any-
thing about Infinity, is that we cannot obtain from
science any knowledge concerning God : And I have
been the more desirous to show the absence of proof of
this doctrine, because I conceive that science does give
us some knowledge, though it be very little, of the
nature of God : as I shall endeavour to show here-
after.
For instance, I conceive that when we say that God
is an eternal Being, this phraseology is not empty
and unmeaning. It has been used by the wisest and
most thoughtful men in all ages, and, as I conceive,
may be used with undiminished, or with increased
propriety, after all the light which science and phi-
losophy have thrown upon such declarations. The
reader of Newton will recollect how emphatically he
uses this expression along with others of a cognate
characters: “God is eternal and infinite,... that is, He
endures from eternity to eternity, and is present from
infinity to infinity... He is not eternity and infinity,
but eternal and infinite. He is not duration and space,
but He endures and is present. He endures always,
and is present everywhere, and by existing always and
everywhere He constitutes duration and space.” We
shall see shortly that the view to which we are led may
be very fitly expressed by this language.
But I will first notice some other aspects of this
philosophy.
3 Scholium Generale at the end of the Principia.
CHAPTER XXVII.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON ON INERTIA AND WEIGHT.
TN a preceding chapter I have spoken of Sir William
1 Hamilton as the expositor, to English readers, of
modern German systems, and especially of the so-called
“Philosophy of the Unconditioned.” But the same
writer is also noticeable as a continuator of the specu-
lations of English and Scottish philosophers concerning
primary and secondary qualities; and these specula-
tions bear so far upon the philosophy of science that it
is proper to notice them here.
I. In our survey of the sciences, we have spoken of
a class which we have termed the Secondary Mechani-
cal Sciences; these being the sciences which explain
certain sensible phenomena, as sound, light, and heat,
by means of a medium interposed between external
bodies and our organs of sense. In these cases, we
ascribe to bodies certain qualities : we call them reso-
nant, bright, red or green, hot or cold. But in the
sciences which relate to these subjects, we explain these
qualities by the figure, size and motions of the parts
of the medium which intervenes between the object
and the ear, eye, or other sensible organ. And those
former qualities, sound, warmth and colour, are called
secondary qualities of the bodies; while the latter,
figure, size and motion, are called the primary quali-
ties of body.
2. This distinction, in its substance, is of great an-
tiquity. The atomic theory which was set up at an
early period of Greek philosophy was an attempt to
account for the secondary qualities of bodies by means
of their primary qualities. And this is really the
scientific ground of the distinction. Those are primary
HAMILTON ON SECONDARY QUALITIES. 327
qualities or attributes of body by means of which we,
in a scientific view, explain and derive their other
qualities. But the explanation of the sensible quali-
ties of bodies by means of their operation through a
medium has till now been very defective, and is so
still. We have to a certain extent theories of Sound,
Light and Heat, which reduce these qualities to scales
and standards, and in some measure account mechani-
cally for their differences and gradations. But we have
as yet no similar theory of Smells and Tastes. Still,
we do not doubt that fragrance and flavour are per-
ceived by means of an aerial medium in which odours
float, and a fluid medium in which sapid matters are
dissolved. And the special odour and flavour which
are thus perceived must depend upon the size, figure,
motion, number, &c. of the particles thus conveyed to
the organs of taste and smell: that is, those secondary
qualities, as well as the others, must depend upon the
primary qualities of the parts of the medium.
3. In this way the distinction of primary and second-
ary qualities is definite and precise. But when men
attempt to draw the distinction by guess, without any
scientific principle, the separation of the two classes is
vague and various. I have, in the History of Scientific
Ideas", pointed out some of the variations which are
to be found on this subject in the writings of philo-
sophers. Sir William Hamilton” has given an account
of many more which he has compared and analysed
with great acuteness. He has shown how this distinc-
tion is treated, among others, by the ancient atomists,
Leucippus and Democritus, by Aristotle, Galen, Ga-
lileo, Descartes, Boyle, Malebranche, Locke, Reid,
Stewart, Royer-Collard. He then proceeds to give
his own view; which is, that we may most properly
divide the qualities of bodies into three classes, wbich
he calls Primary, Secundo-primary, and Secondary.
The former he enumerates as 1, Extension ; 2, Divisi-
bility; 3, Size; 4, Density or Rarity; 5, Figure;
1 B. iv. c. i.
2 Reid's Worls, Supplementary Dissertation D.
328
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
6, Incompressibility absolute; 7, Mobility; 8, Situa-
tion. The Secundo-primary are Gravity, Cohesion,
Inertia, Repulsion. The Secondary are those com-
monly so called, Colour, Sound, Flavour, Savour, and
Tactical Sensation; to which he says may be added ·
the muscular and cutaneous sensation which accom-
pany the perception of the Secundo-primary qualities.
“ Such, though less directly the result of foreign
causes, are Titillation, Sneezing, Horripilation, Shud-
dering, the feeling of what is called Setting-the-teeth-
on-edge, &c.”
The Secundo-primary qualities Sir William Hamil-
ton traces in further detail. He explains that with
reference to Gravity, bodies are heavy or light. With
reference to Cohesion, there are many coordinate pairs,
of which he enumerates these :-hard and soft; firm
and fluid,the fluid being subdivided into thick and
thin; viscid and friable; tough and brittle; rigid and
flexible; fissile and infissile; ductile and inductile; retrac-
tile and irretractile; rough and smooth; slippery and
tenacious. With reference to Repulsion he gives these
qualities:-compressible and incompressible; elastic and
inelastic. And with reference to Inertia he mentions
only moveable and immoveable.
I do not see what advantage is gained to philosophy
by such an enumeration of qualities as this, which,
after all, does not pretend to completeness; nor do I
see anything either precise or fundamental in such
distinctions as that of elasticity, a mode of cohesion,
and elasticity, a mode of repulsion. But a question in
which our philosophy is really concerned is how far
any of these qualities are universal qualities of matter.
Sir W. Hamilton holds that they are none of them
necessary qualities of matter, and therefore of course
not universal, and argues this point at some length.
With regard to one of his Secundo-primary qualities,
I will make some remarks.
4. Inertia.-In discussing the Ideas which enter in-
to the Mechanical Sciences, I have stated that the Idea
8 Hist. Sc. Id. b. iii.
HAMILTON ON INERTIA.
329
of Force and Resistance to Force, that is, of Force and
Matter, are the necessary foundations of those sciences.
Force cannot act without matter to act on; Matter
cannot exist without Force to keep its parts together
and to keep it in its place. But Force acting upon
matter may either be Force producing rest, or Force
producing motion. If we consider Force producing
motion, the motion produced, that is, the velocity
produced, must depend upon the quantity of matter
moved. It cannot be that the same power, acting in
the same way, shall produce the same velocity by
pushing a small pebble and a large rock. If this were ·
so, we could have no science on such matters. It
must needs be that the same force produces a smaller
velocity in the larger body; and this according to
some measure of its largeness. The measure of the
degree in which the body thus resists this communica-
tion of motion is inertia. And the inertia is neces-
sarily supposed to be proportional to the quantity of
matter, because it is by this inertia that this existence
and quantity of the matter is measured. If therefore
any Science concerning Force and Matter is to exist,
matter must have inertia, and the inertia must be
proportional to the quantity of matter.
5. Sir W. Hamilton, in opposition to this, says,
that we can conceive a body occupying space, and yet
without attraction or repulsion for another body, and
wholly indifferent to this or that position, in space,
to motion and to rest. He infers thence that inertia
is not a necessary quality of bodies.
To this I reply, that even if we can conceive such
bodies, (which in fact man, living in a world of matter
cannot conceive,) at any rate we cannot conceive any
science about such bodies. If bodies were indifferent
to motion and rest, Forces could not be measured by
their effects; nor could be measured or known in any
way. Such bodies might float about like clouds, visi-
ble to the eye, but intangible, and governed by no laws
of motion. But if we have any science about bodies,
they must be tangible, and governed by laws of mo-
tion. Not, then, from any observed properties of
330
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
bodies, but from the possibility of any science about
bodies, does it follow that all bodies have inertia.
6. Gravity. Reasoning of the same kind may be
employed about weight. We can conceive, it is urged,
matter without weight. But I reply, we cannot con-
ceive a science which deals with matter that has no
weight:-a science, I mean, which deals with the quan-
tity of matter of bodies, as arising from the sum of their
elements. For the quantity of matter of bodies is and
must be measured by those sensible properties of mat-
ter which undergo quantitative addition, subtraction
• and division, as the matter is added, subtracted, and
divided. The quantity of matter cannot be known
in any other way. But this mode of measuring the
quantity of matter, in order to be true at all, must be
universally true. If it were only partially true--if
some kinds of matter had weight and others had note
the limits of the mode of measuring matter by weight
would be arbitrary: and therefore the whole procedure
would be arbitrary, and as a mode of obtaining philo-
sophical truth, altogether futile. But we suppose
truth respecting the composition of bodies to be at-
tainable; therefore we must suppose the rule, which is
the necessary basis of such truth, to be itself true.
Sir W. Hamilton has replied to these arguments,
but, as I conceive, without affecting the force of them.
I will repeat here the answer which I have already
given", and will reprint in the Appendix the Memoir
by which his objections were occasioned.
He says, (1), that our reasoning assumes that we
must necessarily have it in our power to ascertain the
Quantity of Matter; whereas this may be a problem
out of the reach of human determination.
To this I reply, that my reasoning does assume that
there is a science, or sciences, which make assertions
concerning the Quantity of Matter : Mechanics and
Chemistry are such sciences. My assertion is, that to
make such sciences possible, Quantity of Matter must
4 Hist. Sc. Id. b. vi. c. iii.
HAMILTON ON WEIGHT.
331
be proportional to Weight. If my opponent deny that
Mechanics and Chemistry can exist as science, he may
invalidate my proof; but not otherwise.
(2) He says that there are two conceivable ways of
estimating the Quantity of Matter: by the Space occu-
pied, and by the Weight or Inertia; and that I assume
the second measure gratuitously.
To which I reply, that the most elementary steps in
Mechanics and in Chemistry contradict the notion that
the Quantity of Matter is proportionate to the Space.
They proceed necessarily on a distinction between
Space and Matter :-between mere Extension and ma-
terial Substance.
(3) He allows that we cannot make the Extension of
a body the measure of the Quantity of Matter, because,
he says, we do not know if “ the compressing force” is
such as to produces the closest compression.” That is,
he assumes a compressing force, assumes a "closest com-
pression," assumes a peculiar (and very improbable)
atomic hypothesis ; and all this, to supply a reason why
we are not to believe the first simple principle of
Mechanics and Chemistry.
(4) He speaks of "a series of apparent fluids (as Light
or its vehicle, the Calorific, the Electro-galvanic, and
Magnetic agents) which we can neither denude of their
character of substance, nor clothe with the attribute of
weight.”
To which my reply is, that precisely because I cannot
“ clothe” these agents with the attribute of Weight, I
do “denude them of the character of Substance.” They
are not substances, but agencies. These Imponderable
Agents are not properly called “Imponderable Fluids."
This I conceive that I have proved; and the proof is
not shaken by denying the conclusion without showing
any defect in the reasoning
(5) Finally, my critic speaks about "a logical canon,"
and about "a criterion of truth, subjectively necessary
and objectively certain ;" which matters I shall not
waste the reader's time by discussing.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
INFLUENCE OF GERMAN SYSTEMS OF PHILOSOPHY IN
BRITAIN.
MHE philosophy of Kant, as I have already said,
involved a definite doctrine on the subject of the
Fundamental Antithesis, and a correction of some of the
errors of Locke and his successors. It was not however
at first favourably received among British philosophers,
and those who accepted it were judged somewhat ca-
priciously and captiously. I will say a word on these
points.
1. (Stewart)—Dugald Stewart, in his Dissertation
on the Progress of the Moral Sciences, repeatedly men-
tions Kant's speculations, and always unfavourably.
In note I to Part I. of the Dissertation he says, “In
our own times, Kant and his followers seem to have
thought that they had thrown a strong light on the
nature of space and also of time, when they introduced
the word form (form of the intellect) as a common
term applicable to both. Is not this to revert to the
scholastic folly of verbal generalization ?” And in
Part II. he gives a long and laborious criticism of a
portion of Kant's speculations; of which the spirit
may be collected from his describing them as resulting
in" the metaphysical conundrum, that the human mind
(considered as a noumenon and not as a phenomenon)
neither exists in space nor time." And after mention-
ing Meiners and Herder along with Kant, he adds,
1 The remarks contained in this
chapter have for the most part been
already printed and circulated in a
Letter to the Author of Prolegomena
Logica, 1852.
STEWART ON KANT.
333
“I am ashamed to say that in Great Britain the only
one of these names which has been much talked of
is Kant." And again in Note EE, he translates some
portion of the German philosopher, adding, that to the
expressions so employed he can attach no meaning.
Stewart, in his criticism of Kant's doctrines, re-
marks that, in asserting that the human mind pos-
sesses, in its own ideas, an element of necessary and
universal truth, not derived from experience, Kant had
been anticipated by Price, by Cudworth, and even by
Plato; to whose Thecetetus both Price and Cudworth
refer, as containing views similar to their own. And
undoubtedly this doctrine of ideas, as indispensable
sources of necessary truths, was promulgated and sup-
ported by weighty arguments in the Thectetus; and
has ever since been held by many philosophers, in
opposition to the contrary doctrine, also extensively
held, that all truth is derived from experience. But,
in pointing out this circumstance as diminishing the
importance of Kant's speculations, Stewart did not
sufficiently consider that doctrines, fundamentally the
same, may discharge a very different office at different
periods of the history of philosophy. Plato's Dia-
logues did not destroy, nor even diminish, the value of
Cudworth's “Immutable Morality.” Notwithstanding
Cudworth’s publications, Price's doctrines came out a
little afterwards with the air and with the effect of
novelties. Cudworth's assertion of ideas did not pre-
vent the rise of Hume's skepticism; and it was Hume's
skepticism which gave occasion to Kant's new assertion
of necessary and universal truth, and to his examina-
tion into the grounds of the possibility and reality of
such truth. To maintain such doctrine after the appear-
ance of intermediate speculations, and with reference
to them, was very different from maintaining it before;
and this is the merit which Kant's admirers claim for
him. Nor can it be denied that his writings produced
an immense effect upon the mode of treating such
questions in Germany; and have had, even in this
country, an influence far beyond what Mr. Stewart
would have deemed their due.
334
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
2. (Mr. G. H. Lewes.)—But as injustice has thus
been done to Kant by confounding his case with that of
his predecessors of like opinions, so on the other hand,
injustice has also been done, both to him and those
who have followed him in the assertion of ideas, by
confounding their case with his. This injustice seems
to me to be committed by a writer on the History of
Philosophy, who has given an account of the successive
schools of philosophy up to our own time;-has as-
signed to Kant an important and prominent place
in the recent history of metaphysics ;—but has still
maintained that Kant's philosophy, and indeed every
philosophy, is and must be a failure. In order to
prove this thesis, the author naturally has to examine
Kant's doctrines and the reasons assigned for them,
and to point out what he conceives to be the fallacy of
these arguments. This accordingly he professes to do;
but as soon as he has entered upon the argument, he
substitutes, as his opponent, for the philosopher of
Königsberg, a writer of our own time and country,
who does not profess himself a Kantian, who has been
repeatedly accused, with whatever justice, of misrepre-
senting what he has borrowed from Kant, and whose
main views are, in the opinion of the writer himself,
very different from Kant's. .Mr. Lewes", in the chap-
ter entitled “Examination of Kant's Fundamental
Principles," after a preliminary statement of the points
he intends to consider, says “Now to the ques-
tion. As Kant confessedly was led to his own system
by the speculations of Hume," and so on; and forth-
with he introduces the name of Dr. Whewell as the
writer whose views he has to criticize, without stating
how he connects him with Kant, and goes on arguing
against him for a dozen pages to the end of the Chapter.
2 Biographical History of Philoso- well, in order to overthrow Kant.
phy, 1846. In a more recent edition So far as his arguments affect my
the author of this work has modified' pbilosopliy, they are, as I conceive,
his expressions, but still employs answered in the various expositions
himself in arguing against Dr. Whe- which I have given of that philosophy.
MR. G. H. LEWES ON KANT.
335
3. It is true, however, that I had adopted some of
Kant's views, or at least some of his arguments. The
chapters on the Ideas of Space and Time in the Phi
losophy of the Inductive Sciences, were almost literal
translations of chapters in the Kritik der Reinen Ver-
nunft. Yet the author was charged by a reviewer at
the time, with explaining these doctrines "in a manner
incompatible with the clear views of Emanuel Kant."
It appeared to be assumed by the English admirers
of the Kantian philosophy, that Kant's views were
true and clear in Germany, but became untenable
when adopted in England.
4. (Mr. Mansel.)- But the most important of my
critics on this ground is Mr. Mansel, who has revived
the censure of my speculations as not doing justice to
the Kantian philosophy. “It is much to be regretted,”
he says 4, “that Dr. Whewell, who has made good use
of Kantian principles in many parts of his Philosophy
of the Inductive Sciences," has not more accurately ob-
served Kant's distinction between the necessary laws
under which all men think, and the contingent laws
under which certain men think of certain things. And
further on Mr. Mansel, after giving great praise to the
general spirit of the Philosophy of the Inductive Sci-
ences, says, “It is to be regretted that the accuracy of
his theory has been in so many instances vitiated by a
stumble at the threshold of the Critical Philosophy."
Mr. Mansel is, indeed, by much the most zealous
English Kantian whose writings I have seen ;-among
those, I mean, who have brought original powers of
philosophical thought to bear upon such subjects; and
have not been, as some have been, enslaved by an
admiration of German systems, just as bigotted as the
contempt of them which others feel. And as Mr.
3 B. Ü. The Philosophy of the vii. Of the Idea of Time. Chap. viii.
Pure Sciences. Chap. ii. Of the Idea Of some peculiarities of the Idea of
of Space. Chap. ii. Of some pecu- Time.
liarities of the Idea of Space. Chap.
4 Prolegomena Logica, by H. L. Mansel, M. A. 1851.
336
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Mansel has stated distinctly some of the points in
which he conceives that I have erred in deviating
from the doctrines of Kant, I should wish to make a
few remarks on those points.
5. Kant considers that Space and Time are con-
ditions of perception, and hence sources of necessary
and universal truth. Dr. Whewell agrees with Kant
in placing in the mind certain sources of necessary
truth; he calls these Fundamental Ideas, and reckons,
besides Space and Time, others, as Cause, Likeness,
Substance, and several more. Mr. Mill, the most
recent and able expounder of the opposite doctrine,
derives all truths from Observation, and denies that
there is such a separate source of truth as Ideas. Mr.
Mansel does not agree either with Mr. Mill or Dr.
Whewell; he adheres to the original Kantian thesis,
that Space and Time are sources of necessary truths,
but denies the office to the other Fundamental Ideas
of Dr. Whewell. In reading what has been said by
Mr. Mill, Mr. Mansel, and other critics, on the subject
of what I have called Fundamental Ideas, I am led to
perceive that I have expressed myself incautiously,
with regard to the identity of character between the
first two of these Fundamental Ideas, namely, Space
and Time, and the others, as Force, Composition, and
the like. And I am desirous of explaining, to those
who take an interest in these speculations, how far I
claim for the other Fundamental Ideas the same cha-
racter and attributes as for Space and Time.
6. The special and characteristic property of all
the Fundamental Ideas is what I have already men-
tioned, that they are the mental sources of necessary
and universal scientific truths. I call them Ideas,
as being something not derived from sensation, but
governing sensation, and consequently giving form to
our experience;- Fundamental, as being the founda-
tion of knowledge, or at least of Science. And the
way in which those Ideas become the foundations of
Science is, that when they are clearly and distinctly
entertained in the mind, they give rise to inevitable
convictions or intuitions, which may be expressed as
NEW AXIOMS POSSIBLE.
337
Axioms; and these Axioms are the foundations of
Sciences respective of each Idea. The Idea of Space,
when clearly possessed, gives rise to geometrical Ax-
ioms, and is thus the foundation of the Science of Geo-
metry. The Idea of Mechanical Force, (a modification
of the Idea of Cause,) when clearly developed in the
mind, gives birth to Axioms which are the foundation
of the Science of Mechanics. The Idea of Substance
gives rise to the Axiom which is universally accepted,
—that we cannot, by any process, (for instance, by
chemical processes,) create or destroy matter, but can
only combine and separate elements ;-and thus gives
rise to the Science of Chemistry
7. Now it may be observed, that in giving this
account of the foundation of Science, I lay stress on
the condition that the Ideas must be clearly and dis-
tinctly possessed. The Idea of Space must be quite
clear in the mind, or else the Axioms of Geometry
will not be seen to be true: there will be no intuition
of their truth; and for a mind in such a state, there
can be no Science of Geometry. A man may have a
confused and perplexed, or a vacant and inert state of
mind, in which it is not clearly apparent to him, that
two straight lines cannot inclose a space. But this is
not a frequent case. The Idea of Space is much more
commonly clear in the minds of men than the other
Ideas on which science depends, as Force, or Sub-
stance. It is much more common to find minds in
which these latter Ideas are not so clear and distinct
as to make the Axioms of Mechanics or of Chemistry
self-evident. Indeed the examples of a state of mind
in which the Ideas of Force or of Substance are so
clear as to be made the basis of science, are compara-
tively few. They are the examples of minds scienti-
fically cultivated, at least to some extent. Hence,
though the Axioms of Mechanics or of Chemistry may
be, in their owu nature, as evident as those of Geo-
metry, they are not evident to so many persons, nor
at so early a period of intellectual or scientific culture.
And this being the case, it is not surprising that some
persons should doubt whether these Axioms are evident
338
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
at all;—should think that it is an error to assert
that there exist, in such sciences as Mechanics or
Chemistry, Fundamental Ideas, fit to be classed with
Space, as being, like it, the origin of Axioms.
In speaking of all the Fundamental Ideas as being
alike the source of Axioms when clearly possessed,
without dwelling sufficiently upon the amount of
mental discipline which is requisite to give the mind
this clear possession of most of them; and in not
keeping before the reader the different degrees of evi-
dence which, in most minds, the Axioms of different
sciences naturally have, I have, as I have said, given
occasion to my readers to misunderstand me. I will
point out one or two passages which show that this
misunderstanding has occurred, and will try to re-
move it.
8. The character of axiomatic truths seen by in-
tuition is, that they are not only seen to be true, but
to be necessary ;—that the contrary of them is not
only false, but inconceivable. But this inconceivable-
ness depends entirely upon the clearness of the Ideas
which the axioms involve. So long as those Ideas
are vague and indistinct, the contrary of an Axiom
may be assented to, though it cannot be distinctly
conceived. It may be assented to, not because it is
possible, but because we do not see clearly what is
possible. To a person who is only beginning to think
geometrically, there may appear nothing absurd in the
assertion, that two straight lines may inclose a space.
And in the same manner, to a person who is only
beginning to think of mechanical truths, it may not
appear to be absurd, that in mechanical processes, Re-
action should be greater or less than Action; and so,
again, to a person who has not thought steadily about
Substance, it may not appear inconceivable, that by
chemical operations, we should generate new matter,
or destroy matter which already exists.
Here then we have a difficulty:—the test of Axioms
is that the contrary of them is inconceivable; and yet
persons, till they have in some measure studied the
subject, do not see this inconceivableness. Hence our
NEW AXIOMS POSSIBLE.
339
Axioms must be evident only to a small number of
thinkers; and seem not to deserve the name of self-
evident or necessary truths.
This difficulty has been strongly urged by Mr. Mill,
as supporting his view, that all knowledge of truth
is derived from experience. And in order that the
opposite doctrine, which I have advocated, may not
labour under any disadvantages which really do not
belong to it, I must explain, that I do not by any
means assert that those truths which I regard as
necessary, are all equally evident to common thinkers,
or evident to persons in all stages of intellectual deve-
lopment. I may even say, that some of those truths
which I regard as necessary, and the necessity of which
I believe the human mind to be capable of seeing, by
due preparation and thought, are still such, that this
amount of preparation and thought is rare and pecu-
liar; and I will willingly grant, that to attain to and
preserve such a clearness and subtlety of mind as this
and labour.
9. This doctrine,—that some truths may be seen
by intuition, but yet that the intuition of them may
be a rare and difficult attainment, I have not, it
would seem, conveyed with sufficient clearness to ob-
viate misapprehension. Mr. Mill has noticed a pas-
sage of my Philosophy on this subject, which he has
understood in a sense different from that which I in-
tended. Speaking of the two Principles of Chemical
Science, that combinations are definite in kind, and
in quantity, I had tried to elevate myself to the
point of view in which these Principles are seen, not
only to be true, but to be necessary. I was aware
that even the profoundest chemists had not ventured
to do this; yet it appeared to me that there were con-
siderations which seemed to show that any other rule
would imply that the world was a world on which the
human mind could not employ itself in scientific spe-
culation at all. These considerations I ventured to
put forwards, not as views which could at present be
generally accepted, but as views to which chemical
Z 2
340
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
philosophy appeared to me to tend. Mr. Mill, not
unnaturally, I must admit, supposed me to mean that
the two Principles of Chemistry just stated, are self-
evident, in the same way and in the same degree as
the Axioms of Geometry are so. I afterwards ex-
plained that what I meant to do was, to throw out an
opinion, that if we could conceive the composition of
bodies distinctly, we might be able to see that it is
necessary that the modes of this composition should
be definite. This Mr. Mill does not object to 8: but
he calls it a great attenuation of my former opinion;
which he understood to be that we, (that is, men in
general,) already see, or may see, or ought to see, this
necessity. Such a general apprehension of the neces-'
sity of definite chemical composition I certainly never
reckoned upon; and even in my own mind, the
thought of such a necessity was rather an anticipation
of what the intuitions of philosophical chemists in
another generation would be, than an assertion of what
they now are or ought to be; much less did I expect
that persons, neither chemists nor philosophers, would
already, or perhaps ever, see that a proposition, so
recently discovered to be true, is not only true, but
necessary.
10. Of the bearing of this view on the question at
issue between Mr. Mill and me, I may hereafter speak;
but I will now notice other persons who have mis-
understood me in the same way.
An able writer in the Edinburgh Reviews has, in
like manner, said, “Dr. Whewell seems to us to have
gone much too far in reducing to necessary truths
what assuredly the generality of mankind will not feel
to be so." It is a fact which I do not at all contest,
that the generality of nuanlind will not feel the Axioms
of Chemistry, or even of Mechanics, to be necessary
truths. But I had said, not that the generality of
mankind would feel this necessity, but (in a passage
just before quoted by the Reviewer) that the mind
6 Logic, i. p. 273, 3rd edit.
o No. 193, P. 29.
MR. MANSEL'S KANTIANISM.
341
under certain circumstances attains a point of view
from which it can pronounce mechanical (and other)
fundamental truths to be necessary in their nature,
though disclosed to us by experience and observation.
Both the Edinburgh Reviewer and Mr. Mansel ap-
pear to hold a distinction between the fundamental
truths of Geometry, and those of the other subjects
which I have classed with them. The latter says,
that perhaps metaphysicians may hereafter establish
the existence of other subjective conditions of intui-
tions (or, as I should call them, Fundamental Ideas,)
besides Space and Time, but that in asserting such to
exist in the science of Mechanics, I certainly go too
far: and he gives as an instance my Essay,—"Demon-
stration that all matter is heavy.” I certainly did
not expect that the Principles asserted in that Essay
would be assented to as readily or as generally as the
Axioms of Geometry; but I conceive that I have
there proved that Chemical Science, using the balance
as one of its implements, cannot admit “imponderable
bodies” among its elements. This impossibility will,
I think, not only be found to exist in fact, but seen
to exist necessarily, by chemists, in proportion as
they advance towards general propositions of Chemical
Science in which the so-called “imponderable fluids"
enter. But even if I be right in this opinion, to how
few will this necessity be made apparent, and how
slowly will the intuition spread! I am as well aware
as my critics, that the necessity will probably never be
apparent to ordinary thinkers.
II. Though Mr. Mansel does not acknowledge any
subjective conditions of intuition besides Space and
Time, he does recognize other kinds of necessity, which
I should equally refer to Fundamental Ideas; because
they are, no less than Space and Time, the foundations
of universal and necessary truths in science. Such
are’ the Principle of Substance ;-All Qualities exist
in some subject; and the Principle of Causality;--
7 Prol. Log. p. 123.
342
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
Every Event has its Cause. To these Principles he
ascribes a “metaphysical necessity,” the nature and
grounds of which he analyses with great acuteness.
But what I have to observe is, that whatever differ-
ences may be pointed out between the grounds of the
necessity, in this case of metaphysical necessity, and in
that which Mr. Mansel calls mathematical necessity
which belongs to the Conditions or Ideas of Space
and of Time; still, it is not the less true that the
Ideas of Substance and of Cause, do afford a founda-
tion for necessary truths, and that on these truths are
built Sciences. That every Change must have a Cause,
with the corresponding Axioms--that the Cause is
known by the Effect, and Measured by itis the
basis of the Science of Mechanics. That there is a
Substance to which qualities belong, with the corre-
sponding Axiom,--that we cannot create or destroy
Substauce, though we may alter Qualities by combin-
ing and separating Substances, is the basis of the
Science of Chemistry. And that this doctrine of the
Indestructibility of Substance is a primary axiomatic
truth, is certain; both because it has been universally
taken for granted by men seeking for general truths;
and because it is not and cannot be proved by expe-
rience. So that I have here, even according to Mr.
Mansel's own statement, other grounds besides Space
and Time, for necessary truths in Science.
12. Besides mathematical and metaphysical necessity,
Mr. Mansel recognizes also a logical necessity. I will
not pretend to say that this kind of necessity is ex-
actly represented by any of those Fundamental Ideas
which are the basis of Science; but yet I think it will
be found that this logical necessity mainly operates
through the attribution of Names to things; and that
a large portion of its cogency arises from these maxims,
that names must be so imposed that General Pro-
positions shall be possible, and so that Reasoning
shall be possible. Now these maxims are really the
8 See Flil. Ind. Sc. b. vi. c. iii.

MR LO
XX
2
-
-
ANSEL'S KANTIANISM. 343
basis of Natliral History, and are so stated in the Phi-
losophy of the Indi stive Sciences. The former maxim
is the principle of all Classification; and though we
have no syllogisms in Natural History, the apparatus
of genus, species, diferentia, and the like, which was
introduced in the analysis of syllogistic reasoning, is
really more : constar.tly applied in Natural History
than in any other science.
13. Besides the different kinds of necessity which
Mr. Mansel thus acknowledges, I do not see why he
should not, on his own principles, recognize others; as
indeed he appears to me to do. He acknowledges, I
think, the distinction of Primary and Secondary quali-
ties; and this must involve him in the doctrine that
Secondary, alities are necessarily perceived by means
of a Merac Again: he would, I think, acknow-
ledge til n organized bodies, the parts exist for a
Purpose and Purpose is an Idea which cannot be in-
ferred by reasoning from facts, without being possessed
and applied as an Idea. So that there would, I con-
ceivé, exist, in his philosophy, all the grounds of neces-
samy truth which I have termed Fundamental Ideas;
only that he would further subdivide, classify, and ana-
lyse, the kinds and grounds of this necessity.
In this he would do well; and some of his distinc-
tions and analyses of this kind are, in my judgment,
very instructive. But I do not see what objection
there can be to my putting together all these kinds of
necessity, when my purpose requires it; and, inasmuch
as they all are the bases of Science, I may call them
by a general name; for instance, Grounds of Scientific
Necessity; and these are precisely what I mean by
Fundamental Ideas.
That some steady thought, and even some progress
in the coustruction of Science, is needed in order to
see the necessity of the Axioms thus introduced, is
true, and is repeatedly asserted and illustrated in the
History of the Sciences. The necessity of such Axioms
is seen, but it is not seen at first. It becomes clearer
and clearer to each person, and clear to one person
after another, as the human mind dwells more and

344 PHILOSOPHY OF DISCORY.
more steadily on the several subjects of speculation,
There are scientific truths which are seen by intuition,
but this intuition is progressive. This is the remark
which I wish to make in answer to those of my critics
who have objected that truths which I have pro-
pounded as Axioms, are not evidenč to all.
14. That the Axioms of Science are not evident to
all, is true enough, and too true. Take the Axiom of
Substance:-that we may change the condition of a
substance in various ways, but cannot destroy it. This
has been assumed as evident by philosophers in all
ages; but if we ask an ordinary person whether a body
can be destroyed by fire, or diminished, will he un-
hesitatingly reply, that it cannot? It requires some
thought to sayº, äidillac philosopher said that the
weight of the smoke is to be found by subt ting the
weight of the ashes from that of the fuel; y, even
when this is said, it appears, at first, rat, .. a pigram
than a scientific truth. Yet it is by thinking only, not
by an experiment, that, from a happy guess it becomes
a scientific truth. And the thought is the basis, pot
the result, of experimental truths; for which reason. I
ascribe it to a Fundamental Idea. And so, such truths
are the genuine growth of the human mind; not in
nate, as if they needed not to grow; still less, dead
twigs plucked from experience and stuck in from with-
out; not universal, as if they grew up everywhere;
but not the. less, under favourable circumstances, the
genuine growth of the scientific intellect.
15. Not only do I hold that the Axioms, on which
the truths of science rest, grow from guesses into Ax-
ioms in various ways, and often gradually, and at dif-
ferent periods in different minds, and partially, even
in the end; but I conceive that this may be shown by
the history of science, as having really happened, with
regard to all the most conspicuous of such principles.
The scientific insight which enabled discoverers to
achieve their exploits, implied that they were among

9 Kant
AXIOMS ARE NOT FROM EXPERIENCE. 345
the first to acquire an intuitive conviction of the Ax
ioms of their Science: the controversies which form so
large a portion of the history of science, arise from the
struggles between the clearsighted and the dimsighted,
between those who were forwards and those who were
backwards in the progress of ideas; and these contro-
versies have very often ended in diffusing generally a
clearness of thought, on the controverted subject, which
at first, the few only, or perhaps not even they, pos-
sessed. The History of Science consists of the History
of Ideas, as well as of the History of Experience and
Observation. The latter portion of the subject formed
the principal matter of my History of the Inductive
Sciences; the former occupied a large portion of the
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences 10; which, I may
perhaps be allowed to explain, is, for the most part, a
Historical Work no less than the other; and was writ-
ten in a great measure, at the same time, and from the
same survey of the works of scientific writers.
16. I am aware that the explanation which I have
given, may naturally provoke the opponents of the
doctrine of scientific necessity to repeat their ordinary
fundamental objections, in a form adapted to the ex-
pressions which I have used. They may say, the fact
that these so-called Axioms thus become evident only
during the progress of experience, proves that they are
derived from experience: they may, in reply to our
image, say, that truths are stuck into the mind by ex-
perience, as seeds are stuck into the ground; and that
to maintain that they can grow under any other con-
ditions, is to hold the doctrine of spontaneous genera-
tion, which is equally untenable in the intellectual and
in the physical world. I shall not however here re-
sume the general discussion; but shall only say briefly
in reply, that Axioms, for instance, this Axiom, that
material substances cannot be created or annihilated by
any process which we can apply,—though it becomes
evident in the progress of experience, cannot be derived
10 Republished as The History of Scientific Ideas.
346
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
from experience; for it is a proposition which never
has nor can be proved by experience; but which,
nevertheless, has been always assumed by men, seeking
for general truths, as necessarily true, and as control-
ling and correcting all possible experience. And with
regard to the image of vegetable development, I may
say, that as such development implies both inherent
forms in the living seed, and nutritive powers in earth
and air; so the development of our scientific ideas im-
plies both a formative power, and materials acted on;
and that, though the analogy must be very defective,
we conceive that we best follow it by placing the form-
ative power in the living mind, and in the external
world the materials acted on: while the doctrine that
all truth is derived from experience only, appears to
reject altogether one of these elements, or to assert the
two to be one.
CHAPTER XXIX.
NECESSARY TRUTH IS PROGRESSIVE.
S
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.
THE doctrine that necessary truth is progressive
1. is a doctrine very important in its bearing upon
the nature of the human mind; and, as I conceive, in
its theological bearing also. But it is a doctrine to
which objections are likely to be made from various
quarters, and I will consider some of these objections.
I. Necessary truths, it will be said, cannot in-
crease in number. New ones cannot be added to the
old ones. For necessary truths are those of which the
necessity is plain and evident to all mankind-to the
common sense of man; such as the axioms of geo-
metry. But that which is evident to all mankind
must be evident from the first: that which is plain to
the common sense of man cannot require scientific dis-
covery: that which is necessarily true cannot require
accumulated proof.
To this I reply, that necessary truths require for
their apprehension a certain growth and development
of the human mind. Though it is seen that they are
necessarily true, this is seen only by those who think
steadily and clearly, and to think steadily and clearly
on any kind of subject, requires time and attention ;-
requires mental culture. This may be seen even in
the case of the axioms of geometry. These axioms
are self-evident: but to whom are they self-evident?
Not to uncultured savages, or young children; or per-
sons of loose vague habits of thought. To see the
truth and necessity of geometrical axioms, we need
geometrical culture.
Therefore that any axioms are not evident without
patient thought and continued study of the subject,
does not disprove their necessity. Principles may be
348
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
axiomatic and necessary, although they require time,
and the progress of thought and of knowledge, to bring
them to light. And axioms may be thus gradually
brought to light by the progress of knowledge.
Nor is it difficult to give examples of such axioms,
other than geometrical. There is an axiom which has
obtained currency among thoughtful men from the
time that man began to speculate about himself and
the universe :-E nihilo nil fit: Nothing can be made
of nothing. No material substance can be produced
or destroyed by natural causes, though its form and
consistence may be changed indefinitely. Is not this
an axiom? a necessary truth? Yet it is not evident
to all men at first, and without mental culture. At
first and before habits of steady and consistent thought
are formed, men think familiarly of the creation and
destruction of matter. Only when the mind has
received some philosophical culture does it see the
truth and necessity of the axiom of substance, and then
it does see it.
And the axioms on which the science of mechanics
rests, that the cause is measured by the effects, that
reaction is equal and opposite to action, and the like,-
are not these evident to a mind cultivated by steady
thought on such subjects ? and do they not require
such culture of the mind in order to see them? Are
they not obscure or uncertain to those who are not so
cultured, that is to common thinkers : to the general
bulk of mankind ? Thus then it requires the discipline
of the science of mechanics to enable the mind to see
the axioms of that science.
And does not this go further, as science and the
careful study of the grounds of science go further? To
a person well disciplined in mechanical reasoning it
has become, not a conclusion, but a principle, that in
mechanical action what is gained in power is lost in
time: or that in any change, the force gained is equal
to the force lost, so that new force cannot be generated,
any more than new matter, by natural changes. Is this
an axiom? a necessary fundamental truth? It appears
so to at least one great thinker and discoverer now
NECESSARY TRUTH IS PROGRESSIVE. 349:
alive among us. If it do not appear so to us, or not
in the same sense, may not this be because we have
not yet reached his point of view? May not the con-
viction which is now his alone become hereafter the
conviction of the philosophical world? And whatever
the case may be in this instance, have there not been
examples of this progress? Did not Galileo and the
disciples of Galileo reduce several mechanical prin-
ciples to the character of necessary truths, after they
had by experiment and reasoning discovered them to
be actually true? And have we not in these cases so
many proofs that necessary truth is progressive, along
with the progress of knowledge ?
2. But, it will be said, the necessary character
claimed for such truths is an illusion. The pro-
positions so brought into view are really established
by observation : by the study of external facts: and
it is only the effect of habit and familiarity which
makes men of science, when they well know them
to be true, think them to be necessarily true. They
are really the results of experience, as their history
shows; and therefore cannot be necessary and a priori
truths.
To which I reply: Such principles as I have men-
tioned, that material substance cannot be produced
or destroyed—that the cause is measured by the effect
—that reaction is equal and opposite to action : are
not the results of experience, nor can be. No experi-
ence can prove them; they are necessarily assumed as
the interpretation of experience. They were not proved
in the course of scientific investigations, but brought
to light as such investigations showed their necessity.
They are not the results, but the conditions of experi-
mental sciences. If the Axiom of Substance were not
true, and were not assumed, we could not have such a
science as Chemistry, that is, we could have no know-
ledge at all respecting the changes of form of substances.
If the Axioms of Mechanics were not true and were
not assumed, we could have no science of Mechanics,
that is, no knowledge of the laws of force acting on
matter. It is not any special results of the science
350
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
in such cases; but the existence, the possibility, of
any science, which establishes the necessity of these
axioms. They are not the consequences of knowledge,
acquired from without, but the internal condition of
our being able to know. And when we are to know
concerning any new subject contained in the universe,
it is not inconceivable nor strange that there should
be new conditions of our knowledge.
It is not inconceivable or strange, therefore, that as
něw sciences are formed, new axioms, the foundations
of such sciences, should come into view. As the light
of clear and definite kuowledge is kindled in suc-
cessive chambers of the universe, it may disclose, not
only the aspect of those new apartments, but also
the form and structure of the lamp which man is thus
allowed to carry from point to point, and to transmit
from hand to hand. And though the space illumined
to man's vision may always be small in comparison
with the immeasurable abyss of darkness by which it
is surrounded, and though the light may be dim and
feeble, as well as partial; this need not make us doubt
that, so far as we can by the aid of this lamp, we see
truly : so far as we discern the necessary laws of the
universe, the laws are true, and their truth is rooted
in that in which the being of the universe is rooted.
And, to dwell for a moment longer on this image,
we may also conceive that all that this lamp—the
intellect of man cultivated by science,--does, by the
light which it gives, is this—that it dispels a dark-
ness which is dark for man alone, and discloses to
him some things in some measure as all things lie in
clear and perfect light before the eye of God. To
the Divine Mind all the laws of the universe are
plain and clear in all their multiplicity, extent and
depth. The human mind is capable of seeing some
of these laws, though only a few; to some extent,
though but a little way; to some depth, though never to
the bottom. But the Human Mind, can, in the course
of ages and generations, by the long exercise of thought,
successfully employed in augmenting knowledge, im-
prove its powers of vision; and may thus come to see
NECESSARY TRUTH IS PROGRESSIVE. 351
more laws than at first, to trace their extent more
largely, to understand them more thoroughly; and
thus the inward intellectual light of man may become
broader and broader from age to age, though ever
narrow when compared with completeness,
3. Is it strange to any one that inward light, as
well as outward knowledge, should thus increase in
the course of man's earthly career ? that as knowledge
extends, the foundations of knowledge should expand ?
that as man goes on discovering new truths, he should
also discover something concerning the conditions of
truth? Is it wonderful that as science is progressive
the philosophy of science also should be progressive ?
that as we know more of everything else, we should
also come to know more of our powers of knowing?
This does not seem to have been supposed by philo-
sophers in general; or rather, they have assumed that
they could come to know more about the powers of
knowing by thinking about them, even without taking
into account the light thrown upon the nature of
knowledge by the progress of knowledge. From Plato
downwards, through Aristotle, through the Schoolmen,
to Descartes, to Locke, to Kant, Schelling and Hegel,
philosophers have been perpetually endeavouring to
explore the nature, the foundations, the consequences
of our knowledge. But since Plato, scarcely one of
them has ever proceeded as if new light were thrown
upon knowledge by new knowledge. They have,
many or all of them, attempted to establish funda-
mental truths, some of them new fundamental truths,
about the human mind and the nature and conditions
of its knowledge. These attempts show that they do
not deny or doubt that there may be such new fun-
damental truths. Such new fundamental truths re-
specting the human mind and respecting knowledge
must be, in many cases at least, (as it will be seen
that they are, on examining the systems proposed
by the philosophers just mentioned,) seen by their own
light to be true. They are new axions in philosophy.
These philosophers therefore, or their disciples, cannot
consistently blame us for holding the possibility of
new axioms being introduced into philosophy from age
352
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY,
to age, as there arise philosophers more and more
clear-sighted.
4. But though they have no ground for rejecting
our new axioms merely because they are new, we may
have good ground for doubting the value of their new
axioms, that is, of the foundations of their systems;
because they are new truths about knowledge gathered
by merely exploring the old fields of knowledge. We
found our hopes of obtaining a larger view of the
constitution of the human mind than the early philo-
sophers had, on this :—that we obtain our view by
studying the operation of the human mind since their
time; its progress in acquiring a large stock of uncon-
tested truths and in obtaining a wide and real know-
ledge of the universe. Here are new materials which
the ancients had not; and which may therefore justify
the hope that we may build our philosophy higher than
the ancients did. But modern philosophers who use
only the same materials as the ancient philosophers
used, have not the same grounds for hope which we
have. If they borrow all their examples and illustra-
tions of man's knowledge of the universe, from the con-
dition of the universe as existing in Space and Time,
that is, from the geometrical condition of the universe,
they may fail to obtain the light which might be
obtained if they considered that the universe is also
subject to conditions of Substance, of Cause and Effect,
of Force and Matter: is filled with Kinds of things,
in whose structure we assume Design and Ends; and
so on; and if they reflected that these conditions or
Ideas are not mere vague notions, but the bases of
sciences which all thoughtful persons allow to be cer-
tain and real.
It is then, as I have said, from taking advantage of
the progressive character which physical science, in the
history of man, has been found to possess, that I hope
to learn more of the nature and prospects of the hu-
man mind and soul, than those can learn who still take
their stand on the old limited ground of man's know-
ledge. The knowledge of Geometry by the Greeks
was the starting-point of their sound philosophy. It
showed that something might be certainly known, and
NECESSARY TRUTH IS PROGRESSIVE. 353
it showed, in some degree, how it was known. It
thus refuted the skepticism which was destroying phi-
losophy, and offered specimens of solid truth for the
philosopher to analyse. But the Greeks tried to go
beyond geometry in their knowledge of the universe.
They tried to construct a science of Astronomy-of
Harmonics- of Optics of Mechanics. In the two
former subjects, they succeeded to a very considerable
extent. The question then arose, What was the philo-
sophical import of these new sciences? What light did
they throw on the nature of the universe, on the nature
of knowledge, on the nature of the human mind? These
questions Plato attempted to answer. He said that
the lesson of these new sciences is this:-that the
universe is framed upon the Divine Ideas; that man
can to a certain extent obtain sight of these Ideas; and
that when he does this, he knows concerning the uni-
verse. And again, he also put the matter otherwise :
there is an Intelligible World, of which the Visible and
Sensible world is only a dim image. Science consists
in understanding the Intelligible World, which man is
to a certain extent able to do, by the nature of his
understanding. This was Plato's philosophy, founded
upon the progress which human knowledge had made
up to his time. Since his time, knowledge, that is
science, has made a large additional progress. What
is the philosophical lesson to be derived from this pro-
gress, and from the new provinces thus added to
human knowledge? This is a question which I have
tried to answer. I am not aware that any one since
Plato has taken this line of speculation ;-I mean, has
tried to spell out the lesson of philosophy which is
taught us, not by one specimen, or a few only, of the
knowledge respecting the universe which man has
acquired; but by including in his survey all the pro-
vinces of human knowledge, and the whole history of
each. At any rate, whatever any one else may have
done in this way, it seems to me that new inferences
remain to be drawn, of the nature of those which Plato
drew: and those I here attempt to deduce and to
illustrate.
LA
CHAPTER XXX.
THE THEOLOGICAL BEARING OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF
DISCOVERY.
MTHAT necessary truth is progressive;—that science
1 is the idealization of facts, and that this process
goes on from age to age, and advances with the ad-
vance of scientific discovery ;-these are doctrines
which I have endeavoured to establish and to eluci-
date. If these doctrines are true, they are so import-
ant that I may be excused should I return to them again
and again, and trace their consequences in various di-
rections. Especially I would examine the bearing of
these doctrines upon our religious philosophy. I have
hitherto abstained in a great measure from discussing
religious doctrines; but such a reserve carried too far
must deprive our philosophy of all completeness. No
philosophy of science can be complete which is not
also a philosophy of the universe; and no philosophy
of the universe can satisfy thoughtful men, which does
not include a reference to the power by which the uni-
verse came to be what it is. Supposing, then, such a
reference to be admitted, let us see what aspect our
doctrines give to it.
I. (How can there be necessary truths concerning
the actual universe ?)-In looking at the bearing of our
doctrine on the philosophy of the universe, we are met
by a difficulty, which is indeed, only a former difficulty
under a new aspect. When we are come to the con-
clusion that science consists of facts idealized, we are
led to ask, How this can be? How can facts be ideal-
ized ? How can that which is a fact of external obser-
vation become a result of internal thought? How can
that which was known d posteriori become known d.
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
355
priori? How can the world of things be identified
with the world of thoughts? How can we discover a
necessary connexion among mere phenomena?
Or to put the matter otherwise : How is it that the
deductions of the intellect are verified in the world of
sense? How is it that the truths of science obtained
à priori are exemplified in the general rules of facts
observed à posteriori ? How is it that facts, in science,
always do correspond to our ideas?
I have propounded this paradox in various forms,
because I wish it to be seen that it is, at first sight, a
real, not merely a verbal contradiction, or at least a
difficulty. If we can discover the solution of this dif-
ficulty in any one form, probably we can transpose
the answer so as to suit the other forms of the
question.
2. Suppose the case to be as I have stated it; that in
some sciences at least, laws which were at first facts of
observation come to be seen as necessary truths; and
let us see to what this amounts in the several sciences.
It amounts to this: the truths of Geometry, such as
we discern them by the exercise of our own thoughts,
are always verified in the world of observation. The
laws of space, derived from our Ideas, are universally
true in the external world.
In the same way, as to number: the laws or truths
respecting number, which are deduced from our Idea of
Number, are universally true in the external world.
In the same way, as to the science which deals
with matter and force: the truths of which I have
spoken as derived from Ideas :—that action is equal to
reaction; and that causes are measured by their effects;
—are universally verified in all the laws of phenomena
of the external world, which are disclosed by the
science of Mechanics.
In the same way with regard to the composition and
resolution of bodies into their elements; the truths
derived from our Idea of Matter :—that no composition
or resolution can increase or diminish the quantity of
matter in the world, and that the properties of com-
pounds are determined by their composition ;-are
A A 2
356
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
truths derived from Ideas of quantity of matter, and of
composition and resolution; but these truths are uni-
versally verified when we come to the facts of Che-
mistry.
In the same way it is a truth flowing from the Ideas
of the Kinds of things, (as the possible subject of general
propositions expressed in language, that the kinds of
.things must be definite; and this law is verified when-
ever we express general propositions in general terms.:
for instance, when we distinguish species in Mine-
ralogy.
3. This last example may appear to most readers
doubtful. I have purposely pursued the enumeration
till I came to a doubtful example, because it is, and I
conceive always will be, impossible to extend this gene-
ral view to all the Sciences. On the contrary, this doc-
trine applies at present to only a very few of the sci-
ences, even in the eyes of those who hold the existence
of ideal truths. The doctrine extends at present to a
few only of the sciences, even if it extend to one or
two besides those which have been mentioned-Geo-
metry, Mechanics, Chemistry, Mineralogy: and though
it may hereafter appear that Ideal Truths are possible
and attainable for a few other sciences, yet the laws
disclosed by sciences which cannot be reduced to ideal
elements will, I conceive, always very far outnumber
those which can be so reduced. The great body of our
scientific kuowledge will always be knowledge obtained
by mere observation, not knowledge obtained by the
use of theories alone.
4. The survey of the history and philosophy of the
Sciences which we have attempted in previous works
enables us to offer a sort of estimate of the relative
portions of science which have and which have not
thus been idealized. For the Aphorisms? which we
have collected from that survey, contain Axioms which
may be regarded as the Ideal portions of the various
sciences; and the inspection of that series of aphorisms
will show us to how such a portion of science, any-
i Given in the Novum Organon Renovatun.
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
357
thing of this axiomatic or ideal character can be ap-
plied. These Axioms are the Axioms of Geometry
TAphorism XXVI); of Arithmetic (XXXVI); of
Causation (XLVII); of a medium for the sensation of
secondary qualities (LVIII), and their measure (LXIX);
of Polarity (LXXI)); of Chemical Affinity (LXXVI);
of Substance (LXXVII); of Atoms (LXXIX).
Have we any axioms in the sciences which succeed
these in our survey, as Botany, Zoology, Biology, Pa-
læontology?
There is the Axiom of Symmetry (LXXX); of Kind,
(already in some measure spoken of, (LXXXIII)); of
Final Cause (CV); of First Cause (CXVI).
5. (Small extent of necessary truth.)- It is easily
seen how small a portion of each of these latter sciences
is included in these axioms: while, with regard to the
sciences first mentioned, the Axioms include, in a man-
ner, the whole of the science. The science is only
the consequence of the Axioms. The whole science of
Mechanics is only the development of the Axioms con-
cerning action and reaction, and concerning cause and
its measures, which I have mentioned as a part of our
Ideal knowledge.
In fact, beginning from Geometry and Arithmetic,
and going through the sciences of Mechanics, of Second-
ary Qualities, and of Chemistry, onwards to the sci-
ences which deal with Organized Beings, we find that
our ideal truths occupy a smaller and smaller share of
the sciences in succession, and that the vast variety of
facts and phenomena which nature offers to us, is less
and less subject to any rules or principles which we
can perceive to be necessary.
But still, that there are principles,-necessary princi-
ples, which prevail universally even in these higher
parts of the natural sciences --appears on a careful con-
sideration of the axioms which I have mentioned:—that
in symmetrical natural bodies the similar parts are
similarly affected ;-that every event must have a cause;
that there must be a First Cause, and the like.
· 6. It being established, then, that in the progress
of science, facts are idealized—that à posteriori truths

358
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
become a priori truths ;-that the world of things is
identified with the world of thoughts to a certain ex-
tent;—to an extent which grows larger as we see into
the world of things more clearly; the question recurs
which I have already asked: How can this be?
How can it be that the world without us is thus in
some respects identical with the world within us ?-
that is our question.
7. (How did things come to be as they are ?)-It
would seem that we may make a step in the solution
of this question, if we can answer this other: How
did the world without us and the world within us come
to be what they are?
To this question, two very different answers are re-
turned by those who do and those who do not believe
in a Supreme Mind or Intelligence, as the cause and
foundation of the world.
Those who do not believe that the world has for its
cause and foundation a Supreme Intelligence, or who
do not connect their philosophy with this belief, would
reply to our inquiry, that the reason why man's
thoughts and ideas agree with the world is, that they
are borrowed from the world; and that the persuasion
that these Ideas and truths derived from them have
any origin except the world without us, is an il-
lusion.
On this view I shall not now dwell; for I wish to
trace out the consequences of the opposite view, that
there exists a Supreme Mind, which is the cause and
foundation of the universe. Those who hold this, and
who also hold that the human mind can become pos-
sessed of necessary truths, if they are asked how it is
that these necessary truths are universally verified in
the material world, will reply, that it is so because the
Supreme Creative-Mind has made it so to be:--that the
truths which exist or can be generated in man's mind
agree with the laws of the universe, because He who
has made and sustains man and the universe has
caused them to agree:that our Ideas correspond to
the Facts of the world, and the Facts to our Ideas,
because our Ideas are given us by the same power
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
359
which made the world, and given so that these can
and must agree with the world so made.
8. (View of the Theist).-—This, in its general form,
would be the answer of the theist, (so we may call
him who believes in a Supreme Intelligent Cause of
the world and of man,) to the questions which we
have propounded the perplexity or paradox which
we have tried to bring into view. But we must en-
deavour to trace this view this answer—more into
detail.
If a Supreme Intelligence be the cause of the world
and of the Laws which prevail among its phenomena,
these Laws must exist as Acts of that Intelligence
as Laws caused by the thoughts of the Supreme Mind
as Ideas in the Mind of God. And then the ques-
tion would be, How we are to conceive these thoughts,
these Ideas, to be at the same time Divine and human :
-to be at the same time Ideas in the Divine Mind,
and necessary truths in the human mind; and this is
the question which I would now inquire into.
9. (Is this Platonism?)—To the terms in which the
inquiry is now propounded it may be objected that I
am taking for granted the Platonic doctrine, that the
world is constituted according to the Ideas of the
Divine Mind. It may be said that this doctrine is
connected with gross extravagancies of speculation
and fiction, and has long been obsolete among sound
philosophers.
To which I reply, that if such doctrines have been
pushed into extravagancies, with them I have nothing
to do, nor have I any disposition or wish to revive
them. But I do not conceive the doctrine, to the ex-
tent to which I have stated it, to be at all obsolete:
that the Cause and Foundation of the Universe is a
Divine Mind: and from that doctrine it necessarily
follows, that the laws of the Universe are in the Ideas
of the Divine Mind.
I would then, as I have said, examine the conse-
quences of this doctrine, in reference to the question
of which I have spoken. And in order to do this, it
may help us, if we consider separately the bearing of
360
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
this doctrine upon separate portions of our knowledge
of the universe ;--separately its bearing upon the laws
-which form the subject-matter of different sciences :
if we take particular human Ideas, and consider what
the Divine Ideas must be with regard to each of them.
10. (Idea of Space.)-Let us take, in the first place,
the Idea of Space. Concerning this Idea we possess
necessary truths; namely, the Axioms of Geometry;
and, as necessarily resulting from them, the whole body
of Geometry. And our former inquiry, as narrowed
within the limits of this Idea, will be, How is it that
the truths of Geometry—à priori truths—are univer:
sally verified in the observed phenomena of the uni-
verse? And the theist's answer which we have given
will now assume this form :-This is so because the
Supreme Mind has constituted and constitutes the uni-
verse according to the Idea of Space. The universe
conforms to the Idea of Space, and the Idea of Space
exists in the human mind;-is necessarily evoked and
awakened in the human mind existing in the universe.
And since the Idea of Space, which is a constituent of
the universe, is also a constituent of the human mind,
the consequences of this Idea in the universe and in
the human mind necessarily coincide; that is, the
spacial Laws of the universe necessarily coincide with
the spacial Science which man elaborates out of his
mind.
II. To this it may be objected, that we suppose the
Idea of Space in the Divine Mind (according to which
Idea, among others, the universe is constituted, to be
identical with the Idea of Space in the human mind;
and this, it may be urged, is too limited and material a
notion of the Divine Mind to be accepted by a reve-
rent philosophy.
I reply, that I suppose the Divine Idea of Space
and the human Idea of Space to coincide, only so far
as the human Idea goes; and that the Divine Idea
may easily have so much more luminousness and com-
prehensiveness as Divine Ideas may be supposed to
have compared with hurnan. Further, that this Idea
of Space, the first of the Ideas on which human science
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
361
is founded, is the most luminous and comprehensive of
such Ideas; and there are innumerable other Ideas,
the foundations of sciences more or less complete, whichi
are extremely obscure and limited in the human mind,
but which must be conceived to be perfectly clear and
unlimitedly comprehensive in the Divine Mind. And
thus, the distance between the human and the Divine
Mind, even as to the views which constitute the most
complete of the human sciences, is as great in our
view as in any other.
12. That the Idea of Space in the human mind,
though sufficiently clear and comprehensive to be the
source of necessary truths, is far too obscure and limited
to be regarded as identical with the Divine Idea, will be
plain to us, if we call to mind the perplexities which
the human mind falls into when it speculates concern-
ing space infinite. An Intelligence in which all these
perplexities should vanish by the light of the Idea
itself, would be infinitely elevated in clearness and
comprehensiveness of intellectual vision above human
intelligence, even though its Idea of Space should coin-
cide with the human Idea as far as the human Idea
goes.
I do not shrink from saying, therefore, that the
Idea of Space which is a constituent of the human
mind existing in the universe is, as far as it goes,
identical with the Idea of Space which is a constituent
of the universe. And this I give as the answer to
the question, How it is that the necessary truths of
Geometry universally coincide with the relations of
the phenomena of the universe ? And this doctrine,
it is to be remembered, carries us to the further doc-
trine, that the Idea of Space in the human mind is, so
far as it goes, coincident with the Idea of Space in
the Divine Mind.
13. (Idea of Time.)—What I have said of the Idea
of Space, may be repeated, for the most part, with regard
to the Idea of Time; except that the Idea of Time, as
such, does not give rise to a large collection of neces-
sary truths, such as the propositions of Geometry.
Some philosophers regard Number as a modification
362
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
or derivative of the Idea of Time. If we accept this
view, we have, in the Science of Arithmetic, a body of
necessary truths which flow from the Idea of Time.
But this doctrine, whichever way held, does not bear
much on the question with which we are now con-
cerned. That which we do hold is, that the Idea of
Time in the human mind is, so far as it goes, coin-
cident with the Idea of Time in the Divine Mind :
and that this is the reason why the events of the uni-
verse, as contemplated by us, conform to necessary
laws of succession: while at the same time we must
suppose that all the perplexities in the Idea of Time
which embarrass the human mind-the perplexities,
for instance, which arise from contemplating a past
and a future eternity, are, in the Divine Mind, extin-
guished in the Light of the Idea itself.
Space and Time have, and have generally been re-
garded as having, peculiar prerogatives in our specu-
lations concerning the constitution of the universe.
We see and perceive all things as subject to the laws
of Space and Time; or rather (for the term Law does
not here satisfy us), as being and happening in space
and in time: and probably most persons will have no
repugnance to the doctrine that the Divine Mind, as
well as the human, so regards them, and has so con-
stituted them and us that they must be so regarded.
Space and Time are buman Ideas which include all
objects and events, and are the foundation of all human
Science. And we can conceive that Space and Time
are also Divine Ideas which the Divine Mind causes
to include all objects and events, and makes to be the
foundation of all existence. So far as these Ideas go,
our doctrine is not difficult or new.
14. (Ideas of Force and Matter.)—But what are we
to say of the Ideas which come next in the survey of the
sciences, Force and Matter? These are human Ideas
the foundations of several sciences of the mecha-
nical sciences in particular. But are they the founda-
tions of necessary truths? Have we necessary truths
respecting Force and Matter? We have endeavoured
to prove that we have :--that certain fundamental pro-"
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
positions in the Science of Mechanics, although, his-
torically speaking, they were discovered by observa-
tion and experience, are yet, philosophically speaking,
necessary propositions. And being such, the facts of
the universe must needs conform to these propositions;
and the reason why they do so, we hold, in this as in
the former case, to be, that these Ideas, Force and
Matter, are Ideas in the Divine Mind:-Ideas accord-
ing to which the universe is, by the Divine Cause,
constituted and established.
15. That Force and Matter are Ideas existing in
the Divine Mind, and coincident with the Idea of Force
and Matter in the human mind, as far as these go,
is a doctrine which is important in our view of the
universe in relation to its Cause and Foundation.
These are very comprehensive and fundamental
Ideas, and there are certain universal relations among
external things which rest upon these Ideas. The two,
Force and Matter, are, in a certain way, the necessary
antithesis and opposite condition each of the other.
Force (that is Mechanical Force, Pressure or Impulse)
cannot act without matter to act upon. Matter (that
is Body) cannot exist without Force by which it is kept
in its place, by which its parts are held together, and
by which it excludes every other body from the place
which it occupies. We cannot conceive Force with-
out Matter, or Matter without Force; the two are, as
Action and Reaction, necessarily co-ordinate and co-
existent. In every part of the universe they must be
so. In every part of the universe, if there be material
objects, there must be Force; if there be Force, there
must be material objects.
Our apprehension of this universal necessity arises
from our having the Ideas of Force and Matter which
are human Ideas. The actuality of this universal anti-
thesis arises from the Ideas of Force and Matter being
Ideas in the Divine Mind;-Ideas realized as a part of
the fundamental constitution of the universe.
That Force and Matter are thus among the Ideas in
the Divine Mind, and that, with them, the Ideas of
Force and Matter in the human mind, regarded in their
364
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
most general form, agree so far as they go, is another
step in the doctrine which I am trying to unfold.
That the Ideas of Force and Matter in the Divine
Mind are such as to banish by their own light, innu-
Inerable contradictions and perplexities which darken
these Ideas in the human mind, is to be supposed: and
thus the Divine Mind is infinitely luminous and com-
prehensive compared with the human mind.
:: 16. (Creation of Matter.)-It may perhaps be urged,
as an objection to this doctrine, that it asserts Matter to
be a necessary constituent of the universe, and thus
involves the assertion of the eternity of Matter. But
in reality the doctrine asserts Matter to be eternal,
only in the way in which time and space are eternal.
Whether we hold that there was a creation before
which time and space did not exist, with the poet
who says
- Ere Time and Space were Time and Space were not,
is not essential to our present inquiry. Certainly we
cannot conceive such a state, and therefore cannot
reason about it. We have no occasion here to speak
of Creation, nor have spoken of it. What I have said
is, that Space and Time, Force and Matter are univer-
sal elements, principles, constituents, of the universe
as it is—and necessary Ideas of the human mind ex-
isting in that universe. If there ever was a Creation
before which Matter did not exist, it was a Creation
before which Force did not exist. And in the universe
as it is, the two are necessarily co-existent in the human
thought because they are co-existent in the Divine
Thought which makes the world.
We apply then to Force and Matter the doctrine-
the Platonic doctrine, if any one please so to call it,-
that the world is constituted according to the Ideas of
the Divine Mind, and that the human mind appre-
hends the inward and most fundamental relations of
the universe by sharing in some measure of those same
Ideas.
to extend this doctrine of Ideas to all the objects and
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
365
all the aspects of objects which constitute the material
universe? Do we say with Plato that there is not
only an Idea of a Triangle by conformity to which a
figure is a triangle, but an Idea of Gold, by conformity
to which a thing is gold, and Idea of a Table, by con-
formity to which a thing is a table ?
We say none of these things. We say nothing
which at all approaches to them. We do not say that
there is an Idea of a Triangle, the archetype of all
triangles; we only say that man has an Idea of Space,
which is an Idea of a fundamental reality; and that
therefore from this Idea flow real and universal truths—
about triangles and other figures. Still less do we say
that we have an archetypal Idea of Gold, or of a Metal
in general, or of any of the kinds of objects which
exist in the world. Here we part company with Plato
altogether.
But have we any Ideas at all with regard to objects
which we thus speak of as separable into Kinds ? We
can have knowledge,-even exact and general know-
ledge, that is, science-with regard to such things-
with regard to plants and metals-gold and iron. Dowe
possess in our minds, with regard to those objects, any
Ideas, any universal principles, such as we possess with
regard to geometrical figures or mechanical actions ?
And if so, are those human Ideas -verified in the uni-
verse, as the Ideas hitherto considered are ? and do
they thus afford us further examples of Ideas in the
human mind which are also Ideas in the Divine Mind,
manifested in the constitution of the universe ?.
18. (Idea of Kinds.)-Weanswer Yes to these ques-
tions, on this ground :-the objects that exist in the
world, plants and metals, gold and iron, for example,
in order that they may be objects with regard to which
we can have any knowledge, must be objects of distinct
and definite-thought. Plant must differ from metal,
gold from iron, in order that we may know anything
at all about any of these objects. The differences by
which such objects differ need not necessarily be ex-
pressed by definitions, as the difference of a triangle
and a square are expressed; but there must manifestly
366
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
be fixed and definite differences, in order that we may
have any knowledge about them. These Kinds of
things must be so far distinct and definite, as to be
objects of distinct and definite thought. The Kinds of
natural objects must differ, and we must think of things
as of different Kinds, in order that we may know any-
thing about natural objects. Living in a world in
which we exercise our Intellect upon the natural ob-
jects which surround us, we must regard them as
distinct from each other in Kind. We must have an
Idea of Kinds of natural objects.
19. The Idea of a Kind involves this principle:
That where the Kind differs the Properties may differ,
but so far as the Kind is the same the Properties con-
templated in framing the notion of each Kind are the
same. Gold cannot have the distinctive properties of
Iron without being Iron.
In the case of human knowledge, each Kind is
marked by a word-a name; and the doctrine that
the notion of the Kind must be so applied that this
same Kind of object shall have the same properties,
has been otherwise expressed by saying that Names
must be so applied that general propositions may be
possible. We must so apply the name of Gold that we
may be able to say, gold has a specific gravity of a
certain amount and is ductile in a certain degree.
· 20. But this condition of the names of Kinds,-
that they must be such that general propositions about
these Kinds of objects shall be possible ; —is it a neces-
sary result of the Idea of Kind? And if so, can the
Idea of Kind, thus implying the use of language, and
a condition depending on the use of language, be an
Idea in the Divine as well as in the human mind?
Can it be, in this respect, like the Ideas which we
have already considered, Space and Time, Force and
Matter?
We cannot suppose that the Ideas which exist in
the Divine Mind imply, in the Supreme Intelligence,
the need of language, like human language. But
there is no incongruity in supposing that they imply
that which we take as the condition of such language

ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.. 367
as we speak of, namely, distinct thought. There is
nothing incongruous in supposing that the Supreme
Intelligence regards the objects which exist in the
universe as distinct in Kind: and that the Idea of
Kind in the human mind agrees with the Idea of
Kind in the Divine Mind, as far as it goes. And as
we have seen, the Idea of Properties is correlative and
coexistent with the Idea of Kind, so that the one
.changing, the other changes also. There is nothing
incongruous in supposing that the Divine Mind. mani-
fests in the universe of which it is the Cause and
Foundation, these two, its co-ordinate Ideas: and that
the human mind sees that these two Ideas are co-ordi-
nate and coexistent, in virtue of its participating in
these Ideas of the Divine Mind. The universe is full
of things which man perceives do and must differ cor-
respondingly in kind and in properties; and this is so,
because the Ideas of various Kinds and various Pro-
perties are part of the scheme of the universe in the
Divine Mind.
21. That the Ideas of Kinds and Properties as co-
ordinate and interdependent, though common, to a cer-
tain extent, to the human and the Divine Mind, are
immeasurably more luminous, penetrating and compre-
hensive in the Divine than in the human mind, is
abundantly evident. In fact, though man assents to
such axioms as these, that the Properties of Things
depend upon their Kinds, and that the Kinds of
Things are determined by their Properties, -yet the
nature of connexion of Kinds and Properties is a mat-
ter in which man's mind is all but wholly dark, and
on which the Divine Mind must be perfectly clear.
For in how few cases—if indeed in any one--can we
know what is the essence of any Kind;—what is the
real nature of the connexion between the character of
the Kind and its Properties! Yet on this point we must
suppose that the Divine Intellect, which is the foun-
dation of the world, is perfectly clear. Every Kind of
thing, every genus and species of object, appears to Him
in its essential character, and its properties follow as
necessary consequences. He sees the essences of things
368
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
through all time and through all space.; while' we,
slowly and painfully, by observation and experiment,
which we cannot idealize or can idealize only in the
most fragmentary manner, make out a few of the pro-
perties of each Kind of thing. Our Science here is
but a drop in the ocean of that truth, which is known
to the Divine Mind but kept back from us; but still,
that we can know and do know anything, arises from
our taking hold of that principle, human as well as
Divine, that there are differences of Kinds of things,
and corresponding differences of their properties.
22. (Idea of Substance.)—I shall not attempt to
enumerate all the Ideas which, being thus a part of the
foundation of Science in the human mind and of Ex-
istence in the universe, are shown to be at the same
time Ideas in the Divine and in the human mind. But
there is one other of which the necessary and universal
application is so uncontested, that it may well serve
further to exemplify our doctrine. In all reasonings
concerning the composition and resolution of the ele-
ments of bodies, it is assumed that the quantity of
matter cannot be increased or diminished by anything
which we can do to them. We have an Idea of Sub-
stance, as something which may have its qualities
altered by our operations upon it, but cannot have its
quantity changed. And this Idea of Substance is uni-
versally verified in the facts of observation and experi-
ment. Indeed it cannot fail to be so; for it regulates
and determines the way in which we interpret the facts
of observation and experiment. It authorized the phi-
losopher who was asked the weight of a column of
smoke to reply, “Subtract the weight of the ashes
from that of the fuel, and you have the weight of the
smoke:" for in virtue of that idea we assume that, in
combustion, or in any other operation, all the sub-
stance which is subjected to the operation must exist
in the result in some form or other. Now why mày
we reasonably make this assumption, and thus, as it
were, prescribe laws to the universe? Our reply is,
Because Substance is one of the Ideas according to
which the universe is constituted. The material things
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
369
which make up the universe are substance according
to this Idea. They are substance according to this
Idea in the Divine Mind, and they are substance ac-
cording to this Idea in the human mind, because the
human mind has this Idea, to a certain extent, in com-
mon with the Divine Mind. In this, as in the other
cases, the Idea must be immeasurably more clear and
comprehensive in the Divine Mind than in the human.
The human Idea of substance is full of difficulty and
perplexity: as for instance; how a substance can as-
sume successively a solid, fluid and airy form; how two
substances can be combined so as entirely to penetrate
one another and have new qualities : and the like.
All these perplexities and difficulties we must suppose
to vanish in the Divine Idea of Substance. But still
there remains in the human, as in the Divine Idea,
the source and root of the universal truth, that though
substances may be combined or separated or changed
in form in the processes of nature or of art, no portion
of substance can come into being or cease to be.
.23. (Idea of Final Cause.) There is yet one other
Idea which I shall mention, though it is one about which
difficulties have been raised, since the consideration of
such difficulties may be instructive: the Idea of a pur-
pose, or as it is often termed, a Final Cause, in organized
bodies. It has been held, and rightly?, that the as-
sumption of a Final Cause of each part of animals and
plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an efficient
cause of every event. The maxim, that in organized
bodies nothing is in vain, is as necessarily true as the
maxim that nothing happens by chance. I have else-
where shown fully that this Idea is not deduced from
any special facts, but is assumed as a law governing all
facts in organic nature, directing the researches and in-
terpreting the observations of physiologists. I have also
remarked that it is not at variance with that other law,
that plants and that animals are constructed upon gene-
ral plans, of which plans, it may be, we do not see the
? Nov. Org. Ren. Aph. CV.
s Hist. Sc. Id. b. ix. C. vi.
в в
370
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
necessity, though we see how wide is their generality.
This Idea of a purpose, -of a Final Cause--then, thus
supplied by our minds, is found to be applicable
throughout the organic world. It is in virtue of this
Idea that we conceive animals and plants as subject to
disease; for disease takes place when the parts do not
fully answer their purpose; when they do not do what
they ought to do. How is it then that we thus find
an Idea which is supplied by our own minds, but which
is exemplified in every part of the organic world? Here
perhaps the answer will be readily allowed. It is be-
cause this Idea is an Idea of the Divine Mind. There
is a Final Cause in the constitution of these parts of
the universe, and therefore we can interpret them by
means of the Idea of Final Cause. We can see a pur-
pose, because there is a purpose. Is it too presump-
tuous to suppose that we can thus enter into the Ends
and Purposes of the Divine Mind? We willingly
grant and declare that it would be presumptuous to
suppose that we can enter into them to any but a very
'small degree. They doubtless go immeasurably beyond
our mode of understanding or conceiving them. But to
a certain extent we can go. We can go so far as to see
that they are Ends and Purposes. It is not a vain pre-
sumption in us to suppose that we know that the eye
was made for seeing and the ear for hearing. In this
the most pious of men see nothing impious: the most
cautious philosophers see nothing rash. And that we
can see thus far into the designs of the Divine Mind,
arises, we hold, from this:—that we have an Idea of
Design and of Purpose which, so far as it is merely
that, is true; and so far, is Design and Purpose in the
same sense in the one case and in the other.
· I am very far from having exhausted the list of
Fundamental Ideas which the human mind possesses
and which have been made the foundations of Sciences.
Of all such Ideas, I might go on to remark, that they
are of universal validity and application in the region
of external Facts. In all the cases I might go on to
inquire, How is it that man's Ideas, developed in his
internal world, are found to coincide universally with
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
371
the laws of the external world? By what necessity,
on what ground does this happen? And in all cases
I should have had to reply, that this happens, and must
happen, because these Ideas of the human mind are
also Ideas of the Divine Mind according to which the
universe is constituted. Man has these thoughts, and
sees them verified in the universe, because God had
these thoughts and exemplifies them in the universe.
24. (Human immeasurably inferior to Divine).-But
of all these Ideas, I should also have to remark, that
the way in which man possesses them is immeasurably
obscure and limited in comparison with the way in
which God must be supposed to possess them. These
human Ideas, though clear and real as far as they go,
in every case run into obscurity and perplexity, from
which the Ideas of the Divine Mind must be supposed
to be free. In every case, man, by following the train
of thought involved in each Idea, runs into confusion
and seeming contradictions. It may be that by think-
ing more and more, and by more and more studying
the universe, he may remove some of this confusion
and solve some of these contradictions. But when he
has done in this way all that he can, an immeasurable
region of confusion and contradiction will still remain;
nor can he ever hope to advance very far, in dispelling
the darkness which hangs over the greater part of the
universe. His knowledge, his science, his Ideas, ex-
tend only so far as he can keep his footing in the
shallow waters which lie on the shore of the vast
ocean of unfathomable truth.
25. But further, we have not, even so, exhausted
our estimate of the immeasurable distance between
the human mind and the Divine Mind:“very far from
it: we have only spoken of the smallest portion of the
region of truth, that about which we have Sciences
and Scientific Ideas. In that region alone do we claim
for man the possession of Ideas the clearness of which
has in it something divine. But how narrow is the
province of Science compared with the whole domain
of human thought! We may enumerate the sciences
of which we have been speaking, and which involve
BB 2
372
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
such Ideas as I have mentioned. How many are they?
Geometry, Arithmetic, Chemistry, Classification, Phy-
siology. To these we might have added a few others;
as the sciences which deal with Light, Heat, Polari-
ties; Geology and the other Palætiological Sciences;
and there our enumeration at present must stop. For
we can hardly as yet claim to have Sciences, in the
rigorous sense in which we use the term, about the
Vital Powers of man, his Mental Powers, his historical
attributes, as Language, Society, Arts, Law, and the
like. On these subjects few philosophers will pretend
to exhibit to us Ideas of universal validity, prevailing
through all the range of observation. Yet all these
things proceed according to Ideas in the Divine Mind
by which the universe, and by which man, is consti-
tuted. In such provinces of knowledge, at least, we
have no difficulty in seeing or allowing how blind
man is with regard to their fundamental and consti-
tuent principles; how weak his reason; how limited
his view. If on some of the plainest portions of pos-
sible knowledge, man have Ideas which may be regarded
as coincident to a certain extent with those by which
the universe is really constituted; still on by far the
largest portion of the things which most concern him,
he has no knowledge but that which he derives from
experience, and which he cannot put in so general a
form as to have any pretensions to rest it upon a
foundation of connate Ideas.
26. (Science advances towards the Divine Ideas.) -
But there is yet one remark tending somewbat in the
opposite direction, which I must make, as a part of
the view which I wish to present. Science, in the
rigorous sense of the term, involves, we have said,
Ideas which to a certain extent agree with the Ideas
of the Divine Mind. But science in that sense is pro-
gressive; new sciences are formed and old sciences
extended. Hence it follows that the Ideas which man
has, and which agree with the Ideas of the Divine
Mind, may receive additions to their number from
time to time. This may seem a bold assertion; yet
this is what, with due restriction, we conceive to be
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
373
true. Such Ideas as we have spoken of receive addi-
tions, in respect of their manifestation and develop-
ment. The Ideas, the germ of them at least, were in
the human mind before; but by the progress of scien-
tific thought they are unfolded into clearness and dis-
tinctness. That this takes place with regard to scien-
tific Ideas, the history of science abundantly shows.
The Ideas of Space and Time indeed, were clear and
distinct from the first, and accordingly the Sciences of
Geometry and Arithmetic have existed from the ear-
liest times of man's intellectual history. But the Ideas
upon which the Science of Mechanics depends, having
been obscure in the ancient world, are become clear in
modern times. The Ideas of Composition and Reso-
lution have only in recent centuries become so clear
as to be the basis of a definite science. The Idea of
Substance indeed was always assumed, though vaguely
applied by the ancients; and the Idea of a Design or
End in vital structures is at least as old as Socrates.
But the Idea of Polarities was never put forth in a
distinct form till quite recently; and the Idea of Suc-
cessive Causation, as applied in Geology and in the
other Palætiological Sciences, was never scientifically
applied till modern times: and without attempting
to prove the point by enumeration, it will hardly be
doubted that many Scientific Ideas are clear and dis-
tinct among modern men of science which were not so
in the ancient days.
Now all such scientific Ideas are, as I have been
urging, points on which the human mind is a reflex of
the Divine Mind. And therefore in the progress of
science, we obtain, not indeed new points where the
human mind reflects the Divine, but new points where
this reflection is. clear and luminous. We do not assert
that the progress of science can bring into existence
new elements of truth in the human mind, but it may
bring them into view. It cannot add to the characters
of Divine origin in the human mind, but it may add
to or unfold the proofs of such an origin. And this is
what we conceive it does. And though we do not con-
ceive that the Ideas which science thus brings into,
374
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
view are the most important of man's thoughts in
other respects, yet they may, and we conceive do, sup-
ply a proof of the Divine nature of the human mind,
which proof is of peculiar cogency. What other proofs
may be collected from other trains of human thought,
we shall hereafter consider.
27. (Recapitulation.)—This, then, is the argument to
which we have been led by the survey of the sciences in
which we have been engaged :-That the human mind
can and does put forth, out of its natural stores, duly
unfolded, certain Ideas as the bases of scientific truths :
These Ideas are universally and constantly verified in
the universe: And the reason of this is, that they
agree with the Ideas of the Divine Mind according to
which the universe is constituted and sustained: The
human mind has thus in it an element of resemblance
to the Divine Mind : To a certain extent it looks
upon the universe as the Divine Mind does; and there-
fore it is that it can see a portion of the truth : And
not only can the human mind thus see a portion of the
truth, as the Divine Mind sees it: but this portion,
though at present immeasurably small, and certain
to be always immeasurably small compared with the
whole extent of truth which with greater intellectual
powers, he might discern, nevertheless may increase
from age to age.
This is then, I conceive, one of the results of the
progress of scientific discovery—the Theological Result
of the Philosophy of Discovery, as it may, I think, not
unfitly be called :—That by every step in such dis-
covery by which external facts assume the aspect of
necessary consequences of our Ideas, we obtain a fresh
proof of the Divine nature of the human mind: And
though these steps, however far we may go in this
path, can carry us only a very little way in the know-
ledge of the universe, yet that such knowledge, so far
as we do obtain it, is Divine in its kind, and shows
that the human mind has something Divine in its
nature.
The progress by which external facts assume the
aspect of necessary consequences of our Ideas, we have
ITS THEOLOGICAL BEARING.
375
termed the idealization of facts; and in this sense we
have said, that the progress of science consists in the
Idealization of Facts. But there is another way in
which the operation of man's mind may be considered
an opposite view of the identification of Ideas with
Facts; which we must consider, in order to complete our
view of the bearing of the progress of human thought
upon the nature of man.
CHAPTER XXXI.
MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF God.
MTAN’S powers and means of knowledge are so
limited and imperfect that he can know little
concerning God. It is well that men in their theo-
logical speculations should recollect that it is so, and
should pursue all such speculations in a modest and
humble spirit.
But this humility and modesty defeat their own
ends, when they lead us to think that we can know
nothing concerning God: for to be modest and humble
in dealing with this subject, implies that we know this,
at least, that God is a proper object of modest and
humble thought.
2. Some philosophers have been led, however, by
an examination of man's faculties and of the nature of
being, to the conclusion that man can know nothing
concerning God. But we may very reasonably doubt
the truth of this conclusion. We may ask, How can
we know that we can know nothing? If we can know
nothing, we cannot even know that.
It is much more reasonable to begin with things
that we really do know, and to examine how far such
knowledge can carry us, respecting God, as well as
anything else. This is the course which we have been
following, and its results are very far from being
trifing or unimportant.
In thus beginning from what we know, we start
from two points, on each of which we have, we con-
ceive, some real and sure knowledge :-namely, mathe-
matical and physical knowledge of the universe with-
out us; and a knowledge of our own moral and per-
sonal nature within us.
MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.
377
3. (From Nature we learn something of God.)-In
pursuing the first line of thought, we are led to reason
thus. The universe is governed by certain Ideas : for
instance, everything which exists and happens in the
universe, exists and happens In Space and Time. Why
is this? It is, we conceive, because God has consti-
tuted and constitutes the universe so that it may be
so; that is, because the Ideas of Space and of Time are
Ideas according to which God has established and up-
holds the universe.
But we may proceed further in this way, as we have
already said. The universe not only exists in space
and time, but it has in it substances--material sub-
stances: or taking it collectively, Material Substance.
Can we know anything concerning this substance?
Yes: something we can know; for we know that ma-
terial substance cannot be brought into being or anni-
hilated by any natural process. We have then an Idea
of Substance which is a Law of the universe. How is
this ?—We reply, that it is because our Idea of Sub-
stance is an Idea on which God has established and
upholds the universe.
Can we proceed further still? Can we discern any
other Ideas according to which the universe is consti-
tuted? Yes: as we have already remarked, we can
discern several, though as we go on from one to an-
other they become gradually fainter in their light, less
cogent in their necessity. We can see that Force as
well as Material Substance is an Idea on which the
universe is constituted, and that Force and Matter are
a necessary and universal antithesis: we can see that
the Things which occupy the universe must be of defi-
nite Kinds, in order that an intelligent mind may
occupy itself about them, and thus that the Idea of
Kind is a constitutive Idea of the universe. We can
see that some kinds of things have life, and our Idea
of Life is, that every part of a living thing is a means
to an End; and thus we recognize End, or Final
Cause, as an Idea which prevails throughout the uni-
verse, and we recognize this Idea as an Idea according
to which God constitutes and upholds the universe.
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PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY:
Since we know so much concerning the universe,
and since every Law of the universe which is a ne-
cessary form of thought about the universe must
exist in the Divine Mind, in order that it may find
à place in our minds, how can we say that we can
know nothing concerning the Divine Mind?
4. (Though but Little.)—But on the other hand, we
easily see how little our knowledge is, compared with
what we do not know. Even the parts of our know-
ledge which are the clearest are full of perplexities;
and of the Laws of the universe, including living
as well as lifeless things, how small a portion do we
know at all!
Even the parts of our knowledge which are the clear-
est, I say, are full of perplexities. Infinite Space and
an infinite Past, an infinite Future,-how helplessly
our reason struggles with these aspects of our Ideas !
And with regard to Substance, how did ingenerable and
indestructible substance come into being? And with
regard to Matter, how can passive Matter be endued
with living force ? And with regard to Kinds, how
immeasurably beyond our power of knowing are their
numbers and their outward differences: still more their
internal differences and central essence! And with
regard to the Design which we see in the organs of
living things, though we can confidently say we see it,
how obscurely is it shown, and how much is our view
of it disturbed by other Laws and Analogies ! And
the Life of things, the end to which such Design tends,
how full of impenetrable mysteries is it! or rather how
entirely a mass of mystery into which our powers of
knowledge strive in vain to penetrate!
There is therefore no danger that by following this
train of thought we should elevate our view of man too
high, or bring down God in our thoughts to the like-
ness of man. Even if we were to suppose the Idea of
the Divine Mind to be of the same kind as the Ideas
of the human mind, the very few Ideas of this kind,
which man possesses, compared with the whole range
of the universe, and the scanty length to which he can
follow each, make his knowledge so small and imper-
MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.
379
fect, that he has abundant reason to be modest and
humble in his contemplations concerning the Intelli-
gence that knows all and constitutes all. He can, as
I have already said, wade but a few steps into the
margin of the boundless and unfathomable ocean of
truth.
5. But the Ideas of the Divine Mind must necessarily
be different in kind, as well as in number and extent,
from the Ideas of the human mind, on this very account,
that they are complete and perfect. The Mind which
can conceive all the parts and laws of the universe in
all their mutual bearings, fundamental reasons, and
remote consequences, must be different in kind, as
well as in extent, from the mind which can only trace a
few of these parts, and see these laws in a few of their
aspects, and cannot sound the whole depth of any of
them. The Divine Mind differs from the human, in
the way in which we must needs suppose what is Di-
vine to differ from what is human.
6. It has sometimes been said that the Divine Mind
differs from the human as the Infinite from the finite.
And this has been given as a reason why we cannot
know anything concerning God; for we cannot, it is
said, know anything concerning the Infinite. Our
conception of the Infinite being merely negative, (the
negation of a limit,) makes all knowledge about it in-
possible. But this is not truly said. Our conception
of the Infinite is not merely negative. As I have
elsewhere remarked, our conception of the Infinite is
positive in this way:-that in order to form this con-
ception, we begin to follow a given Idea in a given
direction; and then, having thus begun, we suppose
that the progress of thought goes on in that direction
without limit. To arrive at our Idea of infinite space,
for example, we must determine what kind of space
we mean,--line, area or solid; and from what origin
we begin: and infinite space has different attributes
as we take different beginnings in this way.
And so with regard to the kinds of infinity (for
there are many) which belong to the Divine Mind.
We have a few Ideas which represent the Laws of the
380
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
universe :—as Space, Time, Substance, Force, Matter,
Kind, End; of such Ideas the Divine Mind may have
an infinite number. These Ideas in the human mind
are limited in depth and clearness: in the Divine Mind
they must be infinitely clearer than the clearest human
Intuition ; infinitely more profound than the profound-
est human thought. And in this way, and, as we shall
see, in other ways also, the Divine Mind infinitely
transcends the human mind when most fully instructed
and unfolded.
In this way and in other ways also, I say. For we
have hitherto spoken of the human mind only as con-
templating the external world;-as discerning, to a cer-
tain small extent, the laws of the universe. We have
spoken of the world of things without: we must now
speak of the world within us ;-of the world of our
thoughts, our being, our moral and personal being.
7. (From ourselves we learn something concerning
God.) We must speak of this: for this is, as I have
said, another starting point and another line in which
we may proceed from what we know, and see how far
our knowledge carries us, and how far it teaches us
anything concerning God.
Looking at ourselves, we perceive that we have to
act, as well as to contemplate: We are practical as
well as speculative beings. And tracing the nature
and conditions of our actions, in the depths of our
thought we find that there is in the aspect of actions
a supreme and inevitable distinction of right and
wrong. We cannot help judging of our actions as
right and wrong. We acknowledge that there must
be such a judgment appropriate to them. We have
these Ideas of right and wrong as attributes of actions ;
and thus we are moral beings.
8. And again : the actions are our actions. We
act in this way or that. And we are not mere things,
which move and change as they are acted on, but which
do not themselves act, as man acts. I am not a Thing
with me-act in various ways towards me, well or ill
mare also persons. Man is a personal being.
MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.
381
The Ideas of right and wrong the moral Ideas of
man—are then a part of the scheme of the universe to
which man belongs. Could they be this, if they were
not also a part of the nature of that Divine Mind
which constitutes the universe ?.-It would seem not:
the Moral Law of the universe must be a Law of the
Divine Mind, in order that it may be a Law felt and
discerned by man.
9. (Objection answered.)—But, it may be objected,
the Moral Law of the universe is a Law in a different
sense from the Laws of the universe of which we spoke
before--the mathematical and physical laws of the
universe. Those were laws according to which things
are, and events occur: but Moral Laws are Laws ac-
cording to which men ought to act, and according to
which actions ought to be. There is a difference, so
that we cannot reason from the human to the Divine
Mind in the same manner in this case as in the other.
True: we cannot reason in the same manner. But
we can reason still more confidently. For the Law
directing what ought to be is the Supreme Law, and
the mind which constitutes the Supreme Law is the
Supreme Mind, that is, the Divine Mind
10. That the Moral Law is not verified among men
in fact, is not a ground for doubting that it is a Law
of the Divine Mind; but it is a ground for inquiring
what consequences the Divine Mind has annexed to
the violation of the Law; and in what manner the
supremacy of the Law will be established in the total
course of the history of the universe, including, it may
be, the history of other worlds than that in which we
now live.
Considering how dimly and imperfectly we see what
consequences the Divine Governor has annexed to the
violation of the Moral Law, He who sees all these
consequences and has provided for the establishment
of His Law in the whole history of the human race,
must be supposed to be infinitely elevated above man
in wisdom;—more even in virtue of this aspect of His
nature, than in virtue of that which is derived from
the contemplation of the universe.
382
• PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY,
II. Man is a person; and his personality is his high-
est attribute, or at least, that which makes all his highest
attributes possible. And the highest attribute which
belongs to the finite minds which exist in the universe
must exist also in the Infinite Mind which constitutes
the universe as it is. The Divine Mind must reside
in a Divine Person. And as man, by his personality,
acts in obedience to or in transgression of a moral
law, so God, by His Personality, acts in establishing
the Law and in securing its supremacy in the whole
history of the world.
12. (Creation.) — Acknowledging a Divine Mind
which is the foundation and support of the world as it
is, constituting and upholding its laws, it inay be asked,
Does this view point to a beginning of the world?
Was there a time when the Divine Mind called into
being the world, before non-existent? Was there a
Creation of the world?
I do not think that an answer to this question,
given either way, affects the argument which I have
been urging. The Laws of the Universe discoverable
by the human mind, are the Laws of the Divine
Mind, whether or not there was a time when these
Laws first came into operation, or first produced the
world which we see. The argument respecting the
nature of the Divine Mind is the same, whether or
not we suppose a Creation.
But, in point of fact, every part of our knowledge
of the Universe does seem to point to a beginning.
Every part of the world has been, so far as we can
see, formed by natural causes out of something differ-
ent from what it now is. The Earth, with its lands
and seas, teeming with innumerable forms of living
things, has been produced from an earth formed of
other lands and seas, occupied with quite different
forms of life: and if we go far enough back, from an
earth in which there was no life. The stars which we
call fixed move and change; the nebulæ in their shape
show that they too are moving and changing. The
Earth was, some at least hold, produced by the con-
densation of a nebula. The history of man, as well
MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.
383
as of others of its inhabitants, points to a beginning.
Languages, Arts, Governments, Histories, all seem to
have begun from a starting point, however remote.
Indeed not only a beginning, but a beginning at no
remote period, appears to be indicated by most of the
sciences which carry us backwards in the world's his-
tory.
· But we must allow, on the other hand, that though
all such lines of research point towards a beginning,
none of them can be followed up to a beginning. All
the lines converge, but all melt away before they reach
the point of convergence. As I have elsewhere said,
in no science has man been able to arrive at a begin-
ning which is homogeneous with the known course of
events, though we can often go very far back, and
limit the hypotheses respecting the origin. We have,
in the impossibility of thus coming to any conclusion
by natural reason on the subject of creation, another
evidence of the infinitely limited nature of the human
mind, when compared with the Creative or Constitu-
tive Divine Mind.
13. (End of the World.)—But if our natural reason,
aided by all that science can teach, can tell us nothing
respecting the origin and beginning of this world, still
less can reason tell us anything with regard to the
End of this world. On this subject, the natural
sciences are even more barren of instruction than on
the subject of Creation. Yet we may say that as the
Constitution of the Universe, and its conformity to a
Collection of eternal and immutable Ideas as its ele-
ments, are not inconsistent with the supposition of a
Beginning of the present course of the world, so nei-
ther are they inconsistent with the supposition of an
End. Indeed it would not be at all impossible that
physical inquiries should present the prospect of an
End, even more clearly than they afford the retrospect
of a Beginning. If, for instance, it should be found
that the planets move in a resisting medium which
Hist. Ind. Sc. b. xviii. C. vi. sect. 5.
384
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
constantly retards their velocity, and must finally
make them fall in upon the central sun, there would
be an end of the earth as to its present state. We can-
not therefore, on the grounds of Science, deny either a
Beginning or an End of the present world.
14. But here another order of considerations comes
into play, namely, those derived from moral and theo-
logical views of the world. On these we must, in con-
clusion, say a few words.
It is very plain that these considerations may lead
us to believe in a view of the Beginning, Middle, and
End of the history of the world, very different from
anything which the mere physical and natural sciences
can disclose to us. And these expressions to which I
have been led, the Beginning, the Middle, and the
End of the world's history according to theological
views, are full of suggestions of the highest interest.
But the interest which belongs to these suggestions is
of a solemn and peculiar kind; and the considerations
to which such suggestions point are better, I think,
kept apart from such speculations as those with which
I have been concerned in the present volume.
CHAPTER XXXII.
ANALOGIES OF PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY,
1. ANY assertion of analogy between physical and
A religious philosophy will very properly be
looked upon with great jealousy as likely to be forced
and delusive; and it is only in its most general aspects
that a sound philosophy on the two subjects can offer
any points of resemblance. But in some of its general
conditions the discovery of truth in the one field of
knowledge and in the other may offer certain analo-
gies, as well as differences, which it may be instructive
to notice; and to some such aspects of our philosophy
I shall venture to refer.
For the physical sciences--the sciences of observa-
tion and speculation-the progress of our exact and
scientific knowledge, as I have repeatedly said, con-
sists in reducing the objects and events of the universe
to a conformity with Ideas which we have in our own
minds :--the Ideas, for instance, of Space, Force, Sub-
stance, and the like. In this sense, the intellectual
progress of men consists in the Idealization of Facts.
2. In moral subjects, on the other hand, where
man has not merely to observe and speculate, but also
to act; where he does not passively leave the facts
and events of the world such as they are, but tries
actively to alter them and to improve the existing
state of things, his progress consists in doing this. He
makes a moral advance when he succeeds in doing
what he thus attempts :-when he really improves the
state of things with which he has to do by removing
evil and producing good :-when he makes the state
of things, namely, the relations between him and other
persons, his acts and their acts, conform more and
CC
386
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
more to Ideas which he has in his own mind :-
namely, to the Ideas of Justice, Benevolence, and the
like. His moral progress thus consists in the realiza-
tion of Ideas. i
And thus we are led to the Aphorism, as we may
call it, that Man's Intellectual Progress consists in the.
Idealization of Facts, and his Moral Progress consists
in the Realization of Ideas.
3. But further, though that progress of science
which consists in the idealization of facts may be
carried through several stages, and indeed, in the his-
tory of science, has been carried through many stages,
yet it is, and always must be, a progress exceedingly
imperfect and incomplete, when compared with the
completeness to which its nature points. Only a few
sciences have made much progress; none are com-
plete; most have advanced only a step or two. In
none have we reduced all the Facts to Ideas. In
all or almost all the unreduced Facts are far more
numerous and extensive than those which have been
reduced. The general mass of the facts of the uni-
verse are mere facts, unsubdued to the rule of science.
The Facts are not Idealized. The intellectual pro-
gress is miserably scanty and imperfect, and would be
so, even if it were carried much further than it is
carried. How can we hope that it will ever approach
to completeness ?
4. And in like manner, the moral progress of man
is still more miserably scanty and incomplete. In
how small a degree has he in this sense realized his
Ideas! In how small a degree has he carried into
real effect, and embodied in the relations of society, in
his own acts and in those of others with whom he is
concerned, the Ideas of Justice and Benevolence and
the like! How far from a complete realization of such
moral Ideas are the acts of the best men, and the rela-
tions of the best forms of society! How far from per-
fection in these respects is man! and how certain it
is that he will always be very far from perfection!
Far below even such perfection as he can conceive, he
will always be in his acts and feelings. The moral
PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 387
progress of man, of each man, and of each society, is,
as I have said, miserably scanty and incomplete; and
when regarded as the realization of his moral Ideas,
its scantiness and incompleteness become still more
manifest than before.
Hence we are led to another Aphorism:-- that
man's progress in the realization of Moral Ideas, and
and always will be, exceedingly scanty and incomplete.
· 5. But there is another aspect of Ideas, both phy-
sical and moral, in which this scantiness and incom-
pleteness vanish. In the Divine Mind, all the phy-
sical Ideas are entertained with complete fulness and
luminousness; and it is because they are so enter-
tained in the Divine Mind, and it is because the uni-
verse is constituted and framed upon them, that we
find them verified in every part of the universe, when-
ever we make our observation of facts and deduce
their laws.
In like manner the Moral Ideas exist in the Divine
Mind in complete fulness and luminousness; and we
are naturally led to believe and expect that they must
be exemplified in the moral universe, as completely
and universally as the physical laws are exemplified in
the physical universe. Is this so? or under what con-
ditions can we conceive this to be?
6. In answering this question, we must consider
how far the moral, still more even than the physical
Ideas of the Divine Mind, are elevated above our.
human Ideas; but yet not so far as to have no resem-
were so, we could not reason about them at all.
In speaking of man's moral Ideas, Benevolence,
Justice, and the like, we speak of them as belonging
to man's Soul, rather than to his Mind, which we have
coinmonly spoken of as the seat of his physical Ideas.
A distinction is thus often made between the intel-
lectual and the moral faculties of man; but on this
man's Mind and Soul, meaning that part of his being
in which are all his Ideas, intellectual and moral.
CC 2
388
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
And now let us consider the question which has
just been asked :-how we can conceive the Divine
Benevolence and Justice to be completely and univer-
sally realized in the moral world, as the Ideas of
Space, Time, &c. are in the physical world?
7. Our Ideas of Benevolence, Justice, and of other
Virtues, may be elevated above their original narrow-
ness, and purified from their original coarseness, by moral
culture; as our Ideas of Force and Matter, of Sub-
stance and Elements, and the like, may be made clear
and convincing by philosophical and scientific.culture.
This appears, in some degree, in the history of moral
terms, as the progress of clearness and efficacy in the
Idea of the material sciences appears in the history of
the terms belonging to such sciences. Thus among
the Romans, while they confined their kindly affections
within their own class, a stranger was universally an
enemy; peregrinus was synonymous with hostis. But
at a later period, they regarded all men as having a
claim on their kindness; and he who felt and acted on
this claim was called humane. This meaning of the
word humanity shows the progress in their Ideas at
least) of the virtue which the word humanity desig-
nates.
8. And as man can thus rise to a point of view
where he sees that man is to be loved as man, so the
humane and loving man inevitably assumes that God
loves all men; and thus assumes that there is, or may
be, a love of man in man's lieart, which represents and
resembles in kind, however remote in degree, the love
of God to man.
But as in man's love of man there are very widely
different stages, rising from the narrow love of a savage
to his family or his tribe, to the widest and warmest
feelings of the most enlightened and loving universal
philanthropist;-SO must we suppose that there are
stages immeasurably wider by which God's love of
man is more comprehensive and more tender than any
love of man for man. The religious philosopher will
fully assent to the expressions of this conviction de-
livered by pious men in all ages. “The eternal God is
PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 389
thy refuge, and beneath thee are the everlasting arms."
“When my father and my mother forsake me the Lord
taketh me up," is the expression of Divine Love, con-
sistent with philosophy as well as with revelation. But
as the Divine Love is more comprehensive and enduring
than any human love, so is it in an immeasurably greater
degree, more enlightened. It is not a love that seeks
merely the pleasure and gratification of its object; that
even an enlightened human love does not do. It seeks
the good of its objects; and such a good as is the great-
est good, to an Intelligence which can embrace all
cases, causes, and contingencies. To our limited un-
derstanding, evil seems often to be inflicted, and the
good of a part seems inconsistent with the good of an-
other part. Our attempts to conceive a Supreme and
complete Good provided for all the creatures which
exist in the universe, baffle and perplex us, even more
than our attempts to conceive infinite space, infinite
time, and an infinite chain of causation. But as the
most careful attention which we can give to the Ideas
of Space, Time, and Causation convinces us that these
Ideas are perfectly clear and complete in the Divine
Mind, and that our perplexity and confusion on these
subjects arise only from the vast distance between the
Divine Mind and our hunan mind, so is it reasonable
to suppose the same to be the source of the confusion
which we experience when we attempt to determine
- What most conduces to the good of our fellow-crea-
tures; and when, urged by love to them, we endeavour
to promote this good. We can do little of what Infi-
nite Love would do, yet are we not thereby dispensed
from seeking in some degree to imitate the working of
Divine Love. We can see but little of what Infinite
Intelligence sees, and this should be one source of con-
fidence and comfort, when we stumble upon perplexi-
ties produced by the seeming mixture of good and evil
in the world.
9. But when we ask the questions which have already
been stated: Whether this Infinite Divine Love is real-
ized in the world, and if so, How: I conceive that we
are irresistibly impelled to reply to the former question,
390
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
that it is: and we then turn to the latter. We are led
to assume that there is in God an Infinite Love of
man, a creature in a certain degree of a Divine nature.
We must, as a consequence of this, assume that the
Love of God to man, necessarily is, in the end, and on
the whole, completely and fully realized in the history
of the world. But what is the complete history of the
world? Is it that which consists in the lives of men such
as we see them between their birth and their death? If
the minds or souls of men are alive after the death of
the body, that future life, as well as this present life,
belongs to the history of the world;-to that provi-
dential history, of which the totality, as we have said,
must be governed by Infinite Divine Love. And in
addition to all other reasons for believing that the
minds and souls of men do thus survive their present
life, is this :—that we thus can conceive, what other-
wise it is difficult or impossible to conceive, the opera-
tion of Infinite Love in the whole of the history of
mankind. If there be a Future State in which men's
souls are still under the authority and direction of the
Divine Governor of the world, all that is here wanting
to complete the scheme of a perfect government of
Intelligent Love may thus be applied: all seeming and
partial evil may be absorbed and extinguished in an
ultimate and universal good.
10. The Idea of Justice as belonging to God sug-
gests to us some of the same kind of reflexions as
those which we have made respecting the Divine Love.
We believe God to be just: otherwise, as has been
said, He would not be God. And as we thus, from
the nature of our minds and souls, believe God to be
just, we must, in this belief, understand Justice ac-
cording to the Idea which we have of Justice; that is,
in some measure, according to the Idea of Justice, as
exemplified in human actions and feelings. It would
be absurd to combine the two propositions, that we
necessarily believe that God is just, and that by just,
we mean something entirely different from the com-
mon meaning of the word.
But though the Divine Idea of Justice must neces-
PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 391
sarily, in some measure, coincide with our Idea of
Justice, we must believe in this, as in other cases, that
the Divine Idea is immeasurably more profound, com-
prehensive, and clear, than the human Idea. Even
the human Idea of Justice is susceptible of many and
large progressive steps, in the way of clearness, con-
sistency, and comprehensiveness. In the moral history
of man this Idea advances from the hard rigour of in-
flexible written Law to the equitable estimation of the
real circumstances of each case; it advances also from
.the narrow Law of a single community to a larger Law,
which includes and solves the conflicts of all such
Laws. Further, the administration of human Law is
always imperfect, often erroneous, in consequence of
man's imperfect knowledge of the facts of each case,
and still more, from his ignorance of the designs and
feelings of the actors. If the Judge could see into the
heart of the person accused, and could himself rise
higher and higher in judicial wisdom, he might exem-
plify the Idea of Justice in a far higher degree than
has ever yet been done.
Il. But all such advance in the improvement of
human Justice must still be supposed to stop immea-
surably short of the Divine Justice, which must in-
clude a perfect knowledge of all men's actions, and all
men's hearts and thoughts; and a universal application
of the wisest and most comprehensive Laws. And the
difference of the Divine and of the human Idea of
Justice may, like the differences of other Divine and
human Ideas, include the solution of all the perplexi-
ties in which we find ourselves involved when we
would trace the Idea to all its consequences. The Di-
vine Idea is immeasurably elevated above the human
Idea; in the Divine Idea all inconsistency, defect, and
incompleteness vanish, and Justice includes in its ad-
ministration every man, without any admixture of in-
justice. This is what we must conceive of the Divine
administration, since God is perfectly just.
12. But here, as before, we have another conclu-
sion suggested to us. We are, by the considerations
just now spoken of, led to believe that, in the Divine
392
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
administration of the world is an administration of
perfect Justice;—that is, such is the Divine Adminis.
tration in the end and on the whole, taking into ac-
count the whole of the providential history of the
world. But the course of the world, taking into ac-
count only what happens to man in this present life,
is not, we may venture to say, a complete and entire
administration of justice. It often happens that in-
justice is successful and triumphant, even in the end,
so far as the end is seen here. It happens that wrong
is done, and is not remedied or punished. It happens
that blameless and virtuous men are subjected to pain,
grief, violence, and oppression, and are not protected,
extricated, or avenged. In the affairs of this world,
the prevalence of injustice and wrong-doing is so ap-
parent, as to be a common subject of complaint: and
though the complaint may be exaggerated, and though
a calm and comprehensive view may often discern com-
pensating and remedial influences which are not visible
at first sight, still we cannot regard the lot of happiness
or misery which falls to each man in this world and
this life as apportioned according to a scheme of per-
fect and universal justice, such as in our thoughts we
cannot but require the Divine administration to be.
13. Here then we are again led to the same con-
viction by regarding the Divine administration of the
world as the realization of the Divine Justice, to which
we were before led by regarding it as the realization
of the Divine Love. Since the Idea is not fully or
completely realized in man's life in this present world,
this present world cannot be the whole of the Divine
Administration. To complete the realization of the
Idea of Justice, as an element of the Divine Adminis-
tration, there nuust be a life of man after his life in
this present world. If man's mind and soul, the part
of him which is susceptible of happiness and misery,
survive this present life, and be still subject to the
Divine Administration, the Idea of Divine Justice
may still be completely realized, notwithstanding all
that here looks like injustice or defective justice; and
it belongs to the Idea of Justice to remedy and com-
PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 393
pensate, not to prevent wrong. And thus by this
supposition of a Future State of man's existence, we
are enabled to conceive that, in the whole of the Di-
vine Government of the universe, all seeming injustice
and wrong may be finally corrected and rectified, in an
ultimate and universal establishment of a reign of per-
fect Righteousness.
14. Admitting the view thus presented, we may
again discern a remarkable analogy between what we
have called our physical Ideas (those of Space, Time,
Cause, Substance, and the like), and our moral Ideas,
(those of Benevolence, Justice, &c.) In both classes we
must suppose that our human Ideas represent, though
very incompletely and at an immeasurable distance,
the Divine Ideas. Even our physical Ideas, when pur-
sued to their consequences, are involved in a perplexity
and confusion from which the Divine Ideas are free.
Our Ideas of Benevolence and Justice are still more
full of imperfections and inconsistency, when we would
frame them into a complete scheme, and yet from such
imperfections and inconsistency we must suppose that
the Divine Benevolence and Justice are exempt. Our
physical Ideas we find in every case exactly exempli-
fied and realized in the universe, and we account for
this by considering that they are the Divine Ideas, on
which the universe is constituted. Our moral Ideas,
the Ideas of Benevolence and Justice in particular,
must also be realized in the universe, as a scheme of
Divine Government. But they are not realized in
the world as constituted of man living this present
life. The Divine Scheme of the world, therefore, ex-
tends beyond this present life of man. If we could
include in our survey the future life as well as the
present life of man, and the future course of the Di-
vine Government, we should have a scheme of the
Moral Government of the universe, in which the Ideas
of Perfect Benevolence and Perfect Justice are as com-
pletely and universally exemplified and realized, as the
Ideas of Space, Time, Cause, Substance, and the like,
are in the physical universe.
15. There is one other remark bearing upon this
394 :
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
analogy, which seems to deserve our attention. As I
have said in the last chapter, the scheme of the world,
as governed by our physical Ideas, seems to point to
a Beginning of the world, or at least of the present
course of the world : and if we suppose a Beginning,
our thoughts naturally turn to an End. But if our
physical Ideas point to a Beginning and suggest an
End, do our Ideas of Divine Benevolence and Justice
in any way lend themselves to this suggestion ?-
Perhaps we might venture to say that in some degree
they do, even to the eye of a mere philosophical reason.
is a progression in the human race, in various moral
attributes-in art, in civilization, and even in humanity
and in justice, which implies a beginning. And that
at any rate there is nothing inconsistent with our Idea
of the Divine Government in the supposition that the
history of this world has a Beginning, a Middle and
an End.
16. If therefore there should be conveyed to us
by some channel especially appropriated to the com-
munication and development of moral and religious
Ideas, the knowledge that the world, as a scheme of
Divine Government, has a Beginning, a Middle, and
an End, of a Kind, or at least, invested with cir-
cumstances .quite different from any which our physi-
cal Ideas can disclose to us, there would be, in such
a belief, nothing at all inconsistent with the analogies
which our philosophy—the philosophy of our Ideas
illustrated by the whole progress of science—has im-
pressed upon us. On the grounds of this philosophy,
we need find no difficulty in believing that as the
visible universe exhibits the operation of the Divine
Ideas of Space, Time, Cause, Substance, and the like,
and discloses to us traces of a Beginning of the pre-
sent mode of operation, so the moral universe exhibits
to us the operation of the Divine Benevolence and
Justice; and that these Divine attributes wrought in
a special and peculiar manner in the Beginning; inter-
posed in a peculiar and special manner in the Middle;
PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 395
the End of the world. And thus the conditions of the
physical universe, and the Government of the Moral
world, are both, though in different ways, a part of the
work which God is carrying on from the Beginning of
things to the End—opus quod Deus operator a prin-
cipio usque ad finem.
17. We are led by such analogies as I have been
adducing to believe that the whole course of events in
which the minds and souls of men survive the present
life, and are hereafter subjected to the Divine govern-
ment in such a way as to complete all that is here de-
ficient in the world's history, is a scheme of perfect
Benevolence and Justice. Now, can we discern in
man's mind or soul itself any indication of a destiny
like this? Are there in us any powers and faculties
which seem as if they were destined to immortality?
If there be, we have in such faculties a strong confirm-
ation of that belief in the future life of man which has
already been suggested to us as necessary to render the
Divine government conceivable.
18. According to our philosophy there are powers
and faculties which do thus seem fitted to endure, and
not fitted to terminate and be extinguished. The Ideas
which we have in our minds—the physical Ideas, as
we have called them, according to which the universe
is constituted,-agree, as far as they go, with the Ideas
of the Divine Mind, seen in the constitution of the
universe. But these Divine Ideas are eternal and im-
perishable : we therefore naturally conclude that the
human mind which includes such elements, is also
eternal and imperishable. Since the mind can take
hold of eternal truths, it must be itself eternal. Since
it is, to a certain extent, the image of God in its facul-
ties, it cannot ever cease to be the image of God.
When it has arrived at a stage in which it sees several
aspects of the universe in the same form in which they
present themselves to the Divine Mind, we cannot
suppose that the Author of the human mind will allow
it and all its intellectual light to be extinguished.
19. And our conviction that this extinction of the
human mind cannot take place becomes stronger still,
396
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
when we consider that the mind, however imperfect
and scanty its discernment of truth may be, is still
capable of a vast, and even of an unlimited progress in
the pursuit and apprehension of truth. The mind is
capable of accepting and appropriating, through the
action of its own Ideas, every step in science which
has ever been made every step which shall hereafter
be made. Can we suppose that this vast and bound-
less capacity exists for a few years only, is unfolded
only into a few of its simplest consequences, and is
then consigned to annihilation? Can we suppose that
the wonderful powers which carry man on, generation
by generation, from the contemplation of one great
and striking truth to another, are buried with each
generation ? May we not rather suppose that that
mind, which is capable of indefinite progression, is
allowed to exist in an infinite duration, during which
such progression may take place?
20. I propose this argument as a ground of hope
· and satisfactory reflexion to those who love to dwell on
the natural arguments for the Immortality of the Soul.
I do not attempt to follow it into detail. I know too
well how little such a cause can gain by obstinate and
complicated argumentation, to attempt to urge the
argument in that manner: and probably different per-
sons, among those who accept the argument as valid,
would give different answers to many questions of de-
tail, which naturally arise out of the acceptance of this
argument. I will not here attempt to solve, or even
to propound these questions. My main purpose in
offering these views and this argument at all, is to
give some satisfaction to those who would think it a
sad and blank result of this long survey of the nature
and progress of science in which we have been so long
engaged (through this series of works), that it should
in no way lead to a recognition of the Author of that
world about which our Science is, and to the high and
consolatory hopes which lift man beyond this world.
No survey of the universe can be at all satisfactory to
thoughtful men, which has not a theological bearing;
por can any view of man's powers and means of know-
PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 397
ing be congenial to such men, which does not recognize
an infinite destination for the mind which has an infi-
nite capacity; an eternal being of the Faculty which
can take a steady hold of eternal being.
21. And as we may derive such a conviction from
our physical Ideas, so too may we no less from our
moral Ideas. Our minds apprehend Space and Time
and Force and the like, as Ideas which are not depen-
dent on the body; and hence we believe that our minds
shall not perish with our bodies. And in the same
manner our souls conceive pure Benevolence and per-
fect Justice, which go beyond the conditions of this
mortal life; and hence we believe that our souls have
to do with a life beyond this mortal life.
It is more difficult to speak of man's indefinite mo-
ral progression even than of his indefinite intellectual
progression. Yet in every path of moral speculation
we have such a progression suggested to us. We may
begin, for instance, with the ordinary feelings and
affections of our daily nature :-Love, Hate, Scorn.
But when we would elevate the Soul in our imagina-
tion, we ascend above these ordinary affections, and
take the repulsive and hostile ones as fitted only to
balance their own influences. And thus the poet,
speaking of a morally poetical nature, describes it:
The Poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above.
He felt the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
But the loftier moralist can rise higher than this, and
can, and will, reject altogether Hate and Scorn from
his view of man's better nature. His description
would rather be
The good man in a loving clime was born,
With loving stars above.
He felt sorrow for hate, pity for scorn,
And love of love.
He would, in his conception of such a character,
ascribe to it all the virtues which result from the
398
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
control and extinction of these repulsive and hostile
affections :- the virtues of magnanimity, forgiving-
ness, unselfishness, self-devotion, tenderness, sweetness.
And these we can conceive in a higher and higher,
degree, in proportion as our own hearts become tender,
forgiving, pure and unselfish. And though in every
human stage of such a moral proficiency, we must
suppose that there is still some struggle with the re-
maining vestiges of our unkind, unjust, angry and
selfish affections, we can see no limit to the extent to.
which this struggle may be successful; no limit to the
degree in which these traces of the evil of our nature
may be worn out by an enduring practice and habit
of our better nature. And when we contemplate a
human character which has, through a long course of
years, and through many trials and conflicts, made
a large progress in this career of melioration, and is
still capable, if time be given, of further progress
towards moral perfection, is it not reasonable to sup-
pose that He who formed man capable of such pro-
gress, and who, as we must needs believe, looks with
approval on such progress where made, will not allow
the progress to stop when it has gone on to the end of
man's short earthly life? Is it not rather reasonable
to suppose that the pure and elevated and all-embracing
affection, extinguishing all vices and including all vir-
tues, to which the good man thus tends, shall continue
to prevail in him as a permanent and ever-during con-
dition, in a life after this?
But can man raise himself to such a stage of moral
progress, by his own efforts ? Such a progress is an
approximation towards the perfection of moral Ideas,
and therefore an approximation towards the image of
God, in whom that perfection resides : is it not then
reasonable to suppose that man needs a Divine In-
fluence to enable him to reach this kind of moral
completeness? And is it not also reasonable to sup-
pose that, as he needs such aid, in order that the Idea
of his moral progress may be realized, so he will receive
şuch aid from the Divine Power which realizes the
Idea of Divine Love in the world; and to do so, must
PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 399
realize it in those human souls which are most fitted
for such a purpose ?
But these questions remind me how difficult, and
indeed, how impossible it is to follow such trains of
reflexion by the light of philosophy alone. To answer
such questions, we need, not Religious Philosophy only,
but Religion: and as I do not here venture beyond
the domain of philosophy, I must, however abruptly,
conclude.
THE END.
APPENDIX.
D
D
APPENDIX A.
OF THE PLATONIC THEORY OF IDEAS.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. Nov. 10, 1856.).
MHOUGH Plato has, in recent times, had many readers and ad-
I mirers among our English scholars, there has been an air of
unreality and inconsistency about the commendation which most of
these professed adherents have given to his doctrines. This appears
to be no caprious criticism, for instance, when those who speak of
him as immeasurably superior in argument to his opponents, do not
venture to produce his arguments in a definite form as able to bear
the tug of modern controversy ;-when they use his own Greek
phrases as essential to the exposition of his doctrines, and speak as
if these phrases could not be adequately rendered in English ;-
and when they assent to those among the systems of philosophy of
modern times which are the most clearly opposed to the system of
Plato. It seems not unreasonable to require, on the contrary, that
if Plato is to supply a philosophy for us, it must be a philosophy
which can be expressed in our own language ;-that his system, if
we hold it to be well founded, shall compel us to deny the opposite
systems, modern as well as ancient; and that, so far as we hold
Plato's doctrines to be satisfactorily established, we should be able
to produce the arguments for them, and to refute the arguments
against them. These seem reasonable requirements of the ad-
herents of any philosophy, and therefore, of Plato's.
I regard it as a fortunate circunstance, that we have recently
had presented to us an exposition of Plato's philosophy which does
conform to those reasonable conditions; and we may discuss this
exposition with the less reserve, since its accomplished author,
though belonging to this generation, is no longer alive. I refer to
the Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, by the late
Professor Butler of Dublin. In these Lectures, we find an account
of the Platonic Philosophy which shows that the writer had con-
sidered it as, what it is, an attempt to solve large problems, which in
all ages force themselves upon the notice of thoughtful men. In
Lectures VIII. and X., of the Second Series, especially, we have a
DD 2
404
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
statement of the Platonic Theory of Ideas, which may be made a
convenient starting point for such remarks as I wish at present to
make. I will transcribe this account; omitting, as I do so, the
expressions which Professor Butler uses, in order to present the
theory, not as a dogmatical assertion, but as a view, at least not
extravagant. For this purpose, he says, of the successive portions
of the theory, that one is not too absurd to be maintained;" that
another is not very extravagant either;” that a third is “surely
allowable;' that a fourth presents “no incredible account" of the
subject; that a fifth is “no preposterous notion in substance, and no
unwarrantable form of phrase.” Divested of these modest for.
mulæ, his account is as follows: (Vol. II. p. 117.]
"Man's soul is made to contain not merely a consistent scheme
of its own notions, but a direct apprehension of real and eternal
laws beyond it. These real and eternal laws are things intelligible,
and not things sensible.
"These laws impressed upon creation by its Creator, and ap-
prehended by man, are something distinct equally from the Creator
and from man, and the whole mass of them may fairly be termed
the World of Things Intelligible.
“Further, there are qualities in the supreme and ultimate Cause
of all, which are manifested in His creation, and not merely mani-
fested, but, in a manner-after being brought out of his super-
essential nature into the stage of being (which is) below him, but
next to him-are then by the causative act of creation deposited in
things, differencing them one from the other, so that tbe things
partake of them (METéXovol), communicate with them (Koivwvolloi).
" The intelligence of man, excited to reflection by the impressions
of these objects thus (though themselves transitory) participant of
a divine quality, may rise to higher conceptions of the perfections
thus faintly exhibited; and inasmuch as these perfections are
unquestionably real existences, and known to be such in the very
act of contemplation,—this may be regarded as a direct intellectual
apperception of them,-a Union of the Reason with the Ideas in
that sphere of being which is common to both.
“ Finally, the Reason, in proportion as it learns to contemplate
the Perfect and Eternal, desires the enjoyment of such contempla-
tions in a more consummate degree, and cannot be fully satisfied,
except in the actual fruition of the Perfect itself.
“ These suppositions, taken together, constitute the Theory of
Ideas."
In remarking upon the theory thus presented, I shall abstain
from any discussion of the theological part of it, as a subject which
OF THE PLATONIC THEORY OF IDEAS. 405
would probably be considered as unsuited to the meetings of this
Society, even in its most purely philosophical form. But I conceive
that it will not be inconvenient, if it be not wearisome, to discuss
the Theory of Ideas as an attempt to explain the existence of real
knowledge; which Prof. Butler very rightly considers as the neces-
sary aim of this and cognate systems of philosophy.
I conceive, then, that one of the primary objects of Plato's
Theory of Ideas is, to explain the existence of real knowledge,
that is, of demonstrated knowledge, such as the propositions of
geometry offer to us. In this view, the Theory of Ideas is one
attempt to solve a problem, much discussed in our times, What is
the ground of geometrical truth? I do not mean that this is the
whole object of the Theory, or the highest of its clainis. As I have
said, I omnit its theological bearings; and I am aware that there are
passages in the Platonic Dialogues, in which the Ideas which enter
into the apprehension and demonstration of geometrical truths are
spoken of as subordinate to Ideas which have a theological aspect.
But I have no doubt that one of the main motives to the construc-
tion of the Theory of Ideas was, the desire of solving the Problem,
“How is it possible that man should apprehend necessary and
eternal truths?” That the truths are necessary, makes them eter-
nal, for they do not depend on time; and that they are eternal,
gries them at once a theological bearing.
That Plato, in attempting to explain the nature and possibility of
real knowledge, had in his mind geometrical truths, as examples of
such knowledge is, I think, evident from the general purport of his
discourses on such subjects. The advance of Greek geometry into
a conspicuous position, at the time when the Heraclitean sect were
proving that nothing could be proved and nothing could be known,
naturally suggested mathematical truth as the refutation of the skep-
ticism of mere sensation. On the one side it was said, we can know
nothing except by our sensations, and that which we observe with
our senses is constantly changing; or at any rate, may change at any
moment. On the other hand it was said, we do know geometrical
truths, and as truly as we know them, that they cannot change.
Plato was quite alive to the lesson, and to the importance of this
kind of truths. In the Meno and in the Phædo he refers to them,
as illustrating the nature of the human mind: in the Republic and
the Timæus he again speaks of truths which far transcend anything
1 P. 116. “No amount of human knowledge can be adequate which does
not solve the phenomena of these absolute certainties."
406
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
which the senses can teach, or even adequately exemplify. The
senses, he argues in the Theatetus, cannot give us the knowledge
which we have; the source of it must therefore be in the mind
itself; in the Ideas which it possesses. The impressions of sense
are constantly varying, and incapable of giving any certainty: but :-
the Ideas on which real truth depends are constant and invariable,
and the certainty which arises from these is firm and indestructible.
Ideas are the permanent, perfect objects, with which the mind
deals when it contemplates necessary and eternal truths. They
belong to a region superior to the material world, the world of
sense. They are the objects which make up the furniture of the
Intelligible World; with which the Reason deals, as the Senses
deal each with its appropriate Sensation.
But, it will naturally be asked, what is the Relation of Ideas to
the Objects of Sense? Some counexion, or relation, it is plain,
there must be. The objects of sense can suggest, and can illustrate
real truths. Though these truths of geometry cannot be proved,
cannot even be exactly exemplified, by drawing diagrams, yet
diagrams are of use in helping ordinary minds to see the proof;
and to all minds, may represent and illustrate it. And though our
conclusions with regard to objects of sense may be insecure and
imperfect, they have some show of truth, and therefore some
resemblance to truth. What does this arise from? How is it ex-
plained, if there is no truth except concerning Ideas ?
To this the Platonist replied, that the phenomena which present
themselves to the senses partake, in a certain manner, of Ideas, and
thus include so much of the nature of Ideas, that they include also
an element of Truth. The geometrical diagram of Triangles and
Squares which is drawn in the sand of the floor of the Gymnasium,
partakes of the nature of the true Ideal Triangles and Squares, so
that it presents an imitation and suggestion of the truths which are
true of them. The real triangles and squares are in the mind :
they are, as we have said, objects, not in the Visible, but in the
Intelligible World. But the Visible Triangles and Squares make
us call to mind the Intelligible; and thas the objects of sense
suggest, and, in a way, exemplify the eternal truths.
This I conceive to be the simplest and directest ground of two
primary parts of the Theory of Ideas;—The Eternal Ideas consti-
tuting an Intelligible World; and the Participation in these Ideas
ascribed to the objects of the world of sense. And it is plain that
so far, the Theory meets what, I conceive, was its primary purpose;
it answers the questions, How can we have certain knowledge,
though we cannot get it from Sense ? and, How can we have
OF THE PLATONIC THEORY OF IDEAS. 407
knowledge, at least apparent, though imperfect, about the world of
sense?
But is this the ground on which Plato himself rests the truth of
his Theory of Ideas? As I have said, I have no doubt that these
were the questions which suggested the Theory; and it is perpetu-
ally applied in such a manner as to show that it was held by Plato
in this sense. But his applications of the Theory refer very often
to another part of it;—to the Ideas, not of Triangles and Squares,
of space and its affections; but to the Ideas of Relations as the
Relations of Like and Unlike, Greater and Less; or to things quite
different from the things of which geometry treats, for instance, to
Tables and Chairs, and other matters, with regard to which no
demonstration is possible, and no general truth (still less necessary
and eternal truth) capable of being asserted.
I conceive that the Theory of Ideas, thus asserted and thus sup-
ported, stands upon very much weaker ground than it does, when
it is asserted concerning the objects of thought about which neces-
sary and demonstrable truths are attainable. And in order to
devise arguments against this part of the Theory, and to trace
the contradictions to which it leads, we have no occasion to task
our own ingenuity. We find it done to our hands, not only in
Aristotle, the open opponent of the Theory of Ideas, but in works
which stand among the Platonic Dialogues themselves. And I wish
especially to point out some of the arguments against the Ideal
Theory, which are given in one of the most noted of the Platonic
Dialogues, the Parmenides.
The Parmenides contains a narrative of a Dialogue held between
Parmenides and Zeno, the Eleatic Philosophers, on the one side,
and Socrates, along with several other persons, on the other. It
may be regarded as divided into two main portions; the first, in
which the Theory of Ideas is attacked by Parmenides, and defended
by Socrates; the second, in which Parmenides discusses, at length,
the Eleatic doctrine that All things are One. It is the former part,
the discussion of the Theory of Ideas, to which I especially wish to
direct attention at present: and in the first place, to that extension
of the Theory of Ideas, to things of which no general truth is
possible; such as I have mentioned, tables and chairs. Plato often
speaks of a Table, by way of example, as a thing of which there
must be an Idea, not taken from any special Table or assemblage
of Tables ; but an Ideal Table, such that all Tables are Tables by
participating in the nature of this Idea. Now the question is,
whether there is any force, or indeed any sense, in this assumption;
and this question is discussed in the Parmenides. Socrates is there
408
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
represented as very confident in the existence of Ideas of the high-
est and largest kind, the Just, the Fair, the Good, and the like.
Parmenides asks him how far he follows his theory. Is there, he
asks, an Idea of Man, which is distinct from us men? an Idea of
Fire ? of Water? “In truth," replies Socrates, “I have often hesi-
tated, Parmenides, about these, whether we are to allow such
Ideas." When Plato had proceeded to teach that there is an Idea
of a Table, of course he could not reject such Ideas as Man, and
Fire, and Water. Parmenides, proceeding in the same line, pushes
him further still. “Do you doubt," says he, “ whether there are
Ideas of things apparently worthless and vile? Is there an Idea of
a Hair? of Mud? of Filth ?” Socrates has not the courage to
accept such an extension of the theory. He says, “By no means.
These are not Ideas. These are nothing more than just what we
see them. I have often been perplexed what to think on this sub-
ject. But after standing to this a while, I have fled the thought,
for fear of falling into an unfathomable abyss of absurdities.” On
this, Parmenides rebukes him for his want of consistency. “Ah
Socrates,” he says, "you are yet young; and philosophy has not yet
taken possession of you as I think she will one day do-when you
will have learned to find nothing despicable in any of these things.
But now your youth inclines you to regard the opinions of men."
It is indeed plain, that if we are to assume an Idea of a Chair or a
Table, we can find no boundary line which will exclude Ideas of
everything for which we have a name, however worthless or offen-
sive. And this is an argument against the assumption of such
Ideas, which will convince most persons of the groundlessness of
the assumption :-the more so, as for the assumption of such Ideas,
it does not appear that Plato offers any argument whatever; nor
does this assumption solve any problem, or remove any difficulty2.
Parmenides, then, had reason to say that consistency required
Socrates, if he assumed any such Ideas, to assume all. And I con-
ceive his reply to be to this effect; and to be thus a reductio ad
absurdum of the Theory of Ideas in this sense. According to the
opinions of those who see in the Parmenides an exposition of Pla.
tonic doctrines, I believe that Parmenides is conceived in this
passage, to suggest to Socrates what is necessary for the comple-
tion of the Theory of Ideas. But upon either supposition, I wish
2 Prof. Butler, Lect. ix. Second
Series, P. 136, appears to think that
Plato had sufficient grounds (of a
theological kind) for the assumption
of such Ideas; but I see no trace of
them.
OF THE PLATONIC THEORY OF IDEAS. 409
especially to draw the attention of my readers to the position of
superiority in the Dialogue in which Parmenides is here placed
with regard to Socrates.
Parmenides then proceeds to propound to Socrates difficulties
with regard to the Ideal Theory, in another of its aspects ;_namely,
when it assumes Ideas of Relations of things; and here also, I wish
especially to have it considered how far the answers of Socrates to
these objections are really satisfactory and conclusive.
« Tell me," says he (S 10, Bekker), “ You conceive that there are
certain Ideas, and that things partaking of these Ideas, are called
by the corresponding names ;-an Idea of Likeness, things partaking
of which are called Like ;—of Greatness, whence they are Great :
of Beauty, whence they are Beautiful ?” Socrates assents, natu-
rally: this being the simple and universal statement of the Theory,
in this case. But then comes one of the real difficulties of the
Theory. Since the special things participate of the General Idea,
has each got the whole of the Idea, which is, of course, One; or
has each a part of the Idea ? “For," says Parmenides, “can there
be any other way of participation than these two ?” Socrates
replies by a similitude: “The Idea, though One, may be wholly in
each object, as the Day, one and the same, is wholly in each place.”
The physical illustration, Parmenides damages by making it more
physical still. “You are ingenious, Socrates," he says, (S 11) “in
making the same thing be in many places at the same time. If you
had a number of persons wrapped up in a sail or web, would you
say that each of them had the whole of it? Is not the case similar?”
Socrates cannot deny that it is. “But in this case, each person has
only a part of the whole; and thus your Ideas are partible." To
this, Socrates is represented as assenting in the briefest possible
phrase; and thus, here again, as I conceive, Parmenides retains his
superiority over Socrates in the Dialogue.
There are many other arguments urged against the Ideal Theory
by Parmenides. The next is a consequence of this partibility of
Ideas, thus supposed to be proved, and is ingenious enough. It is this:
"If the Idea of Greatness be distributed among things that are
Great, so that each has a part of it, each separate thing will be
Great in virtue of a part of Greatness which is less than Greatness
itself. Is not this absurd ?” Socrates submissively allows that it is.
And the same argument is applied in the case of the Idea of
Equality.
“If each of several things have a part of the Idea of Equality, it
will be Equal to something, in virtue of something which is less
than Equality."
410
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
And in the same way with regard to the Idea of Smallness.
“If each thing be small by having a part of the Idea of Smallness,
Smallness itself will be greater than the small thing, since that is
a part of itself.”
These ingenious results of the partibility of Ideas remind us of
the ingenuity shown in the Greek geometry, especially the Fifth
Book of Euclid. They are represented as not resisted by Socrates
(§ 12): “In what way, Socrates, can things participate in Ideas, if
they cannot do so either integrally or partibly?" “ By my troth,"
says Socrates, “it does not seem easy to tell.” Parmenides, who
completely takes the conduct of the Dialogue, then turns to another
part of the subject and propounds other arguments. “What do
you say to this?” he asks.
" There is an Ideal Greatness, and there are many things, separate
from it, and Great by virtue of it. But now if you look at Great-
ness and the Great things together, since they are all Great, they
must be Great in virtue of some higher Idea of Greatness which
includes both. And thus you have a Second Idea of Greatness; and
in like manner you will have a third, and so on indefinitely."
This also, as an argument against the separate existence of Ideas,
Socrates is represented as unable to answer. He replies inter-
rogatively:
“Why, Parmenides, is not each of these Ideas a Thought, which,
by its nature, cannot exist in anything except in the Mind ? In
that case your consequences would not follow."
This is an answer which changes the course of the reasoning: but
still, not niuch to the advantage of the Ideal Theory. Parmenides
is still ready with very perplexing arguments. (§ 13.)
"The Ideas, then," he says, “are Thoughts. They must be
Thoughts of something. They are Thoughts of something, then,
which exists in all the special things; some one thing which the
Thought perceives in all the special things; and this one Thought
thus involved in all, is the Idea. But then, if the special things, as
you say, participate in the Idea, they participate in the Thought;
and thus, all objects are made up of Thoughts, and all things think;
or else, there are thoughts in things which do not think.”
This argument drives Socrates from the position that Ideas are
Thoughts, and he moves to another, that they are Paradigms,
Exemplars of the qualities of things, to which the things them-
selves are like, and their being thus like, is their participating in
the Idea. But here too, he has no better success. Parmenides
argues thus:
“If the Object be like the Idea, the Idea must be like the
OF THE PLATONIC THEORY OF IDEAS. 411
Object. And since the Object and the Idea are like, they must,
according to your doctrine, participate in the Idea of Likeness.
And thus you have one Idea participating in another Idea, and so
on in infinitum.” Socrates is obliged to allow that this demolishes
the notion of objects partaking in their Ideas by likeness: and that
he must seek some other way. “You see then, O Socrates," says
Parmenides, “what difficulties follow, if any one asserts the inde-
pendent existence of Ideas !” Socrates allows that this is true.
“And yet," says Parmenides, “ you do not half perceive the dif-
ficulties which follow from this doctrine of Ideas.” Socrates ex-
presses a wish to know to what Parmenides refers; and the aged sage
replies by explaining that if Ideas exist independently of us, we
can never know anything about them; and that even the Gods
could not know-anything about man. This argument, though
somewhat obscure, is evidently stated with perfect earnestness,
and Socrates is represented as giving his assent to it. “And yet,"
says Parmenides, (end of $ 18) “if any one gives up entirely the
doctrine of Ideas, how is any reasoning possible?”.
All the way through this discussion, Parmenides appears as vastly
superior to Socrates; as seeing completely the tendency of every
line of reasoning, while Socrates is driven blindly from one position
to another; and as kindly and graciously advising a young man
respecting the proper aims of his philosophical career; as well as
clearly pointing out the consequences of his assumptions. Nothing
can be more complete than the higher position assigned to Par-
menides in the Dialogue.
This has not been overlooked by the Editors and Commentators
of Plato. To take fur example one of the latest; in Steinhart's
Introduction to Hieronynius Müller's translation of Parmenides
(Leipzig, 1852), p. 261, he says: “It strikes us, at first, as strange,
that Plato here seems to come forward as the assailant of his own
doctrine of Ideas. For the difficulties which he makes Parmenides
propound against that doctrine are by no means sophistical or
superficial, but substantial and to the point. Moreover there is
among all these objections, which are partly derived from the
Megarics, scarce one which does not appear again in the penetrating
and comprehensive argumentations of Aristotle against the Platonic
Doctrine of Ideas.”
Of course, both this writer and other commentators on Plato
offer something as a solution of this difficulty. But though these
explanations are subtle and ingenious, they appear to leave no
satisfactory or permanent impression on the mind. I must avow
that, to me, they appear insufficient and empty; and I cannot help
412
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
believing that the solution is of a more simple and direct kind. It
may seem bold to maintain an opinion different from that of so
many eminent scholars; but I think that the solution which I.offer,
will derive confirmation from a consideration of the whole Dialogue;
and therefore I shall venture to propound it in a distinct and .
positive form. It is this:
I conceive that the Parmenides is not a Platonic Dialogue at all;
but Antiplatonic, or more properly, Eleatic: written, not by
Plato, in order to explain and prove his Theory of Ideas, but by
some one, probably an admirer of Parmenides and Zeno, in order
to show how strong were his master's arguments against the
Platonists and how weak their objections to tie Eleatic doctrine.
I conceive that this view throws an especial light on every part
of the Dialogue, as a brief survey of it will show. Parmenides
and Zeno come to Athens to the Panathenaic festival: Parmenides
already an old man, with a silver head, dignified and benevolent in
his appearance, looking five and sixty years old : Zeno about forty,
tall and handsome. They are the guests of Pythodorus, outside
the Wall, in the Ceramicus; and there they are visited by Socrates
then young, and others who wish to hear the written discourses of
Zeno. These discourses are explanations of the philosophy of
Parmenides, which he had delivered in verse.
Socrates is represented as showing, from the first, a disposition
to criticize Zeno's dissertation very closely; and without any prelude
or preparation, he applies the Doctrine of Ideas to refute the Eleatic
Doctrine that All Things are One. ($ 3.) When he had heard to
the end, he begged to have the first Proposition of the First Book
read again. And then, “How is it, o Zeno, that you say, That
if the Things which exist are Many, and not One, they must be at
the same time like and unlike? Is this your argument? Or do I
misunderstand you?” “No,” says Zeno, "you understand quite
rightly.” Socrates then turns to Parmenides, and says, somewhat
rudely, as it seems, “ Zeno is a great friend of yours, Parmenides:
he shows his friendship not only in other ways, but also in what he
writes. For he says the same things which you say, though he
pretends that he does not. You say, in your poems, that All Things
are One, and give striking proofs: he says that existences are not
many, and he gives many and good proofs. You seem to soar above
us, but you do not really differ.” Zeno takes this sally good-
humouredly, and tells him that he pursues the scent with the keen-
ness of a Laconian hound. “But,” says he ($ 6), “there really is
less of ostentation in my writing than you think. My Essay was
merely written as a defence of Parmenides long ago, when I was
OF THE PLATONIC THEORY OF IDEAS. 413
young; and is not a piece of display composed now that I am
older. And it was stolen from me by some one; so that I had no
choice about publishing it."
Here we have, as I conceive, Socrates already represented as
placed in a disadvantageous position, by his abruptness, rude
allusions, and readiness to put bad interpretations on what is done.
For this, Zeno's gentle pleasantry is a rebuke. Socrates, however,
forthwith rushes into the argument; arguing, as I have said, for
his own Theory.
“Tell me," he says, “ do you not think there is an Idea of Like-
ness, and an Idea of Unlikeness? And that everything partakes of
these Ideas? The things which partake of Unlikeness are unlike.
If all things partake of both Ideas, they are both like and unlike;
and where is the wonder? (S 7.) If you could show that Likeness
itself was Unlikeness, it would be a prodigy; but if things which
partake of these opposites, have both the opposite qualities, it
appears to me, Zeno, to involve no absurdity.
“So if Oneness itself were to be shown to be Maniness” (I hope
I may use this word, rather than multiplicity) “I should be sur-
prised; but if any one say that I am at the same time one and many,
where is the wonder? For I partake of maniness : my right side is
different from my left side, my upper from my under parts. But I
also partake of Oneness, for I am here One of us seven. So that
both are true. And so if any one say that stocks and stones, and
the like, are both one and many,—not saying that Oneness is
Maniness, nor Maniness Oneness, he says nothing wonderful: he
says what all will allow. ($ 8.) If then, as I said before, any one
should take separately the Ideas or Essence of Things, as Likeness
and Unlikeness, Maniness and Oneness, Rest and Motion, and the
like, and then should show that these can mix and separate again,
I should be wonderfully surprised, o Zeno: for I reckon that I
have tolerably well made myself master of these subjects 8. I
should be much more surprised if any one could show me this con-
tradiction involved in the Ideas themselves; in the object of the
Reason, as well as in Visible objects."
It may be remarked that Socrates delivers all this argumenta- ·
tion with the repetitions which it involves, and the vehemence of
I am aware that this translation of my view; but I do not conceive
is different from the common trans- that the argument would be percep-
lation. It appears to me to be con- tibly weaker, if the common inter-
sistent with the habit of the Greek pretation were adopted.
language. It slightly leans iu favour
414
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
its manner, without waiting for a reply to any of his interrogations;
instead of making every step the result of a concession of his
opponent, as is the case in the Dialogues where he is represented
as triumphant. Every reader of Plato will recollect also that in
those Dialogues, the triumph of temper on the part of Socrates is
represented as still more remarkable than the triumph of argument.
No vehemence or rudeness on the part of his adversaries prevents
his calmly following his reasoning; and he parries coarseness by
compliment. Now in this Dialogue, it is remarkable that this kind
of triumph is given to the adversaries of Socrates. “When Socrates
had thus delivered himself,” says Pythodorus, the narrator of the
conversation, "we thought that Parmenides and Zeno would both
be angry. But it was not so. They bestowed entire attention
upon him, and often looked at each other, and smiled, as in
admiration of Socrates. And when he had ended, Parmenides
said: “O Socrates, what an admirable person you are, for the
earnestness with which you reason! Tell me then, Do you then
believe the doctrine to which you have been referring;-that there
are certain Ideas, existing independent of Things; and that there
are, separate from the Ideas, Things which partake of them?
And do you think that there is an Idea of Likeness besides the
likeness which we have; and a Oneness and a Maniness, and the
like? And an Idea of the Right, and the Good, and the Fair, and
of other such qualities?!" Socrates says that he does hold this;
Parmenides then asks him, how far be carries this doctrine of
Ideas, and propounds to him the difficulties which I have already
stated; and when Socrates is unable to answer him, lets him off
in the kind but patronizing way which I have already described.
To me, comparing this with the intellectual and moral attitude
of Socrates in the most dramatic of the other Platonic Dialogues,
it is inconceivable, that this representation of Socrates should be
Plato's. It is just what Zeno would have written, if he had
wished to bestow upon his master Parmenides the calm dignity and
irresistible argument which Plato assigns to Socrates. And this
character is kept up to the end of the Dialogue. When Socrates
(S 19) has acknowledged that he is at loss which way to turn for
his philosophy, Parmenides undertakes, though with kind words,
to explain to him by what fundamental error in the course of his
speculative habits he has been misled. He says; “You try to
make a complete Theory of Ideas, before you have gone through
a proper intellectual discipline. The impulse which urges you to
such speculations is admirable—is divine. But you must exercise
yourself in reasoning which many think trifling, while you are yet
OF THE PLATONIC THEORY OF IDEAS. 415
young; if you do not, the truth will elude your grasp.” Socrates
asks submissively what is the course of such discipline: Parmenides
replies, “The course pointed out by Zeno, as you have heard."
And then, gives him some instructions in what manner he is to test
any proposed Theory. Socrates is frightened at the laboriousness
and obscurity of the process. He says, “ You tell me, Parmenides,
of an overwhelming course of study; and I do not well comprehend
it. Give me an example of such an examination of a Theory."
“It is too great a labour," says he, "for one so old as I am.”
“Well then, you, Zeno,” says Socrates, “ will you not give us such
an example ?” Zeno answers, smiling, that they had better get it
from Parmenides himself; and joins in the petition of Socrates
to him, that he will instruct them. All the company unite in the
request. Parmenides compares himself to an aged racehorse,
brought to the course after long disuse, and trembling at the risk ;
but finally consents. And as an example of a Theory to be
examined, takes his own Doctrine, that All Things are One,
carrying on the Dialogue thenceforth, not with Socrates, but with
Aristoteles (not the Stagirite, but afterwards one of the Thirty),
whom he chooses as a younger and more manageable respondent.
The discussion of this Doctrine is of a very subtle kind, and
it would be difficult to njake it intelligible to a modern reader.
Nor is it necessary for my purpose to attempt to do so. It is plain
that the discussion is intended seriously, as an example of true
philosophy; and each step of the process is represented as irresis-
tible. The Respondent has nothing to say but Yes; or No; How
so ? Certainly ; It does appear; It does not appear. The discus-
sion is carried to a much greater length than all the rest of the
Dialogue; and the result of the reasoning is summed up by Par-
menides thus: “If One exist, it is Nothing. Whether One exist
or do not exist, both It and Other Things both with regard to
Themselves and to Each other, All and Everyway are and are not,
appear and appear not." And this also is fully assented to; and
so the Dialogue ends.
I shall not pretend to explain the Doctrines there examined
that One exists, or One does not exist, nor to trace their con.
sequences. But these were Formulæ, as familiar in the Eleatic
school, as Ideas in the Platonic; and were undoubtedly regarded
by the Megaric contemporaries of Plato as quite worthy of being
discussed, after the Theory of Ideas had been overthrown. This,
accordingly, appears to be the purport of the Dialogue; and it is
pursued, as we see, without any bitterness toward Socrates or his
disciples; but with a persuasion that they were poor philosophers,
conceited talkers, and weak disputants.
416
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY.
The external circumstances of the Dialogue tend, I conceive,
to confirm this opinion, that it is not Plato's. The Dialogue
begins, as the Republic begins, with the mention of a Cephalus,
and two brothers, Glaucon and Adimantus. But this Cephalus
is not the old man of the Piræus, of whon we have so charming a
picture in the opening of the Republic. He is from Clazomenæ,
and tells us that his fellow-citizens are great lovers of philosophy;
a trait of their character which does not appear elsewhere. Even
the brothers Glaucon and Adimantus are not the two brothers
of Plato who conduct the Dialogue in the later books of the
Republic: so at least Ast argues, who holds the genuineness of the
Dialogue. This Glaucon and Adimantus are most wantonly in-
troduced; for the sole office they have, is to say that they have
a half-brother Antiphon, by a second marriage of their mother.
No such half-brother of Plato, and no such marriage of his mother,
are noticed in other remains of antiquity. Antiphon is represented
as having been the friend of Pythodorus, who was the host of
Parmenides and Zeno, as we have seen. And Antiphon, having
often heard from Pythodorus the account of the conversation of
his guests with Socrates, retained it in his memory, or in his
tablets, so as to be able to give the full report of it which we have
in the Dialogue Parmenides 4. To me, all this looks like a clumsy
imitation of the Introductions to the Platonic Dialogues.
I say nothing of the chronological difficulties which arise from
bringing Parmenides and Socrates together, though they are
considerable; for they have been explained more or less satisfac-
torily; and certainly in the Thcætetus, Socrates is represented as
saying that he when very young had seen Parmenides who was
very old 5. Athenæus, however, reckons this among Plato's
fictions. Schleiermacher gives up the identification and relation
of the persons mentioned in the Introduction as an unmanageable
story.
I may add that I believe Cicero, who refers to so many of Plato's
Dialogues, nowhere refers to the Parmenides. Athenæus does
refer to it; and in doing so blames Plato' for his coarse imputa-
tions on Zeno and Parmenides. According to our view, these are
hostile attempts to ascribe rudeness to Socrates or to Plato. Stall-
bauni acknowledges that Aristotle nowhere refers to this Dia.
logue.
4. In the First Alcibiades, Pytho-
dorus is mentioned as having paid
100 minæ to Zeno for his instructions
(119 A).
6 P. 183 e.
Deip. xi. c. 15, p. 105.
APPENDIX B.
ON PLATO'S SURVEY OF THE SCIENCES.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. APRIL 23, 1855.)
A SURVEY by Plato of the state of the Sciences, as existing in
A his time, may be regarded as hardly less interesting than Francis
Bacon's Review of the condition of the Sciences of his time, con-
tained in the Advancement of Learning. Such a survey we have, in
the seventh book of Plato's Republic; and it will be instructive to
examine what the Sciences then were, and what Plato aspired to
have them become; aiding ourselves by the light afforded by the
subsequent history of Science.
• In the first place, it is interesting to note, in the two writers,
Plato and Bacon, the same deep conviction that the large and
profound philosophy which they recommended, had not, in their
judgment, been pursued in an adequate and worthy manner, by
those who had pursued it at all. The reader of Bacon will
recollect the passage in the Novum Organon (Lib. I. Aphorism 80)
where he speaks with indignation of the way in which philosophy
had been degraded and perverted, by being applied as a mere in-
strument of utility or of early education : "So that the great
mother of the Sciences is thrust down with indignity to the offices
of a handmaid;—is made to minister to the labours of medicine or.
mathematics ; or again, to give the first preparatory tinge to the
immature minds of youth?."
i Accedit et illud quod naturalis
philosophia in iis ipsis viris, qui ei
transitus cujusdam et pontisternii ad
alia. Atque magna ista scientiarum
hominem, præsertim his recentiori- quæ medicinæ aut mathematicis ope-
bus temporibus, vix nacta sit; nisi ribus ministrat, et rursus quæ ado.
forte quis monachi alicujus in cellula, lescentium immatura ingenia lavat
aut nobilis in villula lucubrantis, et imbuat velut tinctura quadam
exemplum adduxerit; sed facta est prima, ut aliam postea felicius et
demum naturalis philosophia instar commodius excipiant.
E
E
418
APPENDIX B.
In the like spirit, Plato says (Rep. vi. $ 11, Bekker's ed.):
“Observe how boldly and fearlessly I set about my explanation of
my assertion that philosophers ought to rule the world. For I
begin by saying, that the State must begin to treat the study of
philosophy in a way opposite to that uow practised. Now, those
who meddle at all with this study are put upon it when they are
children, between the lessons which they receive in the farm-yard
and in the shop?; and as soon as they have been introduced to the
hardest part of the subject, are taken off from it, even those who
get the most of philosophy. By the hardest part, I mean, the
discussion of principles Dialectic3. And in their succeeding years,
if they are willing to listen to a few lectures of those who make
philosophy their business, they think they have done great things,
as if it were something foreign to the business of life. And as
they advance towards old age, with a very few exceptions, philosophy
in them is extinguished: extinguished far more completely than the
Heraclitean sun, for theirs is not lighted up again, as that is every
morning:" alluding to the opinion which was propounded, by way of
carrying the doctrine of the unfixity of sensible objects to an ex-
treme; that the Sun is extinguished every night and lighted again
in the morning. In opposition to this practice, Plato holds that
philosophy should be the especial employment of men's minds when
their bodily strength fails.
What Plato means by Dialectic, which he, in the next Book,
calls the highest part of philosophy, and which is, I think, what he
here means by the hardest part of philosophy, I may hereafter
consider : but at present I wish to pass in review the Sciences
which he speaks of, as leading the way to that highest study. These
Sciences are Arithmetic, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, As-
tronomy and Harmonics.
The view in which Plato here regards the Sciences is, as the
instruments of that culture of the philosophical spirit which is to
make the philosopher the fit and natural ruler of the perfect State
-the Platonic Polity. It is held that to answer this purpose, the
mind must be instructed in something more stable than the know-
ledge supplied by the senses;~a knowledge of objects which are
constantly changing, and which therefore can be no real permanent
Knowledge, but only Opinion. The real and permanent Know-
ledge which we thus require is to be found in certain sciences,
which deal with truths necessary and universal, as we should noir
? METAŠÙ olkovoulas xai xenuation money-getting.
poll, between house-keeping and 3 Tò tepi tous dóyovs.
ON PLATO'S SURVEY OF THE SCIENCES. 410
describe them: and which therefore are, in Plato's language, a
knowledge of that which really is 4.
This is the object of the Sciences of which Plato speaks. And
hence, when he introduces Arithmetic, as the first of the Sciences which
are to be employed in this mental discipline, he adds (VII. S 8) that
it must be not nere common Arithmetic, but a science which leads
to speculative truths, seen by lutuition®; not an Arithmetic which
is studied for the sake of buying and selling, as among tradesmen
and shopkeepers, but for the sake of pure and real Science ?
I shall not dwell upon the details with which he illustrates this
view, but proceed to the other Sciences which he mentions.
Geometry is then spoken of, as obviously the next Science in
order; and it is asserted that it really does answer the required
condition of drawing the mind from visible, mutable phenomena to
a permanent reality. Geometers indeed speak of their visible dia-
grams, as if their problems were certain practical processes; to
erect a perpendicular; to construct a square: and the like. But
this language, though necessary, is really absurd. The figures are
mere aids to their reasonings. Their knowledge is really a know-
ledge not of visible objects, but of permanent realities : and thus,
Geometry is one of the helps by which the mind may be drawn to
Truth; by which the philosophical spirit may be formed, which
looks upwards instead of downwards.
Astronomy is suggested as the Science next in order, but Socrates,
the leader of the dialogue, remarks that there is an intermediate
Science first to be considered. Geometry treats of plane figures;
Astronomy treats of solids in motion, that is, of spheres in motion ;-
for the astronomy of Plato's time was mainly the doctrine of
the sphere. But before treating of solids in motion, we must
have a science which treats of solids simply. After taking space of
two dimensions, we must take space of three dimensions, length,
breadth and depth, as in cubes and the like. But such a Science,
it is remarked, has not yet been discovered. Plato "notes as
4 The Sciences are to draw the Plato does not really ascribe much
mind from that which grows and weight to this use of Science, as we
perishes to that which really is: see in what he says of Geometry and
tanta Luxis Axòe drò Toộ Yervo- Astronomy.
μένου επί το όν.
8 ορθώς έχει εξής μετα δευτέραν
5 émi Béav rös twv ápowv búrews. aðčnu spirnu darßávelv, čoti dé TOU
6 T7 vo get avrm.
τούτο περί την των κύβων αύξης και
? He adds and for the sake of TÒ Bálovs pétexov.
war;" this point I have passed by.
E E 2
420
APPENDIX B.
deficient” this branch of knowledge; to use the expression employed
by Bacon on the like occasions in his Review. Plato goes on to
say, that the cultivators of such a science have not received due en-
couragement; and that though scorned and starved by the public,
and not recommended by any obvious utility, it has still made great
progress, in virtue of its own attractiveness.
In fact, researches in Solid Geometry had been pursued with
great zeal by Plato and his friends, and with remarkable success.
The five Regular Solids, the Tetrahedron or Pyramid, Cube, Octa-
hedron, Dodecahedron and Icosahedron, had been discovered; and
the curious theorem, that of Regular Solids there can be just so
many, these and no others, was known. The doctrine of these
Solids was already applied in a way, fanciful and arbitrary, no
doubt, but ingenious and lively, to the theory of the Universe. In
the Timæus, the elements have these forms assigned to them re-
spectively. Earth has the Cube: Fire has the Pyramid: Water has
the Octahedron: Air has the Icosahedron: and the Dodecahedron
is the plan of the Universe itself. This application of the doctrine
of the Regular Solids shows that the knowledge of those figures
was already established; and that Plato had a right to speak of
Solid Geometry as a real and interesting Science. And that this
subject was so recondite and profound,—that these five Regular
Solids had so little application in the geometry which has a bearing
on man's ordinary thoughts and actions,—made it all the more
natural for Plato to suppose that these solids had a bearing on the
constitution of the Universe; and we shall find that such a belief
in later times found a ready acceptance in the minds of mathemati-
cians who followed in the Platonic line of speculation.
Plato next proceeds to consider Astronomy; and here we have
an amusing touch of philosophical drama. Glaucon, the hearer and
pupil in the Dialogue, is desirous of showing that he has profited
by what his instructor had said about the real uses of Science. He
says Astronomy is a very good branch of education. It is such a
very useful science for seamen and husbandmen and the like.
Socrates says, with a smile, as we may suppose: “You are very
amusing with your zeal for utility. I suppose you are afraid of
being condemned by the good people of Athens for diffusing Use-
less Knowledge.” A little afterwards Glaucon tries to do better,
but still with no great success. He says, “ You blamed me for
praising Astronomy awkwardly: but now I will follow your lead.
Astronomy is one of the sciences which you require, because it
makes men's minds look upwards, and study things above. Any one
can see that.” 6: Well," says Socrates, "perhaps any one can see it
ON PLATO'S SURVEY OF THE SCIENCES. 421
except me I cannot see it.” Glaucon is surprised, but Socrates
goes on: “Your notice of 'the study of things above' is certainly
a very magnificent one. You seem to think that if a man bends his
head back and looks at the ceiling he looks upwards' with his
mind as well as his eyes. You may be right and I may be wrong:
but I have no notion of any science which makes the mind look
upwards, except a science which is about the permanent and the
invisible. It makes no difference, as to that matter, whether a man
gapes and looks up or shuts his mouth and looks down. If a man
merely look up and stare at sensible objects, his mind does not look
upwards, even if he were to pursue his studies swimming on his back
in the sea.”
The Astronomy, then, which merely looks at phenomena does
not satisfy Plato. He wants something more. What is it? as
Glaucon very naturally asks.
Plato then describes Astronomy as a real science ($ 11). “The
variegated adornments which appear in the sky, the visible lumina.
ries, we must judge to be the most beautiful and the most perfect
things of their kind: but since they are mere visible figures, we
must suppose them to be far inferior to the true objects; namely,
those spheres which, with their real proportions of quickness and
slowness, their real number, their real figures, revolve and carry
luminaries in their revolutions. These objects are to be apprehend-
ed by reason and mental conception, not by vision.” And he then
goes on to say that the varied figures which the skies present to the
eye are to be used as diagrams to assist the study of that higher
truth; just as if any one were to study geometry by means of beau-
tiful diagrans constructed by Dædalus or any other consummate
artist.'
Here then, Plato points to a kind of astronomical science which
goes beyond the mere arrangement of phenomena: an astronomy
which, it would seem, did not exist at the time when he wrote. It
is natural to inquire, whether we can determine more precisely
what kind of astronomical science he meant, and whether such
science has been brought into existence since his time.
He gives us some further features of the philosophical astronomy
which he requires. “As you do not expect to find in the most
exquisite geometrical diagrams the true evidence of quantities being
equal, or double, or in any other relation: so the true astronomer
will not think that the proportion of the day to the month, or the
month to the year, and the like, are real and inimutable things.
He will seek a deeper truth than these. We must treat Astronomy,
like Geometry, as a series of problems suggested by visible things.
422
APPENDIX B.
We must apply the intelligent portion of our mind to the sub-
ject."
Here we really come in view of a class of problems which astro-
nomical speculators at certain periods have proposed to themselves.
What is the real ground of the proportion of the day to the month,
and of the month to the year, I do not know that any writer of
great name has tried to determine: but to ask the reason of these
proportions, namely, that of the revolution of the earth on its axis,
of the moon in its orbit, and of the earth in its orbit, are questions
just of the same kind as to ask the reason of the proportion of
the revolutions of the planets in their orbits, and of the proportion
of the orbits themselves. Now who has attempted to assign such
reasons?
Of course we shall answer, Kepler: not so much in the Laws of
the Planetary motions which bear his name, as in the Law which
at an earlier period he thought he had discovered, determining the
proportion of the distances of the several Planets from the Sun.
And, curiously enough, this solution of a problem which we may
conceive Plato to have had in his mind, Kepler gave by means of
the Five Regular Solids which Plato had brought into notice, and
had enoployed in his theory of the Universe given in the Timæus.
Kepler's speculations on the subject just mentioned were given to
the world in the Mysterium Cosmographicum published in 1596. In
his Preface, he says “In the beginning of the year 1595 I brooded
with the whole energy of my mind on the subject of the Copernican
system. There were three things in particular of which I pertina-
ciously sought the causes; why they are not other than they are: the
number, the size, and the motion of the orbits." We see how
strongly he had his mind impressed with the same thought which
Plato had so confidently uttered: that there must be some reason
for those proportions in the scheme of the Universe which appear
casual and vague. He was confident at this period that he had
solved two of the three questions which haunted him;--that he
could account for the number and the size of the planetary orbits.
His account was given in this way.-" The orbit of the Earth is a
circle; round the sphere to which this circle belongs describe a
dodecahedron; the spbere including this will give the orbit of
Mars. Round Mars inscribe a tetrahedron; the circle including
this will be the orbit of Jupiter. Describe a cube round Jupiter's
orbit; the circle including this will be the orbit of Saturn. Now
inscribe in the Earth's orbit an icosahedron : the circle inscribed in
it will be the orbit of Venus. Inscribe an octahedron in the orbit
of Venus; the circle inscribed in it will be Mercury's orbit. This is
ON PLATO'S SURVEY OF THE SCIENCES. 423.
the reason of the number of the planets;" and also of the magni-
tudes of their orbits.
These proportions were only approximations; and the Rule thus
asserted has been shown to be unfounded, by the discovery of new
Planets. This Law of Kepler has been repudiated by succeeding
Astronomers. So far, then, the Astronomy which Plato requires
as a part of true philosophy has not been brought into being. But
are we thence to conclude that the demand for such a kind of
Astronomy was a mere Platonic imagination ?-was a mistake
which more recent and sounder views have corrected? We can
hardly venture to say that. For the questions which Kepler thus
asked, and which he answered by the assertion of this erroneous
Law, are questions of exactly the same kind as those which he asked
and answered by means of the true Laws which still fasten his
name upon one of the epochs of astronomical history. If he was
wrong in assigning reasons for the number and size of the planetary
orbits, he was right in assigning a reason for the proportion of the
motions. This he did in the Harmonice Mundi, published in 1619:
where he established that the squares of the periodic times of the
different Planets are as the cubes of their mean distances from the
central Sun. Of this discovery he speaks with a natural exultation,
which succeeding astronomers have thought well founded. He
says: “What I prophesied two and twenty years ago as soon as I
had discovered the five solids among the heavenly bodies; what I
firmly believed before I had seen the Harmonics of Ptolemy; what
I promised my friends in the title of this book (On the perfect Har.
mony of the celestial motions), which I named before I was sure of
my discovery; what sixteen years ago I regarded as a thing to be
sought; that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, for which I settled in
Prague, for which I devoted the best part of my life to astronomical
contemplations; at length I have brought to light, and have recog-
nized its truth beyond my most sanguine expectations.” (Harm.
Mundi, Lib. v.)
Thus the Platonic notion, of an Astronomy which deals with
doctrines of a more exact and determinate kind than the obvious
relations of phænomena, may be found to tend either to error or to
truth. Such aspirations point equally to the five regular solids
which Kepler imagined as determining the planetary orbits, and to
the Laws of Kepler in which Newton detected the effect of univer-
sal gravitation. The realities which Plato looked for, as something
incomparably more real than the visible luminaries, are found, when
we find geometrical figures, epicycles and eccentrics, laws of motion
424
APPENDIX B.
and laws of force, which explain the appearances. His Realities are
Theories which account for the Phenomena, Ideas which connect
the Facts.
• But, is Plato right in holding that such Realities as these are
more real than the Phenomena, and constitute an Astronomy of a
higher kind than that of mere Appearances ? To this we shall, of
course, reply that Theories and Facts have each their reality, but
that these are realities of different kinds. Kepler's Laws are as real
as day and night; the force of gravity tending to the Sun is as real
as the Sun; but not more so. True Theories and Facts are equally
real, for true Theories are Facts, and Facts are familiar Theories.
Astronomy is, as Plato says, a series of Problems suggested by visi-
ble Things; and the Thoughts in our own minds which bring the
solutions of these Problems, have a reality in the Things which sug-
gest them.
But if we try, as Plato does, to separate and oppose to each other
the Astronomy of Appearances and the Astronomy of Theories, we
attempt that which is impossible. There are no Phenomena which
do not exhibit some Law; no Law can be conceived without Pheno-
mena. The heavens offer a series of Problems; but however many
of these Problems we solve, there remain still innumerable of them
unsolved; and these unsolved Problems have solutions, and are not
different in kind from those of which the extant solution is most
complete.
Nor can we justly distinguish, with Plato, Astronomy into tran.
sient appearances and permanent truths. The theories of Astro-
nomy are permanent, and are manifested in a series of changes : but
the change is perpetual just because the theory is permanent. The
perpetual change is the permanent theory. The perpetual changes
in the positions and movements of the planets, for instance, manifest
the permanent machinery: the machinery of cycles and epicycles, as
Plato would have said, and as Copernicus would have agreed; while
Kepler, with a profound admiration for both, would have asserted
that the motions might be represented by ellipses, more exactly, if
not more truly. The cycles and epicycles, or the ellipses, are as
real as space and time, in which the motions take place. But we
cannot justly say that space and time and motion are more real than
the bodies which move in space and time, or than the appearances
which these bodies present.
Thus Plato, with his tendency to exalt Ideas above Facts,--to find
a Reality which is more real than Phenomena,-to take hold of a
permanent Truth which is more true than truths of observation,-
ON PLATO'S SURVEY OF THE SCIENCES. 425
attempts what is impossible. He tries to separate the poles of the
Fundamental Antithesis, which, however antithetical, are insepa-
rable.
At the same time, we must recollect that this tendency to find a
Reality which is something beyond appearance, a permanence which
is involved in the changes, is the genuine spring of scientific dis-
covery. Such a tendency has been the cause of all the astronomical
science which we possess. It appeared in Plato himself, in Hippar-
chus, in Ptolemy, in Copernicus, and most eminently in Kepler; and
in him perhaps in a manner more accordant with Plato's aspirations
when he found the five Regular Solids in the Universe, than when
he found there the Conic Sections which determine the form of the
planetary orbits. The pursuit of this tendency has been the source
of the mighty and successful labours of succeeding astronomers: and
the anticipations of Plato on this head were more true than he him-
self could have conceived.
When the above view of the nature of true astronomy has been
proposed, Glaucon says:
“That would be a task much more laborious than the astronomy
now cultivated.” Socrates replies: “I believe so: and such tasks
must be undertaken, if our researches are to be good for any-
thing."
After Astronomy, there comes under review another Science,
which is treated in the same manuer. It is presented as one of the
Sciences which deal with real abstract truth; and which are there-
fore suited to that development of the philosophic insight into
the highest truth, which is here Plato's main object. This Science
is Harmonics, the doctrine of the mathematical relations of musical
sounds. Perhaps it may be more difficult to explain to a general
audience, Plato's views on this than on the previous subjects: for
though Harmonics is still acknowledged as a Science including the
mathematical truths to which Plato here refers, these truths are less
generally known than those of geometry or astronomy. Pythagoras
is reported to have been the discoverer of the cardinal proposition in
this Mathematics of Music:-namely, that the musical notes which
the ear recognizes as having that definite and harmonious relation
which we call an octave, a fifth, a fourth, a third, have also, in some
way or other, the numerical relation of 2 to 1, 3 to 2, 4 to 3, 5 to 4.
I say "some way or other," because the statements of ancient writ-
ers on this subject are physically inexact, but are right in the essen-
tial point, that those simple numerical ratios are characteristic of
the most marked harmonic relations. The numerical ratios really
represent the rate of vibration of the air when those harunonics
426
APPENDIX B.
are produced. This perhaps Plato did not know: but he knew
or assumed that those numerical ratios were cardinal truths in har-
mony: and he conceived that the exactness of the ratios rested on
grounds deeper and more intellectual than any testimony which the
ear could give. This is the main point in his mode of applying the
subject, which will be best understood by translating (with some
abridgement) what he says. Socrates proceeds:
(§ 11 near the end.) “Motion appears in many aspects. It
would take a very wise man to enumerate them all: but there are
two obvious kinds. One which appears in astronomy, (the revolu-
tions of the heavenly bodies,) and another which is the echo of that.
As the eyes are made for Astronomy, so are the ears made for the
motion which produces Harmony 10: and thus we have two sister
sciences, as the Pythagoreans teach, and we assent.
($ 12.) “To avoid unnecessary labour, let us first learn what
they can tell us, and see whether anything is to be added to it;
retaining our own view on such subjects: namely this :—that those
whose education we are to superintend—real philosophers-are
never to learn any imperfect truths :-anything which does not tend
to that point (exact and permanent truth) to which all our know-
ledge ought to tend, as we said concerning astronomy. Now
those who cultivate music take a very different course from this.
You may see them taking immense pains in measuring musical notes
and intervals by the ear, as the astronomers measure the heavenly
motions by the eye.
“Yes, says Glaucon, they apply their ears close to the instrument,
as if they could catch the note by getting near to it, and talk of
some kind of recurrences l. Some say they can distinguish an
interval, and that this is the smallest possible interval, by which
others are to be measured; while others say that the two notes are
identical: both parties alike judging by the ear, not by the
intellect.
“You mean, says Socrates, those fine musicians who torture their
notes, and screw their pegs, and pinch their strings, and speak of
the resulting sounds in grand terms of art. We will leave them,
and address our inquiries to our other teachers, the Pythagoreans."
The expressions about the small interval in Glaucon's speech
appear to me to refer to a curious question, which we know was
discussed among the Greek mathematicians. If we take a keyed
9 αντίστροφον αυτού.
10 προς έναρμόνιον φοραν στα παγή ναι.
11 Tuklara åtta.
ON PLATO'S SURVEY OF THE SCIENCES. 427
instrument, and ascend from a key note by two octaves and a third,
(say from A, to C3) we arrive at the same nominal note, as if we
ascend four times by a fifth (A, to E1, E, to B2, B, to F2, F, to Cz).
Hence one party might call this the same note. But if the Oc-
taves, Fifths, and Third be perfectly true intervals, the notes
arrived at in the two ways will not be really the same. (In the one
case, the note is xx ; in the other xxx; which are 1
and 14, or in the ratio of 81 to 80). This small interval by which
the two notes really differ, the Greeks called a Comma, and it was
the smallest musical interval which they recognized. Plato disdains
to see anything in portant in this controrersy; though the con-
troversy itself is really a curious proof of his doctrine, that there
is a mathematical truth in Harmony, higher than instrumental
exactness can reach. He goes on to say:
“ The musical teachers are defective in the same way as the
astronomical. They do indeed seek numbers in the harmonic notes,
which the ear perceives : but they do not ascend from them to the
Problem, What are harmonic numbers and what are not, and what
is the reason of each 12”? “That, says Glaucon, would be a sub-
lime inquiry.”
Have we in Harmonics, as in Astronomy, anything in the succeed-
ing History of the Science which illustrates the tendency of Plato's
thoughts, and the value of such a tendency?
It is plain that the tendency was of the same nature as that which
induced Kepler to call his work on Astronomy Harmonice Mundi ;
and which led to many of the speculations of that work, in which
harmonical are mixed with geometrical doctrines. And if we are
disposed to judge severely of such speculations, as too fanciful for
sound philosophy, we may recollect that Newton himself seems to
have been willing to find an analogy between harmonic numbers
and the different coloured spaces in the spectrum.
But I will say frankly, that I do not believe there really exists
any harmonical relation in either of these cases. Nor can the prob-
lem proposed by Plato be considered as having been solved since his
time, any further than the recurrence of vibrations, when their ratios
are so simple, may be easily conceived as affecting the ear in a
peculiar manner. The imperfection of musical scales, which the
comma indicates, has not been removed; but we may say that, in
the case of this problem, as in the other ultimate Platonic problems,
the duplication of the cube and the quadrature of the circle, the
12 tives Šúpowvol ápcduoi, &c.
428
APPENDIX B.
impossibility of a solution has been already established. The prob-
lem of a perfect musical scale is impossible, because no power of 2
can be equal to a power of 3; and if we further take the multiplier
5, of course it also cannot bring about an exact equality. This impos-
sibility of a perfect scale being recognized, the practical problem is
what is the system of temperament which will make the scale best
suited for musical purposes; and this problem has been very fully
discussed by modern writers.
APPENDIX BB.
ON PLATO'S NOTION OF DIALECTIC.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. May 7, 1855.)
THE surrey of the sciences, arithmetic, plane geometry, solid
geometry, astronomy and harmonics-which is contained in the
seventh Book of the Republic (8 6-12), and which has been dis-
cussed in the preceding paper, represents them as instruments in
an education, of which the end is something much higher--as steps
in a progression which is to go further. “Do you not know,” says
Socrates ($ 12), “that all this is merely a prelude to the strain
which we have to learn ?" And what that strain is, he forthwith
proceeds to indicate. “That these sciences do not suffice, you
must be aware: for—those who are masters of such sciences-do
they seem to you to be good in dialectic? (delvoi õlal eKTIKO
eivat;)"
“In truth, says Glaucon, they are not, with very few exceptions,
80 far as I have fallen in with them."
“And yet, said I, if persons cannot give and receive a reason,
they cannot attain that knowledge which, as we have said, men
ought to have."
Here it is evident that “to give and to receive a reason,” is a
phrase employed as coinciding, in a general way at least, with being .
"good in dialectic;" and accordingly, this is soon after asserted in
another form, the verb being now used instead of the adjective.
“It is dialectic discussion (tó dialéyeoðun,) which executes the
strain which we have been preparing." It is further said that it is
a progress to clear intellectual light, which corresponds to the pro-
gress of bodily vision in proceeding from the darkened cave de-
scribed in the beginning of the Book to the light of day. This
progress, it is added, of course you call Dialectic (dialektikTv).
Plato further says, that other sciences cannot properly be called
sciences. They begin from certain assumptions, and give us only
the consequences which follow from reasoning on such assumptions.
But these assumptions they cannot prove. To do so is not in the
province of each science. It belongs to a higher science: to the
430
APPENDIX BB.
science of Real Existences. You call the man Dialectical, who re-
quires a reason of the essence of each thingl.
· And as Dialectic gives an account of other real existences, so
does it of that most important reality, the true guide of Life and of
Philosophy, the Real Good. He who cannot follow this through
all the windings of the battle of Life, knows nothing to any pur-
pose. And thus Dialectic is the pinnacle, the top stone of the
edifice of the sciences ?.
Dialectic is here defined or described by Plato according to the
subject with which it treats, and the object with which it is to be
pursued: but in other parts of the Platonic Dialogues, Dialectic
appears rather to imply a certain method of investigation ;-to de-
scribe the form rather than the matter of discussion; and it will
perhaps be worth while to compare these different accounts of
Dialectic.
(Phædrus.) One of the cardinal passages on this point is in the
Phædrus, and may be briefly quoted. Phædrus, in the Dialogue
which bears his name, appears at first as an admirer of Lysias, a
celebrated writer of orations, the contemporary of Plato. In order
to expose this writer's style of composition as frigid and shallow, a
specimen of it is given, and Socrates not only criticises this, but
delivers, as rival compositions, two discourses on the same subject.
Of these discourses, given as the inspiration of the moment, the
first is animated and vigorous; the second goes still further, and
clothes its meaning in a gorgeous dress of poetical and mythical
images. Phædrus acknowledges that his favourite is outshone;
and Socrates then proceeds to point out that the real superiority of his
own discourse consists in its having a dialectical structure, beneath
its outward aspect of imagery and enthusiasm. He says: (Ø 109,
Bekker. It is to be remembered that the subject of all the dis-
courses was Love, under certain supposed conditions.)
“The rest of the performance may be taken as play: but there
were, in what was thus thrown out by a random impulse, two
features, of which, if any one could reduce the effect to an art,
it would be a very agreeable and useful task.
“What are they? Phædrus asks.
"In the first place, Socrates replies, the taking a connected view
of the scattered elements of a subject, so as to bring them into one
1 “Η και διαλεκτικών καλείς τον λό-
γον εκάστου λαμβάνοντα της ουσίας;
(S 14).
OVTO
2 ώσπερ θριγγός τους μαθήμασιν
η διαλεκτική ημιν επάνω κείσθαι.
(§ 14).
ON PLATO'S NOTION OF DIALECTIC. 431
Idea; and thus to give a definition of the subject, so as to make it
clear what we are speaking of; as was then done in regard to Love.
A definition was given of it, what it is: whether the definition
was good or bad, at any rate there was a definition. And hence, in
what followed, we were able to say what was clear and consistent
with itself.
“And what, Phædrus asks, was the other feature ?
“The dividing the subject into kinds or elements, according to
the nature of the thing itself :---not breaking its natural mem-
bers, like a bad carver who cannot hit the joint. So the two dis-
courses which we have delivered, took the irrational part of the
mind, as their common subject; and as the body has two different
sides, the right and the left, with the same names for its parts; so
the two discourses took the irrational portion of man; and the one
took the left-hand portion, and divided this again, and again sub-
divided it, till, among the subdivisions, it found a left-handed kind
of Love, of which nothing but ill was to be said. While the dis-
course that followed out the right-hand side of phrenzy, (the
irrational portion of man's nature,) was led to something which
bore the nanie of Love like the other, but which is divine, and was
praised as the source of the greatest blessing.”
“Now I,” Socrates goes on to say, “am a great admirer of these
processes of division and comprehension, by which I endeavour to
speak and to think correctly. And if I can find any one who is ,
able to see clearly what is by nature reducible to one and mani-
fested in many elements, I follow his footsteps as a divine guide.
Those who can do this, I call whether rightly or not, God knows
but I have hitherto been in the habit of calling them dialectical
men."
It is of no consequence to our present purpose whether either of
the discourses of Socrates in the Phædrus, or the two together, as
is here assumed, do contain a just division and subdivision of that
part of the human soul which is distinguishable from Reason, and
do thus exhibit, in its true relations, the affection of Love. It is
evident that division and subdivision of this kind is here presented
as, in Plato's opinion, a most valuable method; and those who
could successfully practise this method are those whom he admires
as dialectical men. This is here his Dialectic.
(Sophistes.) We are naturally led to ask whether this method of
dividing a subject as the best way of examining it, be in any other
part of the Platonic Dialogues more fully explained than it is in
the Phædrus; or whether any rules are given for this kind of
Dialectic.
432
APPENDIX BB.
To this we may reply, that in the Dialogue entitled The Sophist,
a method of dividing a subject, in order to examine it, is explained
and exemplified with extraordinary copiousness and ingenuity.
The object proposed in that Dialogue is, to define what a Sophist
is; and with that view, the principal speaker, (who is represented
as an Eleatic stranger,) begins by first exemplifying what is his
method of framing a definition, and by applying it to define an
Angler. The course followed, though it now reads like a burlesque
of philosophical methods, appears to have been at that time a bona
fide attempt to be philosophical and methodical. It proceeds thus:
- We have to inquire concerning Angling. Is it an Art? It is.
Now what kind of art? All art is an art of making or an art of
getting: (Poietic or Ktetic.) It is Ktetic. Now the art of getting,
is the art of getting by exchange or by capture: (Metabletic or
Chirotic.) Getting by capture is by contest or by chase: (Agonistic
or Thereutic.) Getting by chase is a chase of lifeless or of living
things: (the first has no name, the second is Zootheric.) The chase
of living things is the chase of land animals or of water aninials :
(Pezotheric or Enygrotheric.) Chase of water animals is of birds
or of fish: (Ornithothereutic and Halieutic.) Chase of fish is by
inclosing or by striking them: (Hercotheric or Plectic.) We strike
them by day with pointed instruments, or by night, using torches:
(hence the division Ankistreutic and Pyreutic.) Of Ankistreutic, one
kind consists in spearing the fish downwards from above, the other
in twitching them upwards from below: (these two arts are Trio-
dontic and Aspalieutic.) And thus we have, what we sought, the
notion and the description of angling: namely that it is a Ktetic,
Chirotic, Thereutic, Zootheric, Enygrotheric, Halieutic, Plectic,
Ankistreutic, Aspalieutic Art.'
Several other examples are given of this ingenious mode of defini.
tion, but they are all introduced with reference to the definition of
the Sophist. And it will further illustrate this method to show
how, according to it, the Sophist is related to the Angler.
The Sophistical Art is an art of getting, by capture, living things,
namely men. It is thus a Ktetic, Chirotic, Thereutic art, and so far
agrees with that of the Angler. But here the two arts diverge,
since that of the Sophist is Pezotheric, that of the Angler Enygro-
theric. To determine the Sophist still more exactly, observe that
the chase of land animals is either of tame animals (including man)
or of wild animals: (Hemerotheric and Agriotheric.) The chase of
tame animals is either by violence, (as kidnapping, tyranny, and war
in general,) or by persuasion, (as by the arts of speech;) that is, it
is Biaiotheric or Pithanurgic. The art of persuasion is a private or
ON PLATO'S NOTION OF DIALECTIC. 433
a public proceeding: (Idiothereutic or Demosiothereutic.) The art of
private persuasion is accompanied with the giving of presents, (as
lovers do,) or with the receiving of pay: (thus it is Dorophoric or
Mistharneutic.) To receive pay as the result of persuasion, is the
course, either of those who merely earn their bread by supplying
pleasure, namely flatterers, whose art is Hedyntic; or of those who
profess for pay to teach virtue. And who are they? Plainly the
Sophists. And thus Sophistic is that kind of Ktetic, Chirotic,
Thereutic, Zootheric, Pezotheric, Hemerotheric, Pithanurgic, Idio-
thereutic, Mistharneutic art, which professes to teach virtue, and
takes money on that account.
The same process is pursued along several other lines of inquiry:
and at the end of each of them the Sopbist is detected, involved in
a number of somewhat obnoxious characteristics. This process of
division it will be observed, is at every step bifurcate, or as it is
called, dichotomous. Applied as it is in these examples, it is rather
the vehicle of satire than of philosophy. Yet, I have no doubt that
this bifurcate method was admired by some of the philosophers of
Piato's time, as a clever and effective philosophical invention. We
may the more readily believe this, inasmuch as one of the most acute
persons of our own time, who has come nearer than any other to
the ancient heads of sects in the submission with which his followers
have accepted his doctrines, has taken up this Dichotomous Method,
and praised it as the only philosophical mode of dividing a sub-
ject. I refer to Mr Jeremy Bentham's Chrestomathia (published
originally in 1816), in which this exhaustive bifurcate method, as he
calls it, was applied to classify sciences and arts, with a view to a
scheme of education. How exactly the method, as recommended by
bim, agrees with the method illustrated in the Sophist, an examina-
tion of any of his examples will show. Thus to take Mineralogy as
an example: according to Bentham, Ontology is Cænoscopic or
Idioscopic: the Idioscopic is Somatoscopic or Pneumatoscopic; the
Somatoscopic is Pososcopic or Poioscopic: Poioscopic is Physiur-
Epigeoscopic: Epigeoscopic is Abioscopic or Embioscopic. And
thus Mineralogy is the Science Idioscopic, Somatoscopic, Poioscopic,
Physiurgoscopic, Epigeoscopic, Abioscopic: inasmuch as it is the
science which regards bodies, with reference to their qualities -
bodies, namely, the works of nature, terrestrial, lifeless.
I conceive that this bifurcate method is not really philosophical or
valuable: but that is not our business here. What we have to con-
sider is whether this is what Plato meant by the term Dialectic.
The general description of Dialectic in the Sophistes agrees very
FF
434
APPENDIX BB.
closely with that quoted from the Phædrus, that it is the separation
of a subject according to its natural divisions.
Thus, see in the Sophist the passage S 83: "To divide a subject
according to the kinds of things, so as neither to make the same
kind different nor different kinds identical, is the office of the
Dialectical Science.” And this is illustrated by observing that it
is the office of the science of Grammar to determine what letters
may be combined and what may not; it is the office of the science of
Music to determine what sounds differing as acute and grave, may
be combined, and what may not: and in like manner it is the office
of the science of Dialectic to determine what kinds may be com-
bined in one subject and what may not. And the proof is still fur-
ther explained.
In many of the Platonic Dialogues, the Dialectic which Socrates
is thus represented as approving, appears to include the form of
Dialogue, as well as the subdivision of the subject into its various
branches. Socrates is presented as attaching so much importance to
this form, that in the Protagoras (8 65) he rises to depart, because
his opponent will not conform to this practice. And generally in
Plato, Dialectic is opposed to Rhetoric, as a string of short ques-
tions and answers to a continuous dissertation.
Xenophon also seems to imply (Mem. IV. 5, 11) that Socrates
included in his notion of Dialectic the form of Dialogue as well as
the division of the subject.
But that the method of close Dialogue was not called Dialectic
by the author of the Sophist, we have good evidence in the work
itself. Among other notions which are analysed by the bifurcate
division here exhibited, is that of getting by contest (Agonistic,
previously given as a division of Ktetic). Now getting by contest
may be by peaceful trial of superiority, or by fight: (Hamilletic or
Machetic). The fight may be of body against body, or of words
against words : these may be called Biastic and Amphisbetic. The
fight of words about right and wrong, may be by long discourses
opposed to each other, as in judicial cases; or by short questions
and answers : the former may be called Dicanic, the latter Anti-
logic. Of these colloquies, about right and wrong, some are
natural and spontaneous, others artificial and studied: the former
need no special name; the latter are commonly called Eristic. Of
Eristic colloquies, some are a source of expense to those who hold
them, some of gain : that is, they are Chrematophthoric or Chrema-
tistic: the former, the occupation of those who talk for pleasure's
and for company's sake, is Adoleschic, wasteful garrulity; the
latter, that of those who talk for the sake of gain, is Sophistic.
ON PLATO'S NOTION OF DIALECTIC. 435
And thus Sophistic is an art Eristic, which is part of Antilogic,
wbich is part of Amphisbetic, which is part of Agonistic, which is
part of Chirotic, which is a part of Ktetic. ($ 23.)
We may notice here an indication that satire rather than exact
reason directs these analyses; in that Sophistic, which was before
a part of the thereutic branch of chirotic and htetic, is here a part of
the other branch, agonistic.
But the remark which I especially wish to make here is, that the
art of discussing points of right and wrong by short questions and
answers, being here brought into view, is not called Dialectic,
which we might have expected; but Antilogic. It would seem
therefore that the Author of the Sophist did not understand by
Dialectic such a process as Socrates describes in Xenophon ; (Mem.
1v. 5, 11, 12;) where he says it was called Dialectic, because it was
followed by persons dividing things into their kinds in conversation:
(kolvi Bouleveobul õlaléyouras :) or such as the Socrates of Plato
insisted upon in the Protagoras and the Gorgias. Of the two
elements which the Dialectical Process of Socrates implied, Divi-
sion of the subject and Dialogue, the author of the Sophistes does
not claim the name of Dialectic for either, and seems to reject it
for the second.
But without insisting upon the name, are we to suppose that the
Dichotomous Method of the Sophistes Dialogue, (I may add of the
Politicus, for the method is the same in this Dialogue also,) is the
method of division of a subject according to its natural members, of
which Plato speaks in the Phædrus?
If the Sophistes be the work of Plato, the answer is difficult
either way. If this method be Plato's Dialectic, how came he to
omit to say so there? how came he even to seem to deny it? But
on the other hand, if this dichotomous division be a different pro-
cess from the division called Dialectic in the Phædrus, had Plato
two methods of division of a subject ? and yet has he never spoken
of them as two, or marked their distinction ?
This difficulty would be removed if we were to adopt the opinion,
to which others, on other grounds, have been led, that the Sophistes,
though of Plato's time, is not Plato's work. The grounds of this
opinion are,—that the doctrines of the Sophistes are not Platonic:
(the doctrine of Ideas is strongly impugned and weakly defended :)
Socrates is not the principal speaker, but an Eleatic stranger: and
there is, in the Dialogue, none of the dramatic character which we
generally have in Plato. The Dialogue seems to be the work of
some Eleatic opponent of Plato, rather than his.
(Rep. B. VII.) But we can have no doubt that the Phædrus
FF 2
436
APPENDIX BB.
contains Plato's real view of the nature of Dialectic, as to its form;
let us see how this agrees with the view of Dialectic, as to its
matter and object, given in the seventh Book of the Republic.
According to Plato, Real Existences are the objects of the exact
sciences (as number and figure, of Arithmetic and Geometry).
The things which are the objects of sense are transitory pheno-
mena, which have no reality, because no permanence. Dialectic
deals with Realities in a more general manner. This doctrine is
everywhere inculcated by Plato, and particularly in this part of the
Republic. He does not tell us how we are to obtain a view of the
higher realities, which are the objects of Dialectic: only he here
assumes that it will result from the education which he enjoins.
He says (§ 13) that the Dialectic Process (vi õlake Tikr uédooos)
alone leads to true science: it makes no assumptions, but goes to
First Principles, that its doctrives may be firmly grounded: and
thus it purges the eye of the soul, which was immersed in barbaric
mud, and turns it upward; using for this purpose the aid of the
sciences which have been mentioned. But when Glaucon inquires
about the details of this Dialectic, Socrates says he will not then
answer the inquiry. We may venture to say, that it does not ap-
pear that he had any answer ready.
Let us consider for a moment what is said about a philosophy
rendering a reason for the First Principles of each Science, which
the Science itself cannot do. That there is room for such a branch
of philosophy in some sciences, we easily see. Geometry, for
instance, proceeds from Axioms, Definitions and Postulates ; but by
the very nature of these terms, does not prove these First Prin-
ciples. These--the Axioms, Definitions and Postulates,-are, I
conceive, what Plato here calls the Hypotheses upon which Geo-
metry proceeds, and for which it is not the business of Geometry to
render a reason. According to him, it is the business of “Dialec-
tic” to give a just account of these “Hypotheses.” What then is
Dialectic ?
(Aristotle.) It is, I think, well worthy of remark, that Aristotle,
giving an account in many respects different from that of Plato, of
the nature of Dialectic, is still led in the same manner to consider
Dialectic as the branch of philosophy which renders a reason for
First Principles. In the Topics, we have a distinction drawn be-
tween reasoning demonstrative, and reasoning dialectical: and the
distinction is this:-( Top. I. 1) that demonstration is by syllogisms
from true first principles, or from true deductions from such prin-
ciples; and that the Dialectical Syllogism is that which syllogizes
from probable propositions (é évồówv). And he adds that
ON PLATO'S NOTION OF DIALECTIC. 437
probable propositions are those which are accepted by all, or hy the
greatest part, or by the wise. In the next chapter, he speaks of
the uses of Dialectic, which, he says, are three, mental discipline,
debates, and philosophical science. And he adds (Top. I. 2, 6)
that it is also useful with reference to the First Principles in each
Science : for from the appropriate Principles of each science we
cannot deduce anything concerning First Principles, since these
principles are the beginning of reasoning. But from the probable
principles in each province of science we must reason concerning
First Principles: and this is either the peculiar office of Dialectic,
or the office most appropriate to it; for it is a process of investigation,
and must lead to the Principles of all methods.
That a demonstrative science, as such, dues uot explain the origin
of its own First Principles, is undoubtedly true. Geometry does
not undertake to give a reason for the Axioms, Definitions, and
Postulates. This has been attempted, both in ancient and in modern
times, by the Metaphysicians. But the Metaphysics employed on
such subjects has not commonly been called Dialectic. The term
has certainly been usually employed rather as describing a Method,
than as determining the subject of investigation. Of the Faculty
which apprehends First Principles, both according to Plato and to
Aristotle, I will hereafter say a few words.
The object of the dichotomous process pursued in the Sophistes,
and its result in each case, is a Definition. Definition also was one
of the main features of the inquiries pursued by Socrates, Induction
being the other; and indeed in many cases Induction was a series
of steps which ended in Definition. And Aristotle also taught a
peculiar method, the object and result of which was the construc-
tion of Definitions:-namely his Categories. This method is one
of division, but very different from the divisions of the Sophistes.
His method begins by dividing the whole subject of possible inquiry
into ten heads or Cotegories—Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation,
Place, Time, Position, Habit, Action, Passion. These again are
subdivided: thus Quality is Habit or Disposition, Power, Affection,
Form. And we have an example of the application of this method
to the construction of a Definition in the Ethics; where he deter-
mines Virtue to be a Habit with certain additional limitations.
Thus the Induction of Socrates, the Dichotomy of the Eleatics,
the Categories of Aristotle, may all be considered as methods by
which we proceed to the construction of Definitions. If, by any
method, Plato could proceed to the construction of a Definition, or
rather of an Idea, of the Absolute Realities on which First Princi-
ples depend, such a method would correspond with the notion of
438
APPENDIX BB.
Dialectic in the Republic. And if it was a method of division like
the Eleatic or Aristotelic, it would correspond with the notion of
Dialectic in the Phædrus.
That Plato's notion, however, cannot have been exactly either of
these is, I think, plain. The colloquial method of stimulating and
testing the progress of the student in Dialectic is implied, in the
sequel of this discussion of the effect of scientific study. Add the
method of Dialogue, as the instrument of instruction, being thus
supposed, the continuation of the account in the Republic, implies
that Plato expected persons to be made dialectical by the study of
the exact sciences in a comprehensive spirit. After insisting on
Geometry and other sciences, he says (Rep. VII. § 16): “The
synoptical man is dialectical; and he who is not the one, is not
the other."
But, we may ask, does a knowledge of sciences lead naturally to
a knowledge of Ideas, as absolute realities from which First Prin-
ciples flow? And supposing this to be true, as the Platonic Phi-
losophy supposes, is the Idea of the Good, as the source of moral
truths, to be thus attained to ? That it is, is the teaching of
Plato, here and elsewhere; but have the speculations of subsequent
philosophers in the same direction given any confirmation of this
lofty assumption ?
In reply to this inquiry, I should venture to say, that this
assumption appears to be a remnant of the Socratic doctrine from
which Plato began his speculations, that Virtue is a kind of know-
ledge; and that all attempts to verify the assumption have failed.
What Plato added to the Socratic notion was, that the inquiry
after The Good, the Supreme Good, was to be aided by the
analogy or suggestions of those sciences which deal with neces-
sary and eternal truths; the supreme good being of the nature
of those necessary and eternal truths. This notion is a striking
one, as a suggestion, but it has always failed, I think, in the
attempts to work it out. Those who in modern times, as Cudworth
and Samuel Clarke, have supposed an analogy between the neces-
sary truths of Geometry and the truths of Morality, though they
have used the like expressions concerning the one and the other
class of truths, have failed to convey clear doctrines and steady con-
victions to their readers; and have now, I believe, few or no
followers.
The result of our investigation appears to be, that though Plato
added much to the matter by means of which the mind was to
be improved and disciplined in its research after Principles and
Definitions, he did not establish any form of Method according
ON PLATO'S NOTION OF DIALECTIC. 439
to which the inquiry must be conducted, and by which it might
be aided. The most definite notion of Dialectic still remained
the same with the original informal view which Socrates had
taken of it, as Xenophon tells us, (Mem. iv. 5, 11) when he says:
“He said that Dialectic (Tò dialéyeobal) was so called because
it is an inquiry pursued by persons who take counsel together,
separating the subjects considered according to their kinds (dla-
Néyoutus). He held accordingly that men should try to be well
prepared for such a process, and should pursue it with diligence :
by this means, he thought, they would become good men, fitted
for responsible offices of command, and truly dialectical" (dialek-
TIKUTÁTOJs). And this is, I conceive, the answer to Mr. Grote's
interrogatory exclamation (Vol. VIII. p. 577): “Surely the Ety-
mology here given by Xenophon or Socrates of the word (dla-
Téyeolar) cannot be considered as satisfactory." The two notions,
of investigatory Dialogue, and Distribution of notions according
to their kinds, which are thus asserted to be connected in etymology,
were, among the followers of Socrates, connected in fact; the
dialectic dialogue was supposed to involve of course the dialectic
division of the subject.
APPENDIX O.
OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS ACCORD-
ING TO PLATO.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. Nov. 10, 1856.)
TN the Seventh Book of Plato's Republic, we have certain sciences
described as the instruments of a philosophical and intellectual
education; and we have a certain other intellectual employment
spoken of, namely, Dialectic, as the means of carrying the mind
beyond these sciences, and of enabling it to see the sources of
those truths which the sciences assume as their first principles.
These points have been discussed in the two preceding papers.
But this scheme of the highest kind of philosophical education
proceeds upon a certain view of the nature and degrees of knowledge,
and of the powers by which we know; which view had been pre-
sented in a great measure in the Sixth Book; this view I shall
now attempt to illustrate.
To analyse the knowing powers of man is a task so difficult, that
we need not be surprised if there is much obscurity in this portion
of Plato's writings. But as a reason for examining what he has
said, we must recollect that if there be in it anything on this sub-
ject which was true then, it is true still; and also, that if we know
any truth on that subject now, we shall find something correspond-
ing to that truth in the best speculations of sagacious ancient
writers, like Plato. It may therefore be worth while to discuss
the Platonic doctrines on this matter, and to inquire how they are
to be expressed in modern phraseology.
Plato's doctrine will perhaps be most clearly understood, if we
begin by considering the diagram by which he illustrates the
different degrees of knowledyel. He sets out from the distinction
of visible and intelligible things. There are visible objects, squares
and triangles, for instance ; but these are not the squares and tri.
angles about which the Geometer reasons. The exactness of his
reasoning does not depend on the exactness of his diagrams. He
i Pol. vi. $ 19.
OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.
441
reasons from certain mental squares and triangles, as he conceives
and understands them. “Thus there are visible and there are
intelligible things. There is a visible and an intelligible world”:
and there are two different regions about which our knowledge is
concerned. Now take a line divided into two unequal segments to
represent these two regions : and again, divide each segment in the
same ratio. The parts of each segment are to represent differences
of clearness and distinctness, and in the visible world these parts
are things and images. By images I mean shadows, and reflections
in water, and in polished bodies; and by things, I mean that of
which these images are the resemblances ; as animals, plants,
things made by man. This difference corresponds to the difference,
of Knowledge and mere Opinion; and the Opinable is to the Know-
able as the Image to the Reality.”
This analogy is assented to by Glaucon; and thus there is as-
sumed a ground for a further construction of the diagram.
“Now," he says, "we have to divide the segment which repre-
sents Intelligible Things in the same way in which we have divided
that which represents Visible Things. The one part must repre-
sent the knowledge which the mind gets by dealing as it were with
images, and by reasoning downwards from Principles; the other
that which it has by dealing with the Ideas themselves, and going
to First Principles.
“The one part depends upon assumptions or hypotheses, the
other is unhypothetical or absolute truth.
“One kind of Intelligible Things, then, is Conceptions; for in-
stance, geometrical conceptions of figures, by means of which we
reason downwards, assuming certain First Principles.
"Now the other kind of Intelligible Things is this :—that which
the Reason includes in virtue of its power of reasoning, when it
2 He adds, “This oraton, this visi- the three kinds of angles (right, acute,
ble world, I will not say has any and obtuse); and figures, (as a trian-
connexion with ouranon, heaven, gle, a square,) and the like." I say
that I may not be accused of playing his "hypotheses” are the Definitions
upon words."
and Postulates, not the Axioms: for
3 It is plain that Plato, by Hypo- the Axioms of Arithmetic and Geo-
theses, in this place, means the usual metry belong to the Higher Faculty,
foundations of Arithmetic and Geo- which ascends to First Principles.
metry; namely, Definitions and Pos- But this Faculty operates rather in
tulates. He says that “the arith- using these axioms than in enunciat-
meticians and geometers take as hypo- ing them. It knows them implicitly
theses (ürro OéuevoL) odd and even, and rather than expresses them explicitly.
442
APPENDIX C.
regards the assumptions of the Sciences as, what they are, assump-
tions only; and uses them as occasions and starting points, that
from these it may ascend to the absolute, (avutoDetov, unhy-
pothetical,) which does not depend upon assumption, but is the
origin of scientific truth. The Reason takes hold of this first priu-
ciple of truth; and availing itself of all the connections and rela-
tions of this principle, it proceeds to the conclusion; using no
sensible image in doing this, but contemplating the Ideas alone;
and with these Ideas the process begins, goes on, and terminates."
This account of the matter will probably seem to require at least
further explanation; and that accordingly is acknowledged in the
Dialogue itself. Glaucon says :
“I apprehend your meaning in a certain degree, but not very
clearly, for the matter is somewhat abstruse. You wish to prove
that the knowledge which, by the Reason, we acquire, of Real
Existence and Intelligible Things, is of a higher degree of certainty
than the knowledge which belongs to what are commonly called
Sciences. Such sciences, you say, have certain assumptions for
their bases; and these assumptions are, by the students of such
sciences, apprehended, not by Sense (that is, the Bodily Senses),
but by a Mental Operation, by Conception. But inasmuch as
such students ascend no higher than the assumptions, and do not go
to the First Principles of Truth, they do not seem to you to have
true knowledge_intuitive insight—Nous-on the subject of their
reasonings, though the subjects are intelligible, along with their
principle. And you call this habit and practice of the Geometers
and others by the name Conception, not Intuition4; taking Con.
ception to be something between Opinion on the one side, and
Intuitive Insight on the other."
“You have explained it well, said I. And now consider the
four sections (of the line) of which we have spoken, as corresponding
to four affections in the mind. Intuition, the highest; Conception,
the next; the third, Belief; and the fourth, Conjecture (from
likenesses); and arrange them in order, so that they may have more
or less of certainty, as their objects have more or less of truth 5.
4 Slávolav ddt' où voûv.
5 The Diagram, as here described, would be this:

Intelligible World.
Visible World.
Intuition.
Conception.
Things.
Images.
OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.
443
“I understand, said he. I agree to what you say, and I arrange
them as you direct."
And so the Sixth Book ends: and the Seventh Book opens
with the celebrated image of the Cave, in which men are confined,
and see all external objects only by the shadows which they cast
on the walls of their prison. And this imperfect knowledge of
things is to the true vision of them, which is attained by those
who ascend to the light of day, as the ordinary knowledge of men is
to the knowledge attainable by those whose minds are purged and
illuminated by a true philosophy.
Confining ourselves at present to the part of Plato's speculations
which we have mentioned, namely, the degrees of knowledge,
and the division of our knowing faculties, we may understand,
and may in a great degree accept, Plato's scheme. We have already
(in the preceding papers) seen that, by the knowledge of real
things, he means, in the first place, the knowledge of universal
and necessary truths, such as Geometry and the other exact sciences
deal with. These we call sciences of Demonstration; and we
are in the habit of contrasting the knowledge which constitutes
such sciences with the knowledge obtained by the Senses, by Ex-
perience or mere Observation. This distinction of Demonstrative
and Empirical knowledge is a cardinal point in Plato's scheme
also; the former alone being allowed to deserve the name of
Knowledge, and the latter being only Opinion. The Objects with
which Demonstration deals may be termed Conceptions, and the
objects with which Observation or Sense has to do, however
much speculation may reduce them to mere Sensations, are commonly
described as Things. Of these Things, there may be Shadows or
Images, as Plato says; and as we may obtain a certain kind of
knowledge, pamely Opinion or Belief, by seeing the Things them-
selves, we may obtain an inferior kind of Opinion or Belief by seeing
their Images, which kind of opinion we may for the moment call
Conjecture. Whether then we regard the distinctions of knowledge
itself or of the objects of it, we have three terms before us.
If we consider the kinds of knowledge, they are
Demonstration : Belief: Conjecture:
If the objects of this knowledge, they are
Conceptions: Things : Images.
Plato supposes the whole, and each of the two parts, to be divided in the
same ratio, in order that the analogy of the division in each case may be
represented.
444
APPENDIX C.
But in each of these Series, the first term is evidently wanting: for
Demonstration supposes Principles to reason from. Conceptions
suppose some basis in the mind which gives them their evidence.
What then is the first term in each of these two Series ?
The Principles of Demonstration must be seen by Intuition.
Conceptions derive their properties from certain powers or
attributes of the mind which we may term Ideas.
Therefore the two series are
Intuition: Demonstration : Belief: Conjecture.
Ideas: Conceptions: Things: Images.
Plato further teaches that the two former terms in each Series
belong to the Intelligible, the two latter to the Visible World:
and he supposes that the ratio of these two primary segments
of the line is the same as the ratio in which each segment is
divided.
In using the term Ideas to describe the mental sources from
which Conceptions derive their validity in demonstration, I am
employing a phraseology which I have already introduced in the
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. But independently altogether
of this, I do not see what other term could be employed to denote
the mental objects, attributes, or powers, whatever they be, from
which Conceptions derive their evidence, as Demonstrative Truths
derive their evidence from Intuitive Truths.
That the Scheme just presented is Plato's doctrine on this subject,
I do not conceive there can be any doubt. There is a little want
of precision in his phraseology, arising from his mixing together
the two series. In fact, his final series
Noësis: Dianoia: Pistis: Eikasia;
which is the process pursued, or Science, which is the knowledge
obtained, Conception, which is the object with which the mind
deals. Such deviations from exact symmetry and correlation in
speaking of the faculties of the mind, are almost unavoidable in
every language. And there is yet another source of such inac-
curacies of language; for we have to speak, not only of the
process of acquiring knowledge, and of the objects with which
the mind deals, but of the Faculties of the mind which are
thus employed. Thus Intuition is the Process; Ideas are the
The four segments might be as 4:2:2:1; or as 9:6:6:4; or generally,
as a : 07::.
OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.
445
Object, in the first term of our series. The Faculty also we
may call Intuition; but the Greek offers a distinction. Noësis
is the Process of Intuition; but the Faculty is Nous. If we
wish to preserve this distinction in English, what must we call
the Faculty? I conceive we must call it the Intuitive Reason, a
term well known to our older philosophical writers?. Again:
taking the second term of the series, Demonstration is the process,
Science, the result; and Conceptions are the objects with which
the mind deals. But what is the Faculty thus employed? What
is the Faculty employed in Demonstration? The same philosophical
writers of whom I spoke would have answered at once, the Dis-
cursive Reason; and I do not know that, even now, we can suggest
any better term. The Faculty employed in acquiring the two lower
kinds of knowledge, the Faculty which deals with Things and
their Images is, of course, Sense, or Sensation.
The assertion of a Faculty of the mind by which it appre-
hends Truth, which Faculty is higher than the Discursive Reason,
as the Truth apprehended by it is higher than mere Demonstrative
Truth, agrees (as it will at once occur to several of my readers)
with the doctrine taught and insisted upon by the late Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. And so far as he was the means of inculcating
this doctrine, which, as we see, is the doctrine of Plato, and I
might add, of Aristotle, and of many other philosophers, let him
have due honour. But in his desire to impress the doctrine upon
men's minds, he combined it with several other tenets, which will
not bear examination. He held that the two Faculties by which
these two kinds of truth are apprehended, and which, as I have
said, our philosophical writers call the Intuitive Reason and the
Discursive Reason, may be called, and ought to be called, respectively,
The Reason and The Understanding ; and that the second of these
is of the nature of the Instinct of animals, so as to be something
intermediate between Reason and Instinct. These opinions, I may
venture to say, are altogether erroneous. The Intuitive Reason and
the Discursive Reason are not, by any English writers, called the
Reason and the Understanding; and accordingly, Coleridge has
had to alter all the passages, namely, those taken from Leighton,
Harrington, and Bacon, from which his exposition proceeds. The
Understanding is so far from being especially the Discursive or
Hence the mind Reason receives
Intuitive or Discursive.
MILTON.
446
APPENDIX C.
Reasoning Faculty, that it is, in universal usage, and by our best
writers, opposed to the Discursive or Reasoning Faculty. Thus this
is expressly declared by Sir John Davis in his poem On the Immor-
tality of the Soul. He says, of the soul,
When she rates things, and moves from ground to ground,
The name of Reason (Ratio) she acquires from this:
But when by reason she truth hath found,
And standeth fixt, she Understanding is.
Instead of the Reason being fixed, and the Understanding discur-
sive, as Mr. Coleridge says, the Reason is distinctively discursive;
that is, it obtains conclusions by running from one point to another.
This is what is meant by Discursus; or, taking the full term, Dis-
cursus Rationis, Discourse of Reason. Understanding is fixed, that
is, it dwells upon one view of a subject, and not upon the steps by
which that view is obtained. The verb to reason, implies the sub-
stantive, the Reason, though it is not coextensive with it: for as I
have said, there is the Intuitive Reason as well as the Discursive
Reason. But it is by the Faculty of Reason that we are capable of
reasoning; though undoubtedly the practice or the pretence of rea-
soning may be carried so far as to seem at variance with reason in
the more familiar sense of the term; as is the case also in French.
Molière's Crisale says (in the Femmes Savantes),
Raisonner est l'emploi de toute ma maison,
Et le raisonnement en bannit la Raison.
If Mr. Coleridge's assertion were true, that the Understanding is
the discursive and the Reason the fixed faculty, we should be justi-
fied in saying that The Understanding is the faculty by which we
reason, and the Reason is the faculty by which we understand. But
this is not so.
Nor is the Understanding of the nature of Instinct, nor does it
approach nearer than the Reason to the nature of Instinct, but the
contrary. The Instincts of animals bear a very obscure resem-
blance to any of man's speculative Faculties; but so far as there is
any such resemblance, Instinct is an obscure image of Reason, not
of Understanding. Animals are said to act as if they reasoned,
rather than as if they understood. The verb understand is especially
applied to man as distinguished from animals. Mr. Coleridge tells
a tale from Huber, of certain bees which, to prevent a piece of
honey from falling, balanced it by their weight, while they built a
pillar to support it. They did this by Instinct, not understanding
what they did; men, doing the same, would have understood what
they were doing. Our Translation of the Scriptures, in making
OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.
447
it the special distinction of map and animals, that he has Under-
standing and they have not, speaks quite consistently with good
philosophy and good English.
Mr. Coleridge's object in his speculations is nearly the same as
Plato's; namely, to declare that there is a truth of a higher kind
than can be obtained by mere reasouing; and also to claim, as por-
tions of this higher truth, certain fundamental doctrines of Morality.
Among these, Mr. Coleridge places the Authority of Conscience,
and Plato, the Supreme Good. Mr. Coleridge also holds, as Plato
held, that the Reason of man, in its highest and most comprehensive
form, is a portion of a Supreme and Universal Reason; and-leads to
Truth, not in virtue of its special attributes in each person, but by
its own nature.
Many of the opinions which are combined with these doctrines,
both in Plato and in Coleridge, are such as we should, I think, find
it impossible to accept, upon a careful philosophical examination of
them; but on these I shall not bere dwell.
I will only further observe, that if any one were to doubt whether
the ternNoûs is rightly rendered Intuitive Reason, we may find
proof of the propriety of such a rendering in the remarkable discus-
sion concerning the Intellectual Virtues, which we have in the
Sixth Book of the Nicomachean Ethics. It can hardly be question-
ed that Aristotle had in his mind, in writing that passage, the
doctrines of Plato, as expounded in the passage just examined, and
similar passages. Aristotle there says that there are five Intellec-
tual Virtues, or Faculties by which the Mind aims at Truth in
asserting or denying :-namely, Art, Science, Prudence, Wisdom,
Nous. In this enumeration, passing over Art, Prudence, and Wis-
dom, as virtues which are mainly concerned from practical life, we
have, in the region of speculative Truth, a distinction propounded
between Science and Nous : and this distinction is further explained
(c. 6) by the remarks that Science reasons with Principles; and that
these Principles cannot be given by Science, because Science reasons
from them; nor by Art, nor Prudence, for these are conversant with
matters contingent, not with matters demonstrable; nor can the
First Principles of the Reasonings of Science be given by Wisdom,
for Wisdom herself has often to reason from Principles. Therefore
the First Principles of Demonstrative Reasoning must be given by
a peculiar Faculty, Nous. As we have said, Intuitive Reason is the
most appropriate English term for this Faculty
The view thus given of that higher kind of Knowledge which
Plaço and Aristotle place above ordinary Science, as being the
Knowledge of and Faculty of learning First Principles, will enable
448
APPENDIX C.
us to explain some expressions which miglit otherwise be misunder-
stood. Socrates, in the concluding part of this Sixth Book of the
Republic, says, that this kind of knowledge is “ that of which the
Reason (Nóyos) takes hold, in virtue of its power of reasoning 8.”
Here we are plainly not to understand that we arrive at First Prin-
ciples by reasoning : for the very opposite is true, and is here taught;
-namely, that First Principles are not what we reason to, but what
we reason from. The meaning of this passage plainly is, that First
Principles are those of which the Reason takes hold in virtue of its
power of reasoning ;—they are the conditions which must exist in
order to make any reasoning possible :—they are the propositions
which the Reason must involve implicitly, in order that we may
reason explicitly;--they are the intuitive roots of the dialectical
power.
In accordance with the views now explained, Plato's Diagram
may be thus further expanded. The term idéa is not used in this
part of the Republic; but, as is well known, occurs in its peculiar
Platonic sense in the Tenth Book.

Intelligible World. vońtov.
Visible World. opatóv.
Object.
Ideas
ιδέαι
Conceptions
διάνοια
Things
Śwa K.T.d,
Images
εικόνες
Process .
Intuition
νόησις
Demonstration
επιστήμη
Belief
πίστις
Conjecture
εικασία
Faculty
Intuitive Reason | Discursive Reason
νούς
λόγος
Sensation
αίσθησις
8 τη του διαλέγεσθαι δυνάμει.
APPENDIX D.
CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLÉ’S ACCOUNT OF
INDUCTION.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. FEB. 11, 1850.)
THE Cambridge Philosophical Society has willingly admitted
among its proceedings not only contributions to science, but also
to the philosophy of science; and it is to be presumed that this
willingness will not be less if the speculations concerning the philo-
sophy of science which are offered to the Society involve a reference
to ancient authors. Induction, the process by which general truths
are collected from particular examples, is one main point in such
philosophy: and the comparison of the views of Induction enter-
tained by ancient and modern writers has already attracted much
notice. I do not intend now to go into this subject at any length;
but there is a cardinal passage on the subject in Aristotle's Analytics,
(Analyt. Prior. II. 25) which I wish to explain and discuss. I will
first translate it, making such emendations as are requisite to render
it intelligible and consistent, of which I shall afterwards give an
account.
I will number the sentences of this chapter of Aristotle in order
that I may afterwards be able to refer to them readily.
$1. “We must now proceed to observe that we have to examine
not only syllogisms according to the aforesaid figures, --syllogisms
logical and demonstrative, but also rhetorical syllogisms,-and,
speaking generally, any kind of proof by which belief is influenced,
following any method.
§ 2. "All belief arises either from Syllogism or from Induction :
(we must now therefore treat of Induction.]
§ 3. “Induction, and the Inductive Syllogism, is when by means of
one extreme term we infer the other extreme term to be true of the
middle term.
$ 4. “ Thus if A, C, be the extremes, and B the mean, we have
to show, by means of C, that A is true of B.
GG
450
APPENDIX D.
§ 5. "Thus let A be long-lived; B, that which has no gall-
bladder; and C, particular long-lived animals, as elephant, horse,
mule.
$ 6. " Then every C is A, for all the animals above named are
long-lived.
$7. “Also every C is B, for all those animals are destitute of
gall-bladder.
$ 8. “If then B and C are convertible, and the mean (B) does
not extend further than extreme (C), it necessarily follows that
every B is A.
§ 9. “For it was shown before, that, if any two things be
true of the same, and if either of them be convertible with the ex-
treme, the other of the things predicated is true of the convertible
(extreme).
§ 10. “But we must conceive that C consists of a collection of
all the particular cases; for Induction is applied to all the cases.
§ 11. “But such a syllogism is an inference of a first truth and
immediate proposition.
$ 12. “For when there is a mean term, there is a demonstrative
syllogism through the mean; but when there is not a mean, there is
proof by Induction.
§ 13. “And in a certain way, Induction is contrary to Syllogism;
for Syllogism proves, by the middle term, that the extreme is true of
the third thing: but Induction proves, by means of the third thing,
that the extreme is true of the mean.
$ 14. “And Syllogism concluding by means of a middle term is
prior by nature and more usual to us; but the proof by Induction,
is more luminous.”
I think that the chapter, thus interpreted, is quite coherent and
intelligible; although at first there seems to be some confusion,
from the author sometimes saying that Induction is a kind of Syllo-
gism, and at other times that it is not. The amount of the doctrine
is this.
When we collect a general proposition by Induction from par.
ticular cases, as for instance, that all animals destitute of gall-
bladder (acholous), are long-lived, (if this proposition were true, of
which hereafter,) we may express the process in the form of a Syllo-
gism, if we will agree to make a collection of particular cases our
middle term, and assume that the proposition in which the second
extreme term occurs is convertible. Thus the known propositions
ure
Elephant, horse, mule, &c., are long-lived.
Elephant, horse, mule, &c., are acholous.
CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLE'S INDUCTION. 451
But if we suppose that the latter proposition is convertible, we
shall have these propositions :
Elephant, horse, mule, &c., are long-lived.
All acholous animals are elephant, horse, mule, &c.,
from whence we infer, quite rigorously as to form,
All acholous animals are long-lived.
This mode of putting the Inductive inference shows both the
strong and the weak point of the illustration of Induction by means
of Syllogism. The strong point is this, that we make the inference
perfect as to form, by including an indefinite collection of particular
cases, elephant, horse, mule, &c., in a single term, C. The Syllo-
gism then is
All Care long-lived.
All acholous animals are C.
Therefore all acholous animals are long-lived.
The weak point of this illustration is, that, at least in some
instances, when the number of actual cases is necessarily indefinite,
the representation of them as a single thing involves an unauthorized
step. In order to give the reasoning which really passes in the
niind, we must say
Elephant, horse, &c., are long-lived.
All acholous animals are as elephant, horse, &c.,
Therefore all acholous animals are long-lived.
This “as” must be introduced in order that the "all C” of the
first proposition may be justified by the “C” of the second.
This step is, I say, necessarily unauthorized, where the number of
particular cases is indefinite; as in the instance before us, the species
of acholous animals. We do not know how many such species there
are, yet we wish to be able to assert that all acholous animals are
long-lived. In the proof of such a proposition, put in a syllogistic
form, there must necessarily be a logical defect; and the above dis-
cussion shows that this defect is the substitution of the proposition,
"All acholous animals are as elephant, &c.,” for the converse of
the experimentally proved proposition,“ elephant, &c., are acholous."
In instances in which the number of particular cases is limited,
the necessary existence of a logical flaw in the syllogistic translation
of the process is not so evident. But in truth, such a flaw exists in
all cases of Induction proper: (for Induction by mere enumeration
can hardly be called Induction). I will, however, consider for å
moment the instance of a celebrated proposition which has often
been taken as an example of Induction, and in which the number of
particular cases is, or at least is at present supposed to be, limited.
Kepler's laws, for instance the law that the planets describe ellipses,
G G2
452
APPENDIX D.
may be regarded as examples of Induction. The law was inferred,
we will suppose, from an examination of the orbits of Mars, Earth,
Venus. And the syllogistic illustration which Aristotle gives, will,
with the necessary addition to it, stand thus,
Mars, Earth, Venus describe ellipses.
Mars, Earth, Venus are planets.
Assuming the convertibility of this last proposition, and its univer-
sality, (which is the necessary addition in order to make Aristotle's
syllogism valid) we say
All the planets are as Mars, Earth, Venus.
Whence it follows that all the planets describe ellipses.
If, instead of this assumed universality, the astronomer had made
a real enumeration, and had established the fact of each particular,
he would be able to say
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury, describe
ellipses.
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury are all the
planets.
And he would obviously be entitled to convert the second proposi-
tion, and then to conclude that
All the planets describe ellipses.
But then, if this were given as an illastration of Induction by
means of syllogism, we should have to remark, in the first place, that
the conclusion that “all the planets describe ellipses,” adds nothing
to the major proposition, that “S., J., M., E., V., m., do so." It is
merely the same proposition expressed in other words, so long as
S., J., M., E., V., m., are supposed to be all the planets. And in
the next place we have to make a remark which is more important;
that the minor, in such an example, must generally be either a very
precarious truth, or, as appears in this case, a transitory error. For
that the planets known at any time are all the planets, must always
be a doubtful assertion, liable to be overthrown to-night by an astro-
nomical observation. And the assertion, as received in Kepler's
time, has been overthrown. For Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth,
Venus, Mercury, are not all the planets. Not only have several new
ones been discovered at intervals, as Uranus, Ceres, Juno, Pallas,
Vesta, but we have new ones discovered every day; and any conclu-
sion depending upon this premiss that A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, to
Z are all the planets, is likely to be falsified in a few years by the
discovery of A', B', C', &c. If, therefore, this were the syllogistic
analysis of Induction, Kepler's discovery rested upon a false propo-
sition; and even if the analysis were now made conformable to our
present knowledge, that induction, analysed as above, would still
CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLE'S INDUCTION. 453
involve a proposition which to-morrow may show to be false. But
yet no one, I suppose, doubts that Kepler's discovery was really a
discovery—the establishment of a scientific truth on solid grounds;
or, that it is a scientific truth for us, notwithstanding that we are
constantly discovering new planets. Therefore the syllogistic ana-
lysis of it now discussed (namely, that which introduces simple enu-
meration as a step) is not the right analysis, and does not represent
the grounds of the Inductive Truth, that all the planets describe
ellipses.
It may be said that all the planets discovered since Kepler's time
conform to his law, and thus confirm his discovery. This we grant:
but they only confirm the discovery, they do not make it; they are
not its groundwork. It was a discovery before these new cases
were known; it was an inductive truth without them. Still, an
objector might urge, if any one of these new planets had contradict-
ed the law, it would have overturned the discovery. But this is too
boldly said. A discovery which is so precise, so complex (in the
phenomena which it explains), so supported by innumerable observa-
tions extending through space and time, is not so easily overturned.
If we find that Uranus, or that Encke's comet, deviates from Kep-
ler's and Newton's laws, we do not infer that these laws must be
false; we say that there must be some disturbing cause in these
cases. We seek, and we find these disturbing causes: in the case of
Uranus, a new planet; in the case of Encke's comet, a resisting
medium. Even in this case therefore, though the number of parti.
culars is limited, the Induction was not made by a simple enumera-
tion of all the particulars. It was made from a fety cases, and when
the law was discerned to be true in these, it was extended to all; the
conversion and assumed universality of the proposition that “these
are planets,” giving us the proposition which we need for the syllo-
gistic exhibition of Induction, "all the planets are as these."
I venture to say further, that it is plain, that Aristotle did not
regard Induction as the result of simple enumeration. This is plain,
in the first place, from his example. Any proposition with regard
to a special class of animals, cannot be proved by simple enumera-
tion: for the number of particular cases, that is, of animal species
in the class, is indefinite at any period of zoological discovery, and
must be regarded as infinite. In the next place, Aristotle says (S 10
of the above extract), “ We must conceive that C consists of a col-
lection of all the particular cases; for induction is applied to all the
cases." We must conceive (voelv) that C in the major, consists of all
the cases, in order that the conclusion may be true of all the cases;
but we cannot observe all the cases. But the evident proof that
Aristotle does not contemplate in this chapter an Induction by sim-
454
APPENDIX D.
ple enumeration, is the contrast in which he places Induction and
Syllogism. For Induction by simple enumeration stands in no con-
trast to Syllogism. The Syllogism of such Induction is quite logi-
cal and conclusive. But Induction from a comparatively small num-
ber of particular cases to a general law, does stand in opposition
to Syllogism. It gives us a truth,-a truth which, as Aristotle
says (§ 14), is more luminous than a truth proved syllogistically,
though Syllogism may be more natural and usual. It gives us ($ 11)
immediate propositions, obtained directly from observation, and not
by a chain of reasoning : “first truths,” the principles from which
syllogistic reasonings may be deduced. The Syllogism proves by
means of a middle term (§ 13) that the extreme is true of a third
thing: thus, (acholous being the middle term):
Acholous animals are long-lived:
All elephants are acholous animals:
Therefore all elephants are long-lived.
But Induction proves by means of a third thing (namely, particular
cases) that the extreme is true of the mean; thus (acholous, still
being the niddle term)
Elephants are long-lived:
Elephants are acholous animals :
Therefore acholous animals are long-lived.
It may be objected, such reasoning as this is quite inconclusive :
and the answer is, that this is precisely what we, and as I believe,
Aristotle, are here pointing out. Induction is inconclusive as rea-
soning. It is not reasoning: it is another way of getting at truth.
As we have seen, no reasoning can prove such an inductive truth as
this, that all planets describe ellipses. It is known from observation,
but it is not demonstrated. Nevertheless, no one doubts its uni.
versal truth, (except, as aforesaid, when disturbing causes intervene).
And thence, Induction is, as Aristotle says, opposed to syllogistic
reasoning, and yet is a means of discovering truth: not only so, but
a means of discovering primary truths, immediately derived from
observation.
I have elsewhere taught that all Induction involves a Conception
of the mind applied to facts. It may be asked whether this applies
in such a case as that given by Aristotle. And I reply, that
Aristotle's instance is a very instructive example of what I mean.
The Conception which is applied to the facts in order to make the
induction possible is the want of the gall-bladder;--and Aristotle
supplies us with a special term for this conception; acholous! But,
1 This term occurs in other parts of Aristotle. See the additional Note.
CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLE'S INDUCTION. 455
it may be said, that the animals observed, the elephant, horse, mule,
&c., are acholous, is a mere fact of observation, not a Conception.
I reply that it is a Selected Fact, a fact selected and compared in
several cases, which is what we mean by a Conception. That there
is needed for such selection and comparison a certain activity of the
mind, is evident; but this also may become more clear by dwelling
a little further on the subject. Suppose that Aristotle, having a
desire to know what class of animals are long-lived, had dissected
for that purpose many animals; elephants, horses, cows, sheep,
goats, deer and the like. How many resemblances, how many dif-
ferences, must he have observed in their anatomy.! He was very
likely long in fixing upon any one resemblance which was common
to all the long-lived. Probably he tried several other characters,
before he tried the presence and absence of the gall-bladder :--per-
haps, trying such characters, he found them succeed for a few cases,
and then fail in others, so that he had to reject them as useless for
his purpose. All the while, the absence of the gall-bladder in the
long-lived animals was a fact: but it was of no use to him, because
he had not selected it and drawn it forth from the mass of other
facts. He was looking for a mean term to connect his first extreme,
long-lived, with his second, the special cases. He sought this mid-
dle term in the entrails of the many animals which he used as
extremes: it was there, but he could not find it. The fact existed,
but it was of no use for the purpose of Induction, because it did
not become a special Conception in his mind. He considered the
animals in various points of view, it may be, as ruminant, as
horned, as hoofed, and the contrary; but not as acholous and the
contrary. When he looked at animals in that point of view,
when he took up that character as the ground of distinction, he
forthwith imagined that he found a separation of long-lived and
short-lived animals. When that Fact became a Conception, he ob-
tained an inductive truth, or, at any rate, an inductive proposition.
He obtained an inductive proposition by applying the Conception
acholous to his observation of animals. This Conception divided
them into two classes, and these classes were, he fancied, long-lived
and short-lived respectively. That it was the Conception, and not
the Fact which enabled him to obtain his inductive proposition, is
further plain from this, that the supposed Fact is not a fact.
Acholous animals are not longer-lived than others. The presence
or absence of the gall-bladder is no character of longevity. It is
true, that in one familiar class of animals, the herbivorous kind,
there is a sort of first seeming of the truth of Aristotle's asserted
rule: for the horse and mule which have not the gall-bladder are
456
APPENDIX D.
longer-lived than the cow, sheep, and goat, which have it. But if
we pursue the investigation further, the rule soon fails. The deer-
tribe that want the gall-bladder are not longer-lived than the other
ruminating animals which have it. And as a conspicuous evidence
of the falsity of the rule, man and the elephant are perhaps, for
their size, the longest-lived animals, and of these, man has, and the
elephant has not, the organ in question. The inductive proposition,
then, is false; but what we have mainly to consider is, where the
fallacy enters, according to Aristotle's analysis of Induction into
Syllogism. For the two premisses are still true ; that elephants, &c.,
are long-lived; and that elephants, &c., are acholous. And it is
plain that the fallacy comes in with that conversion and generaliza-
tion of the latter proposition, which we have noted as necessary to
Aristotle's illustration of Induction. When we say “ All acholous
animals are as elephants, &c.," that is, as those in their biological
conditions, we say what is not true. Aristotle's condition (8 8) is
not complied with, that the middle term shall not extend beyond
the extreme. For the character acholous does extend beyond the
elephant and the animals biologically resembling it; it extends to
deer, &c., which are not like elephants and horses, in the point in
question. And thus, we see that the assumed conversion and
generalization of the minor proposition, is the seat of the fallacy of
false Inductions, as it is the seat of the peculiar logical character of
true Inductions.
As true Inductive Propositions cannot be logically demonstrated
by syllogistic rules, so they cannot be discovered by any rule. There
is no formula for the discovery of inductive truth. It is caught by
a peculiar sagacity, or power of divination, for which no precepts
can be given. But from what has been said, we see that this saga-
city shows itself in the discovery of propositions which are both
true, and convertible in the sense above explained. Both these steps
may be difficult. The former is often very laborious: and when the
labour has been expended, and a true proposition obtained, it may
turn out useless, because the proposition is not convertible. It was
a matter of great labour to Kepler 'to prove (from calculation of
observations) that Mars moves elliptically. Before he proved this,
he had tried to prove many similar propositions :-that Mars moved
according to the "bisection of the eccentricity,'-according to the
“ vicarious hypothesis,”-according to the “physical hypothesis,'-
and the like; but none of these was found to be exactly true. The
proposition that Mars moves elliptically was proved to be true.
But still, there was the question, Is it convertible? Do all the
planets move as Mars moves? This was proved, (suppose,) to be
CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLE'S INDUCTION. 457
true, for the Earth and Venus. But still the question remains, Do
all the planets move as Mars, Earth, Venus, do? The inductive
generalizing impulse boldly answers, Yes, to this question; though
the rules of Syllogism do not authorize the answer, and though there
remain untried cases. The inductive Philosopher tries the cases as
fast as they occur, in order to confirm his previous conviction; but
if he had to wait for belief and conviction till he had tried every
case, he never could have belief or conviction of such a proposition
at all. He is prepared to modify or add to his inductive truth
according as new cases and new observations instruct him; but he
does not fear that new cases or new observations will overturn an
inductive proposition established by exact comparison of many com-
plex and various phenomena.
Aristotle's example offers somewhat similar reflections. He had
to establish a proposition concerning long-lived animals, which
should be true, and should be susceptible of generalized conversion.
To prove that the elephant, horse and mule are destitute of gall-
bladder required, at least, the labour of anatomizing those animals
in the seat of that organ. But this labour was not enough; for he
would find those animals to agree in many other things besides in
being acholous. He must have selected that character somewhat at
a venture. And the guess was wrong, as a little more labour would
have shown him; if for instance he had dissected deer: for they are
acholous, and yet short-lived. A trial of this kind would have shown
him that the extreme term, acholous, did extend beyond the mean,
namely, animals such as elephant, horse, mule; and therefore, that
the conversion was not allowable, and that the Induction was unten-
able. In truth, there is no relation between bile and longevity?,
and this example given by Aristotle of generalization from induction
is an unfortunate one.
2 Mr. Owen, to whom I am in- intestine: there is no relation be-
debted for the physiological part of tween natural longevity and bile.
this criticism, tells me, “All mam. Neither has the presence or absence
malia bave bile, the carnivora in of the gall-bladder any connexion
greater proportion than the herbi- with age. Man and the elephant are
vora: the gall-bladder is a compara- perhaps for their size the longest
tively unimportant accessory to the lived animals, and the latest at com-
biliary apparatus; adjusting it to ing to maturity: one has the gall-
certain modifications of stomach and bladder, and the other not."
458
APPENDIX D.
In discussing this passage of Aristotle, I have made two altera-
tions in the text, one of which is necessary on account of the fact;
the other on account of the sense. In the received text, the parti-
cular examples of long-lived animals given are man, horse, and mule
(éq'q dè r, Tò kalékaotov uakpóßlov, olov cv pwmos, kai LTTOS,
kai 1 piovos). And it is afterwards said that all these are acholous:
(ällä kai tò B, TÒ un éxov xolju, ravil útrcpXEL Tŷ r.) But
man has a gall-bladder: and the fact was well known in Aristotle's
time, for instance, to Hippocrates; so that it is not likely that
Aristotle would have made the mistake which the text contains.
But at any rate, it is a mistake; if not of the transcriber, of Aristotle;
and it is impossible to reason about the passage, without correcting
the mistalke. The substitution of έλεφας for άνθρωπος makes the
reasoning coherent; but of course, any other acholous long-lived
animal would do so equally well.
The other emendation which I have made is in $ 6. In the re.
ceived text § 6 and 7 stand thus:
6. Then every C is A, for every acholous animal is long-lived
(τω δη Γ όλα υπάρχει το Α, πάν γαρ το άχoλον μακρόβιον).
7. Also every C is B, for all C is destitute of bile.
Whence it may be inferred, says Aristotle, under certain condi.
tions, that every B is A (TÒ A TÛ B út ápxelv) that is, that every
acholous animal is long-lived. But this conclusion is, according to
the common reading, identical with the major premiss ; so that the
passage is manifestly corrupt. I correct it by substituting for
äxolov, I'; and thus reading tâv yap to r uakpóßlov" for every
C is long-lived:” just as in the parallel sentence, 7, we have alla
Kui TÒ B, TÒ usj éxov xolijv, Tavti útrápxel Tŵ r. In this way
the reasoning becomes quite clear. The corrupt substitution of
äxorov for I may have been made in various ways; which I need
not suggest. As my business is with the sense of the passage, and
as it makes no sense without the change, and very good sense with
it, I cannot hesitate to make the emendation. And these emenda-
tions being made, Aristotle's view of the nature and force of In-
duction becomes, I think, perfectly clear and very instructive.
CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLE'S INDUCTION. 459
ADDITIONAL NOTE.
I take the liberty of adding to this Memoir the following remarks,
for which I am indebted to Mr Edleston, Fellow of Trinity College.
Several of the earlier editions of Aristotle have y instead of
å xolov in the passage referred to in the above paper: ex. gr.
(1) The edition printed at Basle, 1539 (after Erasmus): «το γ.”
(2) Basil (Erasmus) 1530. “το γ.”
(3) Burana's Latin version, Venet. 1552, has “ omne enim C
longævum.”
" (4) Sylburg, Francf. 1387 «το γ” is printed in braclkets thus :
“ [το γ] το άχoλον.”
(5) So also in Casaubon's edition, 1590.
(6) Casaub. 1605 «το γ,” (though the Latin version has “ vacans
bile;") not “ [το γ] το άχoλον,” as the edition of 1590.
(7) In the edition printed Aurel. Allobr. 1607, “ [το γ] το
έχoλον;” as in (4) and (5).
(8) Du Val's editions, Paris, 1619, 1629, 1664 « το γ,” though in
Pacius's translation in the adjacent column we find “vacans bile."
(9) In the critical notes to Waitz's edition of the Organon (Lips.
1844) it is stated that “post axolov del. y. n," implying apparently,
that in the MS. marked n, the letter y, which had been originally
written after äxolov, had been erased.
The following passages throw light upon the question whether
άνθρωπος ought or ought not to be retained in the passage dis-
cussed in the Memoir. .
(A) Aristot. De Animalibus Histor. 11. 15, 9 (Bekk.), Twv Mèv
ζωοτόκων και τετραπόδων έλαφος ουκ έχει [χολήν] ουδέ πρόξ,
έτι δε ίππος, όρεύς, όνος, φώκη και των υών ένιοι......"Έχει δε
και ο ελέφας το ήπαρ άχoλον μέν, κ.τ.λ.
(B) Conf. Ib. 1. 17, 10, 11. (In the beginning of Chap. 16, he
says that the external μόρια of man are γνώριμα, «τα δ' εντός
τουναντίον. "Άγνωστα γάρ έστι μάλιστα τα των ανθρώπων,
ώστε δεί προς τα των άλλων μόρια ζώων άνάγοντας σκοπεϊν,”...)
(C) Id De Part. Animal. IV. 2, 2. τα μεν γαρ όλως ουκ έχει
χολήν, οίον ίππος και όρους και όνος και έλαφος και πρόξ.....
46ο
APPENDIX D.
'Εν δε τοίς γένεσι τοίς αυτοίς τα μεν έχειν φαίνεται, τα δ' ουκ
έχειν, οίον εν τω των μυών. Τούτων δ' έστι και ο άνθρωπος
ένιοι μεν γαρ φαίνονται έχοντες χολήν επί του ήπατος, ένιοι δ'
ουκ έχοντες. Διό και γίνεται αμφισβήτησις περί όλου του γέ-
νους" οι γαρ εντυχόντες οποτερωσουν έχουσι περί πάντων υπο-
λαμβάνουσιν ως απάντων εχόντων......
(D) Ib. $ 11. Διό και χαριέστατα λέγουσι των αρχαίων οι
φάσκοντες αίτιον είναι του πλείω ζην χρόνον το μή έχειν χο-
λήν, βλέψαντες επί τα μώνυχα και τας ελάφους" ταύτα γαρ
έχoλά τε και ζη πολύν χρόνον. "Ετι δε και τα μη έωραμένα
υπ' εκείνων ότι ουκ έχει χολήν, οίον δελφίς και κάμηλος, και
ταύτα τυγχάνει μακρόβια όντα. Εύλογον γάρ, κ.τ.λ.
(E) The elephant and man are mentioned together as long-
lived animals (De Long. et Brev. Vita, iv. 2, and De Generat. Ani-
mal. IV. 10, 2.)
The following is the import of these passages:
(A) “Of viviparous quadrupeds, the deer, roe, horse, mule, ass,
seal, and some of the swine, have not the gall-bladder. .....
The elephant also has the liver without gall-bladder, &c."
(Β) «The external parts of man are well known: the internal
parts are far from being so. The parts of man are in a great mea-
sure unknown; so that we must judge concerning them by refer-
ence to the analogy of other animals. ..."
(C) “Some animals are altogether destitute of gall-bladder, as
the horse, the mule, the ass, the deer, the roe...But in some kinds
it appears that some have it, and some have it not, as the mice kind.
And among these is man; for some men appear to have a gall-
bladder on the liver, and some not to have one. And thus there is
a doubt as to the species in general; for those who have happened
to examine examples of either kind, hold that all the cases are of
that kind.”
(D) “Those of the ancients speak most plausibly, who say that
the absence of the gall-bladder is the cause of long life; looking
at animals with uncloven hoof, and deer: for these are destitute of
gall-bladder, and live a long time. And further, those animals in
which the ancients had not the opportunity of ascertaining that
they have not the gall-bladder, as the dolphin, and the camel, are
also long-lived animals.”
CRITICISM OF ARISTOTLE'S INDUCTION. 461
It appears, from these passages, that Aristotle was aware that
some persons had asserted man to have a gall-bladder, but that he
also conceived this not to be universally true. He may have in-
clined to the opinion, that the opposite case was the more usual,
and may have written äv@pwros, in the passage which I have been
discussing. Another mistake of his is the reckoning deer among
long-lived animals.
It appears probable, from the context of the passages (C) and
(D), that the conjecture of a connexion between absence of the
gall-bladder and length of life was suggested by some such notion
as this :—that the gall, from its bitterness, is the cause of irritation,
mental and bodily, and that irritation is adverse to longevity. The
opinion is ascribed to "the ancients,” not claimed by Aristotle as
his own.
APPENDIX E.
ON THE FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF
PHILOSOPHY.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. FEB. 5, 1844.)
1. ALL persons who have attended in any degree to the views
A generally current of the nature of reasoning are familiar
with the distinction of necessary truths and truths of experience;
and few such persons, or at least few students of mathematics,
require to have this distinction explained or enforced. All geome.
tricians are satisfied that the geometrical truths with which they
are conversant are necessarily true: they not only are true, but
they must be true. The meaning of the terms being understood,
and the proof being gone through, the truth of the proposition
must be assented to. That parallelograms upon the same base and
between the same parallels are equal ;-that angles in the same
segment are equal ;--these are propositions which we learn to be
true by demonstrations deduced from definitions and axioms; and
which, when we have thus learnt them, we see could not be other-
wise. On the other hand, there are other truths which we learn
from experience; as for instance, that the stars revolve round the
pole in one day; and that the moon goes through her phases from
full to full again in thirty days. These truths we see to be true;
but we know them only by experience. Men never could have
discovered them without looking at the stars and the moon; and
having so learnt them, still no one will pretend to say that they are
necessarily true. For aught we can see, things might have been
otherwise; and if we had been placed in another part of the solar
system, then, according to the opinions of astronomers, experience
would have presented them otherwise.
the geometrical necessary truths, as being both of a familiar defi-
nite sort; we may easily find other examples of both kinds of truth.
The truths which regard numbers are necessary truths. It is á
necessary truth, that 27 and 38 are equal to 65; that half the sum
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 463
of two numbers added to half their difference is equal to the
greater number. On the other hand, that sugar will dissolve in
water; that plants cannot live without light; and in short, the
whole body of our knowledge in chemistry, physiology, and the
other inductive sciences, consists of truths of experience. If there"
be any science which offer to us truths of an ambiguous kind, with
regard to which we may for a moment doubt whether they are
necessary or experiential, we will defer the consideration of them
till we have marked the distinction of the two kinds more clearly.
3. One mode in which we may express the difference of necessary
truths and truths of experience, is, that necessary truths are those
of which we cannot distinctly conceive the contrary. We can very
readily conceive the contrary of experiential truths. We can
conceive the stars moving about the pole or across the sky in any
kind of curves with any velocities; we can conceive the moon
always appearing during the whole month as a luminous disk, as
she might do if her light were inherent and not borrowed. But
we cannot conceive one of the parallelograms on the same base
and between the same parallels larger than the other; for we
find that, if we attempt to do this, when we separate the paral-
lelograms into parts, we have to conceive one triangle larger than
another, both having all their parts equal; which we cannot
conceive at all, if we conceive the triangles distinctly. We make
this inipossibility more clear by conceiving the triangles to be
placed so that two sides of the one coincide with two sides of
the other; and it is then seen, that in order to conceive the tri-
angles unequal, we must conceive the two bases which have the
same extremities both ways, to be different lines, though both
straight lines. This it is impossible to conceive: we assent to the
impossibility as an axiom, when it is expressed by saying, that two
straight lines cannot inclose a space; and thus we cannot distinctly
conceive the contrary of the proposition just mentioned respecting
parallelograms.
4. But it is necessary, in applying this distinction, to bear in
mind the terms of it;that we cannot distinctly conceive the con-
trary of a necessary truth. For in a certain loose, indistinct way,
persons conceive the contrary of necessary geometrical truths, when
they erroneously conceive false propositions to be true. Thus,
Hobbes erroneously held that he had discovered a means of geo-
metrically doubling the cube, as it is called, that is, findivg two
mean proportionals between two given lines; a problem which can-
not be solved by plane geometry. Hobbes not only proposed a
construction for this purpose, but obstinately maintained that it
464
APPENDIX E.
was right, when it had been proved to be wrong. But then, the
discussion showed how indistinct the geometrical conceptions of
Hobbes were; for when his critics had proved that one of the lines
in his diagram would not meet the other in the point which his
reasoning supposed, but in another point near to it; he maintained,
in reply, that one of these points was large enough to include
the other, so that they might be considered as the same point.
Such a mode of conceiving the opposite of a geometrical truth,
forms no exception to the assertion, that this opposite cannot be
distinctly conceived.
5. In like manner, the indistinct conceptions of children and of
rude savages do not invalidate the distinction of necessary and ex-
periential truths. Children and savages make mistakes even with
regard to numbers; and might easily happen to assert that 27
and 38 are equal to 63 or 64. But such mistakes cannot make
such arithmetical truths cease to be necessary truths. When any
person conceives these numbers and their addition distinctly, by re-
solving them into parts, or in any other way, he sees that their sum
is necessarily 65. If, on the ground of the possibility of children
and savages conceiving something different, it be held that this is
not a necessary truth, it must be held on the same ground, that
it is not a necessary truth that 7 and 4 are equal to 11; for children
and savages might be found so unfamiliar with numbers as not to
reject the assertion that 7 and 4 are 10, or even that 4 and 3 are 6,
or 8. But I suppose that no persons would on such grounds hold
that these arithmetical truths are truths known only by expe-
rience.
6. Necessary truths are established, as has already been said,
by demonstration, proceeding from definitions and axioms, accord.
ing to exact and rigorous inferences of reason. Truths of experi-
ence are collected from what we see, also according to inferences
of reason, but proceeding in a less exact and rigorous mode of
proof. The former depend upon the relations of the ideas which
we have in our minds : the latter depend upon the appearances or
phenomena, which present themselves to our senses. Necessary
truths are formed from our thoughts, the elements of the world
within us; experiential truths are collected from things, the ele-
ments of the world without us. The truths of experience, as they
appear to us in the external world, we call Facts; and when we
are able to find among our ideas a train which will conform them.
selves to the apparent facts, we call this a Theory
7. This distinction and opposition, thus expressed in various
forms; as Necessary and Experiential Truth, Ideas and Senses,
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 465
Thoughts and Things, Theory and Fact, may be termed the
Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy; for almost all the discus-
sions of philosophers have been employed in asserting or denying,
explaining or obscuring this antithesis. It may be expressed in
many other ways; but is not dificult, under all these different
forms, to recognize the same opposition: and the same remarks
apply to it under its various forms, with corresponding modifica-
tions. Thus, as we have already seen, the antithesis agrees with
that of Reasoning and Observation : again, it is identical with the
opposition of Reflection and Sensation : again, sensation deals
with Objects; facts involve Objects, and generally all things with-
out us are Objects:-Objects of sensation, of observation. On the
other hand, we ourselves who thus observe objects, and in whom
sensation is, may be called the Subjects of sensation and observa-
tion. And this distinction of Subject and Object is one of the most
general ways of expressing the fundamental antithesis, although
not yet perhaps quite familiar in English. I shall not scruple
however to speak of the Subjective and Objective element of this
antithesis, where the expressions are convenient.
8. All these forms of antithesis, and the familiar references to
them which men make in all discussions, show the fundamental
and necessary character of the antithesis. We can have no know-
ledge without the union, no philosophy without the separation, of
the two elements. We can have no knowledge, except we have
both impressions on our senses from the world without, and
thoughts from our minds within ;-except we attend to things, and
to our ideas;-except we are passive to receive impressions, and
active to compare, combine,'and mould them. But on the other
hand, philosophy seeks to distinguish the impressions of our senses
fron the thoughts of our ninds ;-to point out the difference of
ideas and things;—to separate the active from the passive faculties
of our being. The two elements, sensations and ideas, are both
requisite to the existence of our knowledge, as both matter and
form are requisite to the existence of a body. But philosophy
considers the matter and the form separately. The properties of
the form are the subject of geometry, the properties of the matter
are the subject of chemistry or mechanics.
9. But though philosophy considers these elements of know-
ledge separately, they cannot really be separated, any more than
can matter and form. We cannot exhibit matter without form, or
form without matter; and just as little can we exhibit sensations
without ideas, or ideas without sensations ;-the passive or the
active faculties of the mind detached from each other.
H E
466
APPENDIX E.
In every act of my knowledge, there must be concerned the
things whereof I know, and thoughts of me who know: I must
both passively receive or have received impressions, and I must
actively combine them and reason on them. No apprehension of
things is purely ideal: no experience of external things is purely
sensational. If they be conceived as things, the mind must have
been awakened to the conviction of things by sensation: if they be
conceived as things, the expressions of the senses must have been
bound together by conceptions. If we think of any thing, we must
recognize the existence both of thoughts and of things. The
fundamental antithesis of philosophy is an antithesis of inseparable
elements.
10. Not only cannot these elements be separately exhibited, but
they cannot be separately conceived and described. The descrip-
tion of them must always imply their relation; and the names by
which they are denoted will consequently always bear a relative
significance. And thus the terms which denote the fundamental an.
tithesis of philosophy cannot be applied absolutely and exclusively
in any case. We may illustrate this by a consideration of some of
the common modes of expressing the antithesis of which we speak.
The terms Theory and Fact are often emphatically used as opposed
to each other: and they are rightly so used. But yet it is im-
possible to say absolutely in any case, This is a Fact and not a
Theory; this is a Theory and not a Fact, meaning by Theory, true
Theory. Is it a fact or a theory that the stars appear to revolve
round the pole? Is it a fact or a theory that the earth is a globe
revolving round its axis ? Is it a fact or a theory that the earth
. l'evolves round the sun? Is it a fact or a theory that the sun
attracts the earth? Is it a fact or a theory that a loadstone attracts
a needle? In all these cases, some persons would answer one way
and some persons another. A person who has never watched the
stars, and has only seen them from time to time, considers their
circular motion round the pole as a theory, just as he considers the
motion of the sun in the ecliptic as a theory, or the apparent
motion of the inferior planets round the sun in the zodiac. A
person who has compared the measures of different parts of the
earth, and who knows that these measures cannot be conceived dis-
tinctly without supposing the earth a globe, considers its globular
form a fact, just as much as the square form of his chamber. A
person to whom the grounds of believing the earth to revolve round
its axis and round the sun, are as familiar as the grounds for be-
lieving the movements of the mail-coaches in this country, con-
ceives the former events to be facts, just as steadily as the latter.
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 467
And a person who, believing the fact of the earth's annual motion,
refers it distinctly to its mechanical course, conceives the sun's
attraction as a fact, just as he conceives as a fact the action of the
wind which turns the sails of a mill. We see then, that in these
cases we cannot apply absolutely and exclusively either of the terms,
Fact or Theory. Theory and Fact are the elements which cor-
respond to our Ideas and our Senses. The Facts are facts so far as
the Ideas have been combined with the sensations and absorbed
in them: the Theories are Theories so far as the Ideas are kept
distinct from the sensations, and so far as it is considered as still
a question whether they can be made to agree with them. A true
Theory is a fact, a Fact is a familiar theory.
In like manner, if we take the terms Reasoning and Observa-
tion; at first sight they appear to be very distinct. Our observa-
tion of the world without us, our reasonings in our own minds,
appear to be clearly separated and opposed. But yet we shall find
that we cannot apply these terms absolutely and exclusively. I see
a book lying a few feet from me: is this a matter of observation?
At first, perhaps, we might be inclined to say that it clearly is so,
But yet, all of us, who have paid any attention to the process of
vision, and to the mode in which we are enabled to judge of the
distance of objects, and to judge them to be distant objects at all,
know that this judgment involves inferences drawn from various
sensations;—from the impressions on our two eyes ;—from our
muscular sensations; and the like. These inferences are of the
nature of reasoning, as much as when we judge of the distance
of an object on the other side of a river by looking at it from differ-
ent points, and stepping the distance between them. Or again: we
observe the setting sun illuminate a gilded weathercock; but this is
as much a matter of reasoning as when we observe the phases
of the moon, and infer that she is illuminated by the sun. All ob-
servation involves inferences, and inference is reasoning.
11. Even the simplest terms by which the antithesis is expressed
cannot be applied : ideas and sensations, thoughts and things, sub-
ject and object, cannot in any case be applied absolutely and ex-
clusively. Our sensations require ideas to bind them together,
namely, ideas of space, time, number, and the like. If pot so
bound together, sensations do not give us any apprehension of
things or objects. All things, all objects, must exist in space and
in time--must be one or many. Now space, time, nuniber, are not
sensations or things. They are something different from, and op-
posed to sensations and things. We have termed them ideas. It
may be said they are relations of things, or of sensations. But
2
468
APPENDIX E.
granting this form of expression, still a relation is not a thing
or a sensation; and therefore we must still have another and
opposite element, along with our sensations. And yet, though
we have thus these two elements in every act of perception, we
cannot designate any portion of the act as absolutely and exclu.
sively belonging to one of the elements. Perception involves sen-
sation, along with ideas of time, space, and the like; or, if any
one prefers the expression, involves sensations along with the ap-
prehension of relations. Perception is sensation, along with such
ideas as make sensation into an apprehension of things or objects.
12. And as perception of objects inplies ideas, as observation
implies reasoning; so, on the other hand, ideas cannot exist where
sensation has not been: reasoning cannot go on when there has not
been previous observation. This is evident from the necessary
order of development of the human faculties. Sensation necessa-
rily exists from the first moments of our existence, and is constantly
at work. Observation begins before we can suppose the exist-
ence of any reasoning which is not involved in observation. Hence,
at whatever period we consider our ideas, we must consider them
as having been already engaged in connecting our sensations, and
as modified by this employment. By being so employed, our ideas
are unfolded and defined, and such development and definition
cannot be separated from the ideas themselves. We cannot con-
ceive space without boundaries or forms; now forms involve sen-
sations. We cannot conceive time without events which mark
the course of time; but events involve sensations. We cannot
conceive number without conceiving things which are numbered;
and things imply sensations. And the forms, thing's, events, which
are thus implied in our ideas,' having been the objects of sensa-
tion constantly in every part of our life, have modified, unfolded
and fixed our ideas, to an extent which we cannot estimate, but
which we must suppose to be essential to the processes which at
present go on in our minds. We cannot say that objects create
ideas; for to perceive objects we must already have ideas. But we
may say, that objects and the constant perception of objects have so
our ideas from the perception of objects.
We cannot say of any ideas, as of the idea of space, or time, or
number, that they are absolutely and exclusively ideas. We cannot
conceive what space, or time, or number would be in our minds,
if we had never perceived any thing or things in space or time.
We cannot conceive ourselves in such a condition as never to have
perceired any thing or things in space or time. But, on the other
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 469
hand, just as little can we conceive ourselves becoming acquainted
with space and time or numbers as objects of sensation. We can-
not reason without having the operations of our minds affected by
previous sensations; but we cannot conceive reasoning to be merely
a series of sensations. In order to be used in reasoning, sensa-
tion must become observation; and, as we have seen, observation
already involves reasoning. In order to be connected by our ideas,
sensations must be things or objects, and things or objects already
include ideas. And thus, as we have said, none of the terms by
which the fundamental antithesis is expressed can be absolutely
and exclusively applied.
13. I now proceed to make one or two remarks suggested by
the views which have thus been presented. And first I remark,
that since, as we have just seen, none of the terms which express
the fundamental antithesis can be applied absolutely and exclu-
sively, the absolute application of the antithesis in any particular
case can never be a conclusive or immoveable principle. This
remark is the more necessary to be borne in mind, as the terms of
this antithesis are often used in a vehement and peremptory man-
ner. Thus we are often told that such a thing is a Fact and not a
Theory, with all the emphasis which, in speaking or writing, tone
or italics or capitals can give. We see from what has been said,
that when this is urged, before we can estimate the truth, or the
value of the assertion, we must ask to whom is it a fact? what
habits of thought, what previous information, what ideas does it
imply, to conceive the fact as a fact? Does not the apprehension
of the fact imply assumptions which may with equal justice be
called theory, and which are perhaps false theory? in which case,
the fact is no fact. Did not the ancients assert it as a fact, that the
earth stood still, and the stars moved? and can any fact have
stronger apparent evidence to justify persons in asserting it empha-
tically than this had? These remarks are by no means urged in
order to show that no fact can be certainly known to be true; but
only to show that no fact can be certainly shown to be a fact
merely by calling it a fact, however emphatically. There is by no
means any ground of general skepticism with regard to truth
involved in the doctrine of the necessary combination of two ele-
ments in all our knowledge. On the contrary, ideas are requisite
to the essence, and things to the reality of our knowledge in every
case. The proportions of geometry and arithmetic are examples of
knowledge respecting our ideas of space and number, with regard
to which there is no room for doubt. The doctrines of astronomy
are examples of truths not less certain respecting the external world.
470
APPENDIX E.
14. I remark further, that since in every act of knowledge,
observation or perception, both the elements of the fundamental
antithesis are involved, and involved in a manner inseparable even
in our conceptions, it must always be possible to derive one of these
elements from the other, if we are satisfied to accept, as proof of
such derivation, that one always co-exists with and implies the
other. Thus an opponent may say, that our ideas of space, time;
and number, are derived from our sensations or perceptions, because
we never were in a condition in which we had the ideas of space
and time, and had not sensations or perceptions. But then, we
may reply to this, that we no sooner perceive objects than we per-
ceive them as existing in space and time, and therefore the ideas of
space and time are not derived from the perceptions. In the same
manner, an opponent may say, that all knowledge which is involved
in our reasonings is the result of experience; for instance, our
knowledge of geometry. For every geometrical principle is pre-
sented to us by experience as true; beginning with the simplest,
from which all others are derived by processes of exact reasoning.
But to this we reply, that experience cannot be the origin of such
knowledge; for though experience shows that such principles are
true, it cannot show that they must be true, which we also know.
We never have seen, as a matter of observation, two straight lines
inclosing a space; but we venture to say further, without the
smallest hesitation, that we never shall see it; and if any one were
to tell us that, according to his experience, such a form was often
seen, we should only suppose that he did not know what he was
talking of. No number of acts of experience can add to the cer-
tainty of our knowledge in this respect; which shows that our
knowledge is not made up of acts of experience. We cannot test
such knowledge by experience; for if we were to try to do so, we
must first know that the lines with which we make the trial are
two such lines cannot inclose a space. Since then, experience can
neither destroy, add to, nor test our axiomatic knowledge, such
knowledge cannot be derived from experience. Since no one act of
experience can affect our knowledge, no numbers of acts of expe-
rience can make it.
15. To this a reply has been offered, that it is a characteristic
property of geometric fornis that the ideas of them exactly resemble
the sensations; so that these ideas are as fit subjects of experi-
mentation as the realities themselves; and that by such experi-
mentation we learn the truth of the axioms of geometry. I might
very reasonably ask those who use this language to explain how a
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 471
particular class of ideas can be said to resemble sensations; how, if
they do, we can know it to be so; how we can prove this resem-
blance to belong to geometrical ideas and sensations, and how it
comes to be an especial characteristic of those. But I will put the
argument in another way. Experiment can only show what is,
not what must be. If experimentation on ideas shows what must
be, it is different from what is commonly called experience.
I may add, that not only the mere use of our senses cannot show
that the axioms of geometry must be true, but that, without the
light of our ideas, it cannot even show that they are true. If we
had a segment of a circle a mile long and an inch wide, we should
have two lines inclosing a space; but we could not, by seeing or
touching any part of either of them, discover that it was a bent line.
16. That mathematical truths are not derived from experience
is perhaps still more evident, if greater evidence be possible, in the
case of numbers. We assert that 7 and 8 are 15. We find it so, if
we try with counters, or in any other way. But we do not, on that
account, say that the knowledge is derived from experience. We
refer to our conceptions of seven, of eight, and of addition, and as
soon as we possess these conceptions distinctly, we see that the
sum must be fifteen. We cannot be said to make a trial, for we
should not believe the apparent result of the trial if it were different.
If any one were to say that the multiplication table is a table of
the results of experience, we should know that he could not be
able to go along with us in our researches into the foundations of
human knowledge; nor, indeed, to pursue with success any specu-
lations on the subject.
17. Attempts have also been made to explain the origin of
axiomatic truths by referring them to the association of ideas. But
this is one of the cases in which the word association has been
applied so widely and loosely, that no sense can be attached to it.
Those who have written with any degree of distinctness on the
subject, have truly taught, that the habitual association of the ideas
leads us to believe a connexion of the things: but they have never
told us that this association gave us the power of forming the ideas.
Association may deterniine belief, but it cannot determine the pos-
sibility of our conceptions. The African king did not believe that
water could become solid, because he had never seen it in that
state. But that accident did not make it impossible to conceive it
so, any more than it is impossible for us to conceive frozen quick-
silver, or melted diamond, or liquefied air; which we may never
have seen, but have no difficulty in conceiving. If there were a
tropical philosopher really incapable of conceiving water solidified,
472
APPENDIX E.
he must have been brought into that mental condition by abstruse
speculations on the necessary relations of solidity and fluidity, not
by the association of ideas.
18. To return to the results of the nature of the Fundamental
Antithesis. As by assuming universal and indissoluble connexion
of ideas with perceptions, of knowledge with experience, as an
evidence of derivation, we may assert the former to be derived from
the latter, so might we, on the same ground, assert the latter to be
derived from the former. We see all forms in space; and we
might hence assert all forms to be mere modifications of our idea
of space. We see all events happen in time; and we might hence
assert all events to be merely limitations and boundary-marks of
our idea of time. We conceive all collections of things as two or
three, or some other number: it might hence be asserted that we
have an original idea of number, which is reflected in external
things. In this case, as in the other, we are met at once by the
impossibility of this being a complete account of our knowledge.
Our ideas of space, of time, of number, however distinctly reflected
to us with limitations and modifications, must be reflected, limited
and modified by something different from themselves. We must
have visible or tangible forms to limit space, perceived events to
mark time, distinguishable objects to exemplify number. But still,
in forms, and events, and objects, we have a knowledge which they
themselves cannot give us. For we know, without attending to
them, that whatever they are, they will conform and must conform
to tlie truths of geometry and arithmetic. There is an ideal por-
tion in all our knowledge of the external world; and if we were
resolved to reduce all our knowledge to one of its two antithetical
elements, we might say that all our knowledge consists in the rela-
tion of our ideas. Wherever there is necessary truth, there must
be something more than sensation can supply: and the necessary
truths of geometry and arithmetic show us that our knowledge of
objects in space and time depends upon necessary relations of ideas,
whatever other element it may involve.
19. This remark may be carried much further than the domain
of geometry and arithmetic. Our knowledge of matter may at first
sight appear to be altogether derived from the senses. Yet we
cannot derive from the senses our knowledge of a truth which we
accept as universally certain;-namely, that we cannot by any pro-
cess add to or diminish the quantity of matter in the world. This
truth neither is nor can be derived from experience; for the experi-
ments which we make to verify it pre-suppose its truth. When .
the philosopher was asked what was the weight of smoke, he bade
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 473
the inquirer subtract the weight of the ashes from the weight of
the fuel. Every one who thinks clearly of the changes which take
place in matter, assents to the justice of this reply: and this, not
because any one had found by trial that such was the weight of the
smoke produced in combustion, but because the weight lost was
assumed to have gone into some other form of matter, not to have
been destroyed. When men began to use the balance in chemical
analysis, they did not prove by trial, but took for granted, as self-
evident, that the weight of the whole must be found in the aggre-
gate weight of the elements. Thus it is involved in the idea of
matter that its amount continues unchanged in all changes which
take place in its consistence. This is a necessary truth: and thus
our knowledge of matter, as collected from chemical experiments,
is also a modification of our idea of matter as the material of the
world incapable of addition or diminution.
20. A similar remark may be made with regard to the mecha-
nical properties of matter. Our knowledge of these is reduced, in
our reasonings, to principles which we call the laws of motion.
These laws of motion, as I have endeavoured to show', depend
upon the idea of Cause, and involve necessary truths, which are
necessarily implied in the idea of cause;-namely, that every
change of motion must have a cause—that the effect is measured
by the cause;-that re-action is equal and opposite to action.
These principles are not derived from experience. No one, I sur-
pose, would derive froni experience the principle, that every event
must have a cause. Every attempt to see the traces of cause in
the world assumes this principle. I do not say that these prin-
ciples are anterior to experience; for I have already, I hope, shown,
that neither of the two elements of our knowledge is, or can be,
anterior to the other. But the two elements are co-ordinate in the
development of the human mind; and the ideal element may be
said to be the origin of our knowledge with the more propriety
of the two, inasmuch as our knowledge is the relation of ideas.
The other element of knowledge, in which sensation is concerned,
and which embodies, limits, and defines the necessary truths which
express the relations of our ideas, may be properly termed ex-
perience; and I have, in the discussion just quoted, endeavoured
to show how the principles concerning mechanical causation,
which I have just stated, are, by observation and experiment,
limited and defined, so that they become the laws of motion,
1 Hist. Sc. Ind. b. iii,
474
APPENDIX E.
And thus we see that such knowledge is derived from ideas, in
a sense quite as general and rigorous, to say the least, as that
in which it is derived from experience.
21. I will take another example of this; although it is one less
familiar, and the consideration of it perhaps a little more difficult
and obscure. The objects which we find in the world, for in.
stance, minerals and plants, are of different kinds; and accord-
ing to their kinds, they are called by various names, by means of
which we know what we mean when we speak of them. The
discrimination of these kinds of objects, according to their differ-
ent forms and other properties, is the business of chemistry and
botany. And this business of discrimination, and of consequent
classification, has been carried on from the first periods of the
development of the human mind, by an industrious and compre-
hensive series of observations and experiments; the only way in
which any portion of the task could have been effected. But as the
foundation of all this labour, and as a necessary assumption during
every part of its progress, there has been in nien's minds the
principle, that objects are so distinguishable by resenıblances and
differences, that they may be named, and known by their names.
This principle is involved in the idea of a Name; and without
it no progress could have been made. The principle may be
briefly stated thus:-Intelligible Names of kinds are possible. If
we suppose this not to be so, language can no longer exist, nor
could the business of human life go on. If instead of having
certain definite kinds of minerals, gold, iron, copper and the like,
of which the external forms and characters are constantly con-
nected with the same properties and qualities, there were no con-
nexion between the appearance and the properties of the object;
if what seemed externally iron might turn out to resemble lead in
its hardness; and what seemed to be gold during many trials,
might at the next trial be found to be like copper; not only all the
uses of these minerals would fail, but they would not be distin-
guishable kinds of things, and the names would be unmeaning.
And if this entire uncertainty as to kind and properties prevailed:
for all objects, the world would no longer be a world to which lan-
guage was applicable. To man, thus unable to distinguish objects
into kinds, and call them by names, all knowledge would be ins-
possible, and all definite apprehension of external objects would
fade away into an inconceivable confusion. In the very apprehen-
sion of objects as intelligibly sorted, there is involved a principle
which springs within us, contemporaneous, in its efficacy, with our
first intelligent perception of the kinds of things of which the world
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 475
consists. We assume, as a necessary basis of our knowledge, that
things are of definite kinds; and the aim of chemistry, botany, and
other sciences is, to find marks of these kinds; and along with
these, to learn their definitely-distinguished properties. Even here,
therefore, where so large a portion of our knowledge comes from
experience and observation, we cannot proceed without a neces.
sary truth derived from our ideas, as our fundamental principle
of knowledge.
22. What the marks are, which distinguish the constant differ-
ences of kinds of things (definite marks, selected from among many
unessential appearances), and what their definite properties are,
when they are so distinguished, are parts of our knowledge to
be learnt froni observation, by various processes; for instance,
among others, by chemical analysis. We find the differences of
bodies, as shown by such analysis, to be of this nature:--that there
are various elementary bodies, which, combining in different definite
proportions, form kinds of bodies definitely different. But, in arriv-
ing at this conclusion, we introduce a new idea, that of Elementary
Composition, which is not extracted from the phenomena, but sup-
plied by the mind, and introduced in order to make the phenomena
intelligible. That this notion of elementary composition is not sup-
plied by the chemical phenomena of combustion, mixture, &c, as
merely an observed fact, we see from this; that men had in ancient
times performed many experiments in which elementary composition
was concerned, and had not seen the fact. It never was truly seen
till modern times; and when seen, it gave a new aspect to the whole
body of known facts. This idea of elementary composition, then, is
supplied by the mind, in order to make the facts of chemical analy-
sis and synthesis intelligible as analysis and synthesis. And this
idea being so supplied, there enters into our knowledge along with
it a corresponding necessary principle;—That the elementary com-
position of a body determines its kind and properties. This is, I
say, a principle assumed, as a consequence of the idea of composi-
tion, not a result of experience; for when bodies have been divided
into their kinds, we take for granted that the analysis of a single
specimen may serve to determine the analysis of all bodies of the
same kind: and without this assumption, chemical knowledge with
regard to the kinds of bodies would not be possible. It has been
said that we take only one experiment to determine the composition
of any particular kind of body, because we have a thousand experi-
ments to determine that bodies of the same kind have the same
composition. But this is not so. Our belief in the principle that
bodies of the same kind have the same composition is not established
476
APPENDIX E.
by experiments, but is assumed as a necessary consequence of the
ideas of Kind and of Composition. If, in our experiments, we
found that bodies supposed to be of the same kind had not the same
composition, we should not at all doubt of the principle just stated,
but conclude at once that the bodies were not of the same kind;-
that the marks by which the kinds are distinguished had been
wrongly stated. This is what has very frequently happened in the
course of the investigations of chemists and mineralogists. And
thus we have it, not as an experiential fact, but as a necessary
principle of chemical philosophy, that the Elementary Composition
of a body determines its Kind and Properties.
23. How bodies differ in their elementary composition, experi-
ment must teach us, as we have already said, that experiment has
taught us. But as we have also said, whatever be the nature of
this difference, kinds must be definite, in order that language may
be possible: and hence, whatever be the terms in which we are
taught by experiment to express the elementary composition of
bodies, the result must be conformable to this principle, That the
differences of elementary composition are definite. The law to
which we are led by experiment is, that the elements of bodies
continue in definite proportions according to weight. Experiments
add other laws; as for instance, that of multiple proportions in
different kinds of bodies composed of tb.e same elements; but of
these we do not here speak.
24. We are thus led to see that in our knowledge of mechanics,
chemistry, and the like, there are involved certain necessary princi-
ples, derired from our ideas, and not from experience. But to this
it may be objected, that the parts of our knowledge in which these
principles are involved has, in historical fact, all been acquired by
experience. The laws of motion, the doctrine of definite propor-
tions, and the like, have all become known by experiment and
observation; and so far from being seen as necessary truths, have
been discovered by long-continued labours and trials, and through
innumerable vicissitudes of confusion, error, and imperfect truth.
This is perfectly true: but does not at all disprove what has been
said. Perception of external objects and experience, experiment
and observation are needed, not only, as we have said, to supply the
objective element of all knowledge-to embody, limit, define, and
modify our ideas; but this intercourse with objects is also requisite
to unfold and fix our ideas themselves. As we have already said,
ideas and facts can never be separated. Our ideas cannot be exer-
cised and developed in any other form than in their combination
with facts, and therefore the trials, corrections, controversies, by
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 477
which the matter of our knowledge is collected, is also the only way
in which the form of it can be rightly fashioned. Experience is
requisite to the clearness and distinctness of our ideas, not because
they are derived from experience, but because they can only be
exercised upon experience. And this consideration sufficiently ex-
plains how it is that experiment and observation have been the
means, and the only means, by which men have been led to a
knowledge of the laws of nature. In reality, however, the neces-
sary principles which ilow from our ideas, and which are the basis
of such knowledge, have not only been inevitably assumed in the
course of such investigations, but have been often expressly pro-
mulgated in words by clear-minded philosophers, long before their
true interpretation was assigned by experiment. This has happened
with regard to such principles as those above mentioned; That every
event must have a cause; That reaction is equal and opposite to
action; That the quantity of matter in the world cannot be in-
creased or diminished: and there would be no difficulty in finding
similar enunciations of the other principles above mentioned ;-
That the kinds of things have definite differences, aud that these
differences depend upon their elementary composition. In general,
however, it may be allowed, that the necessary principles which
are involved in those laws of nature of which we have a knowledge
become then only clearly known, when the laws of nature are dis-
covered which thus involve tlie necessary ideal element.
25. · But since this is allowed, it may be further asked, how we
are to distinguish between the necessary principle which is derived
from our ideas, and the law of nature which is learnt by experience.
And to this we reply, that the necessary principle may be known by
the condition which we have already mentioned as belonging to such
principles :... that it is impossible distinctly to conceive the contrary.
We cannot conceive an event without a cause, except we abandon
all distinct idea of cause; we cannot distinctly conceive two straight
lines inclosing space; and if we seem to conceive this, it is only
because we conceive indistinctly. We cannot conceive 5 and 3
making 7 or 9; if a person were to say that he could conceive this,
we should know that he was a person of immature or rude or be-
wildered ideas, whose conceptions had no distinctness. And thus
we may take it as the mark of a necessary truth, that we cannot
conceive the contrary distinctls.
26. If it be asked what is the test of distinct conception (since
it is upon the distinctness of conception that the matter depends),
we may consider what answer we should give to this question if it
were asked with regard to the truths of geometry. If we doubted
478
APPENDIX E.
whether any one had these distinct conceptions which enable him to
see the necessary nature of geometrical truth, we should inquire if
he could understand the axions as axioms, and could follow, as
demonstrative, the reasonings which are founded upon them. If
this were so, we should be ready to pronounce that he had distinct
ideas of space, in the sense now supposed. And the same answer
may be given in any other case. That reasoner has distinct concep-
tions of mechanical causes who can see the axioms of mechanics as
axioms, and can follow the demonstrations derived from them as
demonstrations. If it be said that the science, as presented to him,
may be erroneously constructed; that the axioms may not be axioms,
and therefore the demonstrations may be futile, we still reply, that
the same might be said with regard to geometry: and yet that the
possibility of this does not lead us to doubt either of the truth or of
the necessary nature of the propositions contained in Euclid's Ele-
ments. We may add further, that although, no doubt, the authors
of elementary books may be persons of confused minds, who present
as axioms what are not axiomatic truths; yet that in general, what
is presented as an axiom by a thoughtful nian, though it may include
some false interpretation or application of our ideas, will also gene-
rally include some principle which really is necessarily true, and
which would still be involved in the axiom, if it were corrected
so as to be true instead of false. And thus we still say, that if
in any department of science a man can conceive distinctly at all,
there are principles the contrary of which he cannot distinctly con-
ceive, and which are therefore necessary truths.
27. But on this it may be asked, whether truth can thus depend
upon the particular state of mind of the person who contemplates
it; and whether that can be a necessary truth which is not so to all
men. And to this we again reply, by referring to geometry and
arithmetic. It is plain that truths may be necessary truths which
are not so to all men, when we include men of confused and per-
plexed intellects; for to such men it is not a necessary truth that
two straight lines cannot inclose a space, or that 14 and 17 are 31.
It need not be wondered at, therefore, if to such men it does not
appear a necessary truth that reaction is equal and opposite to
action, or that the quantity of matter in the world cannot be
increased or diminished. And this view of knowledge and truth
does not make it depend upon the state of mind of the student, any
more than geometrical knowledge and geometrical truth, by the
confession of all, depend upon that state. We know that a man
cannot have any knowledge of geometry without so much of atten-
tion to the matter of the science, and so much of care in the
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 479
management of his own thoughts, as is requisite to keep his ideas
distinct and clear. But we do not, on that account, think of main-
taining that geometrical truth depends merely upon the state of
the student's mind. We conceive that he knows it because it is
true, not that it is true because he knows it. We are not surprised
that attention and care and repeated thought should be requisite to
the clear apprehension of truth. For such care and such repetition
are requisite to the distinctness and clearness of our ideas : and yet
the relations of these ideas, and their consequences, are not pro-
duced by the efforts of attention or repetition which we exert.
They are in themselves something which we may discover, but
cannot make or change. The idea of space, for instance, which is
the basis of geometry, cannot give rise to any doubtful propositions.
What is inconsistent with the idea of space cannot be truly obtained
from our ideas by any efforts of thought or curiosity; if we blunder
into any conclusion inconsistent with the idea of space, our know-
ledge, so far as this goes, is no knowledge: any more than our
observation of the external world would be knowledge, if, from
haste or inattention, or imperfection of sense, we were to mistake
the object which we see before us.
28. But further: not only has truth this reality, which makes it
independent of our mistakes, that it must be what is really con-
sistent with our ideas; but also, a further reality, to which the
term is more obviously applicable, arising from the principle already
explained, that ideas and perceptions are inseparable. For since,
when we contemplate our ideas, they have been frequently.em-
bodied and exemplified in objects, and thus have been fixed and
modified; and since this compound aspect is that under which we
constantly have them before us, and free from which they cannot
be exhibited; our attempts to make our ideas clear and distinct
will constantly lead us to contemplate them as they are manifested
in those external forms in which they are involved. Thus in study-
ing geometrical truth, we shall be led to contemplate it as exhi-
bited in visible and tangible figures;—not as if these could be
sources of truth, but as enabling us more readily to compare the
aspects which our ideas, applied to the world of objects, may
assume. And thus we have an additional indication of the reality
of geometrical truth, in the necessary possibility of its being capable
of being exhibited in a visible or tangible form. And yet even this
test by no means supersedes the necessity of distinct ideas, in order
to a knowledge of geometrical truth. For in the case of the dupli.
cation of the cube by Hobbes, mentioned above, the diagram which
he drew made two points appear to coincide, wbich did not really,
480
APPENDIX E.
and by the nature of our idea of space, coincide; and thus con-
firmed him in his error.
Thus the inseparable nature of the Fundamental Antithesis of
Ideas and Things gives reality to our knowledge, and makes objec-
tive reality a corrective of our subjective imperfections in the pursuit
of knowledge. But this objective exhibition of knowledge can by no
means supersede a complete development of the subjective condition,
namely, distinctness of ideas. And that there is a subjective condi-
tion, by no means makes knowledye altogether subjective, and thus
deprives it of reality ; because, as we have said, the subjective and
the objective elements are inseparably bound together in the funda-
mental antithesis.
29. It would be easy to apply these remarks to other cases, for
instance, to the case of the principle we have just mentioned, that
the differences of elementary composition of different kinds of bodies
must be definite. We have stated that this principle is necessarily
true;—that the contrary proposition cannot be distinctly conceived.
But by whoni? Evidently, according to the preceding reasoning, by
a person who distinctly conceives Kinds, as marked by intelligible
names, and Composition, as determining the kinds of bodies. Per-
sons new to chemical and classificatory science may not possess
these ideas distinctly; or rather, cannot possess them distinctly;
and therefore cannot apprehend the impossibility of conceiving the
opposite of the above principle; just as the schoolboy cannot appre-
hend the impossibility of the numbers in bis multiplication table
being other than they are. But this inaptitude to conceive, in
either case, does not alter the necessary character of the truth:
although, in one case, the truth is obvious to all except schoolboys
and the like, and the other is probably not clear to any except those
who have attentively studied the philosophy of elementary com-
positions. At the same time, this difference of apprehension of the
truth in different persons does not make the truth doubtful or
dependent upon personal qualifications; for in proportion as per-
sons attain to distinct ideas, they will see the truth; and cannot,
with such ideas, see anything as truth which is not truth. When
the relations of elements in a compound become as familiar to a
person as the relations of factors in a multiplication table, he will
then see what are the necessary axioms of chemistry, as he now sees
the necessary axioms of arithmetic.
30. There is also one other remark which I will here make. In
the progress of science, both the elements of our knowledge are
constantly expanded and augmented. By the exercise of observa-
tion and experiment, we have a perpetual accumulation of facts, the
FUNDAMENTAL ANTITHESIS OF PHILOSOPHY. 481
materials of knowledge, the objective element. By thought and
discussion, we have a perpetual development of man's ideas going
on: theories are framed, the materials of knowledge are shaped into
form; the subjective element is evolved ; and by the necessary
coincidence of the objective and subjective elements, the matter and
the form, the theory and the facts, each of these processes furthers
and corrects the other: each element moulds and unfolds the other.
Now it follows, from this constant development of the ideal portion
of our knowledge, that we shall constantly be brought in view of
new Necessary Principles, the expression of the conditions belong.
ing to the Ideas which enter into our expanding knowledge. These
principles, at first dimly seen and hesitatingly asserted, at last be-
come clearly and plainly self-evident. Such is the case with the
principles which are the basis of the laws of motion. Such may
soon be the case with the principles which are the basis of the
philosophy of chemistry. Such may hereafter be the case with
the principles which are to be the basis of the philosophy of the
connected and related polarities of chemistry, electricity, galvanism,
magnetism. That knowledge is possible in these cases, we know;
that our knowledge may be reduced to principles, gradually more
simple, we also know; that we have reached the last stage of
simplicity of our principles, few cultivators of the subject will be
disposed to maintain; and that the additional steps which lead
towards very simple and general principles will also lead to prin-
ciples which recommend themselves by a kind of axiomatic charac-
ter, those who judge from the analogy of the past history of science
will hardly doubt. That the principles thus axiomatic in their
form, do also express some relation of our ideas, of which experi-
ment and observation have given a true and real interpretation,
is the doctrine which I have here attempted to establish and illus-
trate in the most clear and undoubted of the existing sciences; and
the evidence of this doctrine in those cases seems to be unexcep-
tionable, and to leave no room to doubt that such is the universal
type of the progress of science. Such a doctrine, as we have now
seen, is closely connected with the views here presented of the
nature of the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy, which I have
endeavoured to illustrate.
II
APPENDIX F.
REMARKS ON A REVIEW OF THE PHILO-
SOPHY OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES.
Trinity Ludge, April 11th, 1844.
MY DEAR HERSCHEL,
REING about to send you a copy of a paper on a philosophical
question just printed in the Transactions of our Cambridge
Society, I am tempted to add, as a private communication, a few
Remarks on another aspect of the same question. These Remarks
I think I may properly address to you. They will refer to an
Article in the Quarterly Review for June, 1841, respecting my
History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences; and without
assigning any other reason, I may say that the interest I know you
to take in speculations on such subjects makes me confident that
you will give a reasonable attention to what I may have to say on
the subject of that Article. With the Reviewal itself, I am so far
from having any quarrel, that when it appeared I received it as
affording all that I hoped from Public Criticism. The degree and
the kind of admiration bestowed upon my works by a writer so
familiar with science, so comprehensive in his views, and so equit-
able in his decisions, as the Reviewer 'manifestly was, I accepted
as giving my work a stamp of acknowledged value which few other
hands could have bestowed.
You may perhaps recollect, however, that the Reviewer dissented
altogether from some of the general views which I had maintained,
and especially from a general view which is also, in the main,
that presented in the accompanying Memoir, namely, that, besides
Facts, Ideas are an indispensable source of our knowledge; that
Ideas are the ground of necessary truth; that the Idea of Space, in
particular, is the ground of the necessary truths of geometry. This
question, and especially as limited to the last form, will be the sub-
ject of my Remarks in the first place; and I wish to consider the
Reviewer's objections with the respect which their subtlety and
depth of thought well deserye.
REMARKS ON A REVIEW, &c.
483
The Reviewer makes objections to the account which I have
given of the source whence geometrical truth derives its characters
of being necessary and universal; but he is not one of those meta-
physicians who deny those characters to the truths of geometry.
He allows in the most ample manner that the truths of geometry
are necessary. The question between us therefore is from what
this character is derived. The Reviewer prefers, indeed, to have it
considered that the question is not concerning the necessity, but, as
he says, the universality of these truths; or rather, the nature and
grounds of our conviction of their universality. He might have
said, with equal justice, the nature and grounds of our conviction
of their necessity. For his objection to the term necessity in this
case" that all the propositions about realities are necessarily true,
since every reality must be consistent with itself,”' (p. 206)-does not
apply to our conviction of necessity, since we may not be able to
see what are the properties of real things; and therefore may have
no conviction of their necessity. It may be a necessary property of
salt to be soluble, but we see no such necessity; and therefore the
assertion of such a property is not one of the necessary truths with
which we are here concerned. But to turn back to the necessary
or universal truths of geometry, and the ground of those attributes :
The main difference between the Author and the Reviewer is
brought into view, when the Reviewer discusses the general argu-
ment which I had used, in order to show that truths which we see
to be necessary and universal cannot be derived from experience.
The argument is this,
“ Experience must always consist of a limited number of observa-
tions; and however numerous these may be, they can show nothing
with regard to the infinite number of cases in which the experiment
has not been made.... Truths can only be known to be general, not
universal, if they depend upon experience alone. Experience can-
not bestow that universality which she herself cannot have; nor
that necessity of which she has no comprehension.” (Phil. 1. pp.
60, 61.)
Here is that which must be considered as the cardinal argument
on this subject. It is therefore important to attend to the answer
which the Reviewer makes to it. He says,
“We conceive that a full answer to this argument is afforded by
the nature of the inductive propensity -- by the irresistible impulse
of the mind to generalize ad infinitum, when nothing in the nature
of limitation or opposition offers itself to the imagination; and by
our involuntary application of the law of continuity to fill up, by
the same ideal substance of truth, every interval which uncontra-
II 2
484
APPENDIX F.
dicted experience may have left blank in our inductive conclusion.”
(p. 207.)
Now here we have two rival explanations of the same thing,
the conviction of the universality of geometrical truths. The one
explanation is, that this universality is imposed upon such truths
by their involving a certain element, derived from the universal
mode of activity of the mind when apprehending such truths, which
element I have termed an Idea. The other explanation is, that this
universality arises from the inductive propensity--from the irresist-
ible impulse to generalize ad infinitum-from the involuntary appli-
cation of the law of continuity-from the filling up all intervals with
the same ideal substance of truth.
· With regard to these two explanations, I may observe, that so
far as they are thus stated they do not necessarily differ. They
both agree in expressing this; that the ground of the universality
of geometrical truthis is a certain law of tbe mind's activity, wbich
determines its procedure when it is concerned in apprehending the
external world. One explanation says, that we impress upon the
external world the relations of our ideas, and thus believe more
than we see,--the other says, that we have an irresistible impulse
to introduce into our conviction a relation between what we do
observe and what we do not, namely, to generalize ad infinitum
from what we do see. One explanation says, that we perceive all
external objects as included in absolute ideal space,-the other,
that we fill up the intervals of the objects which we perceive with
the same ideal substance of truth. Both sets of expressions may
perhaps be admissible; and if admitted, may be understood as ex-
pressing the same opinions, or opinions which have much in com-
mon. The Author's expressions have the advantage, which ought
to belong to them, as the expressions employed in a systematic
work, of being fixed expressions, technical phrases, intentionally
selected, uniformly and steadily employed whenever the occasion
recurs. The Reviewer's expressions are more lively and figurative,
and such as well become an occasional composition; but hardly
such as could be systematically applied to the subject in a regular
treatise. We could not, as a standard and technical phrase, talk of
filling up the intervals of observation with the same ideal substance
of truth; and the inevitable impulse to generalize would hardly
sufficiently express that we generalize according to a certain idea,
namely, the idea of space. Perhaps that which is suggested to us
as the common import of the two sets of expressions may be con-
veyed by some other phrase, in a nianner free from the objections
which lie against both the Author's and the Critic's terms. Perhaps
REMARKS ON A REVIEW, &c.
485
the mental idea governing our experience, and the irresistible im-
pulse to generalize our observation, may both be superseded by our
speaking of a law of the mind's activity, which is really implied in
both. There operates, in observing the external world, a law of
the mind's activity, by which it connects its observations; and this
law of the mind's activity may be spoken of either as the idea of
space, or as the irresistible impulse to generalize the relations of
space which it observes. And this expression—the laws of the
mind's activity—thus opposed to that werely passive function by
which the mind receives the impressions of sense, may be applied to
other ideas as well as to the idea of space, and to the impulse to
generalize in other truths as well as those of geometry.
So far, it would seen, that the Author and the Critic may be brought
into much nearer agreement than at first seemed likely, with regard
to the grounds of the necessity and universality in our knowledge.
But even if we adopt this conciliatory suggestion, and speak of the
necessity and universality of certain truths as arising from the laws
of the mind's activity, we cannot, without producing great con-
fusion, allow ourselves to say, as the Critic says, that these truths
are thus derived from experience, or from observation. It will, I
say, be found fatal to all philosophical precision of thought and
language, to say that the fundamental truths of geometry, the
axions, with the conviction of their necessary truth, are derived
from experience. Let us take any axiomatic truth of geometry,
and ask ourselves if this is not so.
It is, for example, an axiom in geometry that if a straight line.
cut one of two parallel straight lines, it must cut the other also.
Is this truth derived or derivable from observation of actual parallel
lines, and a line cutting them, exhibited to our senses ? Let those
who say that we do acquire this truth by observation, imagine
to themselves the mode in which the observation must be made.
We have before us two parallel straight lines, and we see that a
straight line which cuts the one cuts the other also. We see this
again in another case, it may be the angles and the distances being
different, and in a third, and in a fourth; and so on; and generaliz-
ing, we are irresistibly led to believe the assertion to be universally
true. But can any one really imagine this to be the mode in whiclı
we arrive at this truth? “We see," says this explanation, “two
parallel straight lines, cut by a third.” But how do we know that
the observed lines are parallel? If we apply any test of parallelism,
we must assume some property of parallels, and thus involve some
axiom on the subject, which we have no more right to assume than
the one now under consideration. We should thus destroy our
486
APPENDIX F.
explanation as an account of the mode of arriving at independent
geometrical axioms. But probably those who would give such an
explanation would not do this. They would not suppose that in
observing this property of parallels we try by measurement whether
the lines are parallel. They would say, I conceive, that we suppose
lines to be parallel, and that then we see that the straight line
which cuts the one must cut the other. That when we make this
supposition, we are persuaded of the truth of the conclusion, is
certain. But what I have to remark is, that this being so, the con.
clusion is the result, not of observation, but of the hypothesis.
The geometrical truth here spoken of, after this admission, no
longer flows from experience, but from supposition. It is not that
we ascertain the lines to be parallel, and then find that they have
this property: but we suppose the lines to be parallel, and therefore
they have this property. This is not a truth of experience.
This, it may be said, is so evident that it cannot have been over-
looked by a very acute reasoner, such as you describe your Critic to
be. What, it may be asked, is the answer which he gives to so
palpable an objection as this? How does he understand his asser-
tion that we learn the truth of geometrical axioms from experience
(p. 208), so as to make it tenable on his own principles? What
account does he give of the origin of such axioms which makes them
in any sense to be derived from experience?
In justice to the Reviewer's fairness (which is unimpeachable
throughout his argumentation) it must be stated that he does give
an account in which he professes to show how this is done. And
the main step of his explanation consists in introducing the con-
ception of direction, and unity of direction. He says (p. 208), “The
unity of direction, or that we cannot march from a given point by
more than one path direct to the same object, is a matter of practical
experience, long before it can by possibility become matter of ab.
stract thought.” We might ask here, as in the former case, how
this can be a matter of experience, except we have some independ-
ent test of directness ? and we might demand to know what this
test is. Or do we not rather, here as in the other case, suppose the
directness of the path; and is not the singleness of the direct path
a consequence, not of its observed form, but of its hypothetical di-
rectness; and thus by no means a result of experience? But we
may put our remark upon this deduction of the geometrical axiom
in another form. We generalize, it is said, the observations which
we have made ever since we were born. But this term "generalize”
is far too vague to pass for an explanation, without being itself ex-
plained. We are impelled to believe that to be true in general
REMARKS ON A REVIEW, &c.
487
which we see to be true in particular. But how do we see any
truth ? How do we pick out any proposition with respect to a
diagram which we see before us? We see in particular, and state
in general, some truth respecting straight lines, or parallel lines, or
concerning direction. But where do we find the conception of
straightness, or parallelism, or direction? These conceptions are
not upon the surface of things. The child does not, from his birth,
see straightness and parallelism so as to know that he sees them.
How then does his experience bear upon a proposition in which
these conceptions are involved ? It is said that it is a matter of
experience long before it is a matter of abstract thought. But how
can there be any experience by which we learn these properties of
a straight line, till our thoughts are at least so abstract as to con-
ceive what straightness is? If it be said that this conception grows
with our experience, and is gradually unfolded with our unfolding
materials of knowledge, so as to give import and significance to
them: I need make no objection to such a statement, except this
that this power of unfolding out of the mind conceptions which give
meaning to our experience, is something in addition to the mere
employment of our senses upon the external world. It is what I
have called the ideal part of our knowledge. It implies, not only
an impulse to generalize from experience, but also an impulse to
form conceptions by which generalization is possible. It requires,
not only that nothing should oppose the tendency, but that the
direction in which the tendency is to operate should be determined
by the laws of the mind's activity; by an internal, not by an ex-
ternal agency.
One main ground on which the Reviewer is disposed to quarrel
with and reject several of the expressions used in the Philosophy ;-
such as that space is an idea, a form of our perception, and the
like,-is this; that such expressions appear to deprive the external
world of its reality; to make it, or at least most of its properties, &
creation of the observing mind. He quotes the following argument
which is urged in the Philosophy, in order to prove that space is
not a notion obtained from experience:“Experience gives us infor-
mation concerning things without us, but our apprehending them
as without us takes for granted their existence in space. Experience
acquaints us with the form, position, magnitude, &c. of particular
objects, but that they have form, position, magnitude, pre-supposes
that they are in space.” From this statement he altogether dissents.
No, says he, “the reason why we apprehend things as without us is
that they are without us. We take for granted that they exist in
space, because they do so exist, and because such their existence is
488.
APPENDIX F.
.
a matter of direct perception, which can neither be explained in
words nor contravened in imagination: because, in short, space is a
reality, and not a mere matter of convention or imagination."
Now, if by calling space an idea, we suggest any doubt of its
reality and of the reality of the external world, we certainly run the
risk of misleading our readers; for the external world is real if
anything be real: the bodies which exist in space are things, if
things are anywhere to be found. That bodies do exist in space,
and that that is the reason why we apprehend them as existing
in space, I readily grant. But I conceive that the term Idea ought
not to suggest any such doubt of the reality of the knowledge in
which it is involved. Ideas are always, in our knowledge, conjoined
with facts. Our real knowledge is knowledge, because it involves
ideas, real, because it involves facts. We apprehend things as ex-
isting in space because they do so exist: and our idea of space
enables us so to observe them, and so to conceive them.
But we want, further, a reason why, apprehending them as they
are, we also apprehend, that in certain relations they could not be
otherwise (that two straight linear objects could not inclose a space,
for instance). This circumstance is no way accounted for by saying
that we apprehend them as they are; and is, I presume to say, in-
explicable, except by supposing that it arises from some property
of the observing mind :-an Idea, as I have termed it,-an irresis-
tible Impulse to generalize, as the Reviewer expresses it. Or, as
I have suggested, we may adopt a third phrase, a Law of the
mind's activity: and in order that no question may remain, whe-
ther we ascribe reality to the objects and relations which we ob-
serve, we may describe it as “a Law of the mind's activity in
apprehending what is.” And thus the real existence of the object,
and the ideal element which our apprehension of it introduces,
would both be clearly asserted.
I am ready to use expressions which recognize the reality of space
and other external things more emphatically than those expressions
which I have employed in the Philosophy, if expressions can be
found which, while they do this, enable us to explain the possibility
of knowledge, and to analyze the structure of truth. It is, indeed,
extremely difficult to find, in speaking of this subject, expressions
which are satisfactory. The reality of the objects which we per.
ceive is a profound, apparently an insoluble problem. We cannot
but suppose that existence is something different from our know-
U
1 These remarks were written in 1841. The accompanying Memoir con-
tains a further discussion of this problem,
REMARKS ON A REVIEW, &c.
480
ledge of existence: that which exists, does not exist merely in our
knowing that it does :-truth is truth whether we know it or not.
Yet how can we conceive truth, otherwise than as something known?
How can we conceive things as existing, without conceiving them
as objects of perception ? Ideas and Things are constantly opposed,
yet necessarily co-existent. How they are thus opposite and yet
identical, is the ultimate problem of all philosophy. The successive
phases of philosophy have consisted in separating and again uniting
these two opposite elements; in dwelling sometimes upon the one
and sometimes upon the other, as the principal or original or only
element; and then in discovering that such an account of the state
of the case was insufficient. Knowledge requires ideas. Reality
requires things. Ideas and things co-exist. Truth is, and is known.
But the complete explanation of these points appears to be beyond
our reach. At least it is not necessary for the purposes of our
philosophy. The separation of ideas and sensations in order to
discover the conditions of knowledge is our main task. How ideas
and sensations are united so as to form things, does not so inme-
diately concern us.
I have stated that we may, without giving up any material por-
tion of the Philosophy of Science to which I have been led,
express the conclusions in other phraseology; and that instead of
saying that all our knowledge involves certain Fundamental Ideas,
the sources from which all universal truth is derived, we may say
that there are certain Laws of Mental Activity according to which
alone all the real relations of things are apprehended. If this
alteration in the phraseology will niake the doctrines more generally
intelligible or acceptable, there is no reason why it should not be
adopted. But I may remark, that a main purpose of the Philo-
sophy was not merely to prove that there are such Fundamental
Ideas or Laws of mental activity, but to enumerate those of them
which are involved in the existing sciences; and to state the funda-
mental truths to which the fundamental ideas lead. This was the
task which was attempted; and if this have been executed with any
tolerable success, it may perhaps be received as a contribution to
the philosophy of science, of which the value is not small, in what-
erer terms it be expressed. And this enumeration of fundamental
ideas, and of truths derived from them, must have something to
correspond to it, in any other mode of expressing that view of the
nature of knowledge which we are led to adopt. If instead of
Fundamental Ideas, we speak of Impulses of generalization, or of
Laws of mental activity, we must still distinguish such Impulses,
or such Lays, according to the distinotions of ideas to which the
490
APPENDIX F.
survey of science led us. We shall thus have a series of groups of
Laws, or of classes of generalizing Impulses, corresponding to the
series of Fundamental Ideas already given. If we employ the
language of the Reviewer, we shall have one generalizing Impulse
which suggests relations of Space; another which directs as to
properties of Numbers ; another which deals with Time; another
with Cause: another which groups objects according to Likeness;
another which suggests a purpose as a necessary relation among
them; to which may be added, even while we confine ourselves to
the physical sciences, several others, as may be seen in the Philo-
sophy. Now when the fundamental conditions and elements of
truth are thus arranged into groups, it is not a matter of so much
consequence to decide whether each group shall be said to be bound
together by an idea or by an impulse of generalization; as it is to
see that, if this happen in virtue of ideas, here are so many distinct
ideas which enter into the structure of science, and give universality
to its matter; and again, if this happen in virtue of an irresistible
impulse of generalization in each case, we have so many different
kinds of impulses of generalization. The main purpose in the
Philosophy was to analyze scientific truth into its conditions and
elements; and I did not content myself with saying that those ele-
ments are Sensations and Ideas; the Ideas being that element
which makes universal knowledge conceivable and possible. I went
further: I enumerated the Ideas which thus enter into science. I
showed that in the sciences which I passed in review, the most
acute and profound inquirers had taken for granted that certain
truths in each science are of universal and necessary validity, and
I endeavoured to select the idea in which this universality and
necessity resided, and to separate it from all other ideas involved
in other sciences. If therefore it be thought better to say that those
principles in each science upon which, as upon the axioms in geo-
metry, the universality and necessity of scientific truth depends, are
arrived at, not by ideas, but by an irresistible impulse of generali-
zation, those who employ such phraseology, if they make a classifi-
cation of such impulses corresponding to my classification of ideas,
will still adopt the greater part of my philosophy, altering only the
phraseology. Or if, as I suggested, instead of “Fundamental
Ideas," we use the phrase “ Laws of Mental Activity,” then our
primary intellectual Code-the Constitution of our minds, as it
may be termed-will consist of a Body of Laws of which the Titles
correspond with the Fundamental Ideas of the Philosophy.
My object was, from the writings of the most sagacious and pro-
found philosophers who have laboured on each science, to extract.
REMARKS ON A REVIEW, &c.
491
such a code, such a constitution. If I have in any degree succeeded
in this, the result must have a reality and a value independently of
all forms of expression. Still I do not think that any language can
ever serve for such legislation, in which the two elements of truth
are not distinguished. Even if we adopt the phraseology which I
have just employed, we shall have to recollect that Law and Fact
must be kept distinct, and that the Constitution has its Principles
as well as its History.
But I will not longer detain you by seeking other modes of ex-
pressing the Fundamental Antithesis to which the accompanying
Memoir refers. The Remarks which I here send you were written
three years ago, on the appearance of the Review which I have
quoted. If I succeed in obtaining for them a few minutes' atten-
tion from you and a few other friends, I shall be glad that they
have been preserved.
I ann, my dear Herschel,
always truly yours,
W. WHEWELL.
P.S. I have abstained from sending you a large portion of my
Remarks as originally written. I had gone on to show that, in
my Philosophy, I had not only enumerated and analyzed a great
number of different Fundamental Ideas which belong to the different
existing sciences, but that I had also shown in what manner these
ideas enter into their respective sciences; namely, by the statement
or use of Axioms, which involve the ideas, and which form the basis
of each science when systematically exhibited. A number of these
Axioms belonging to most of the physical sciences, are stated in the
Philosophy. I might have added also that I have attempted to clas-
sify the historical steps by which such Axioms are brought into
view and applied. But it is not necessary to dwell upon these
points, in order to illustrate the difference and the agreement
between the Reviewer and me..
Sir John F. W. Herschel, Bart. &c.
APPENDIX G.
OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF HYPO-
THESES IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. May 19, 1851.)
1. THE history of science suggests the reflection tliat it is very
difficult for the same person at the sanje time to do justice
to two couflicting theories. Take for example the Cartesian bypo-
thesis of vortices and the Newtonian doctrine of universal grari-
tation. The adherents of the earlier opinion resisted the evidence
of the Newtonian theory with a degree of obstinacy and captious-
ness which now appears to us quite marvellous: while on the other
hand, since the complete triumph of the Newtonians, they have
been unwilling to allow any merit at all to the doctrine of vortices.
It cannot but seem strange, to a calm observer of such changes,
that in a matter which depends upon mathematical proofs, the
whole body of the mathematical world should pass over, as in this
and similar cases they seem to have done, from an opinion con-
fidently held, to its opposite. No doubt this must be, in part,
ascribed to the lasting effects of education and early prejudice.
The old opinion passes away with the old generation: the new
theory grows to its full vigour when its congenital disciples grow
to be masters. John Bernoulli continues a Cartesian to the last;
Daniel, his son, is a Newtonian from the first. Newton's doctrines
are adopted at once in England, for they are the solution of a pro-
blem at which his contemporaries have been labouring for years.
They find no adherents in France, where Descartes is supposed to
have already explained the constitution of the world; and Fon-
tenelle, the secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, dies a
Cartesian seventy years after the publication of Newton's Principia.
This is, no doubt, a part of the explanation of the pertinacity with
which opinions are held, both before and after a scientific revolu-
tion: but this is not the whole, nor perhaps the most instructive
aspect of the subject. There is another feature in the change,
TRANSFORMATION OF HYPOTHESES, &C. 493
which explains, in some degree, how it is possible that, in subjects,
mainly at least mathematical, and therefore claiming demonstrative
evidence, mathematicians should hold different and even opposite
opinions. And the object of the present paper is to point out this
feature in the successions of theories, and to illustrate it by some
prominent examples drawn from the history of science.
2. The feature to which I refer is this; that when a prevalent
theory is found to be untenable, and consequently, is succeeded by
a different, or even by an opposite one, the change is not made
suddenly, or completed at once, at least in the minds of the most
tenacious adherents of the earlier doctrine; but is effected by a
transformation, or series of transformations, of the earlier hypo-
thesis, by means of which it is gradually brought nearer and
nearer to the second; and thus, the defenders of the ancient doc-
trine are able to go on as if still asserting their first opinions, and
to continue to press their points of advantage, if they have any,
against the new theory. They borrow, or imitate, and in some
way accommodate to their original hypothesis, the new explana-
tions which the new theory gives, of the observed facts; and thus
they maintain a sort of verbal consistency; till the original hypo-
thesis becomes inextricably confused, or breaks down under the
weight of the auxiliary hypotheses thus fastened upon it, in order
to make it consistent with the facts.
This often-occurring course of events might be illustrated from
the history of the astronomical theory of epicycles and eccentrics,
as is well known. But my present purpose is to give one or two
brief illustrations of a somewhat similar tendency from other parts
of scientific history; and in the first place, from that part which
has already been referred to, the battle of the Cartesian and New-
tonian systems.
3. The part of the Cartesian system of vortices rhich is most
familiarly known to general readers is the explanation of the motions
of the planets by supposing them carried round the sun by.a kind of
whirlpool of fluid matter in which they are immersed: and the ex-
planation of the motions of the satellites round their primaries by
similar subordinate whirlpools, turning round the primary, and
carried, along with it, by the primary vortex. But it should be
borne in mind that a part of the Cartesian hypothesis which was
considered quite as important as the cosmical explanation, was the
'explanation which it was held to afford of terrestrial gravity. Ter-
restrial gravity was asserted to arise from the motion of the vortex
of subtle matter which revolved round the earth's axis and filled
the surrounding space. It was maintairied tbat by the rotation of
494
APPENDIX G.
such a vortex, the particles of the subtle matter would exert &
centrifugal force, and by virtue of that force, tend to recede from
the center: and it was held that all bodies which were near the
earth, and therefore immersed in the vortex, would be pressed to-
wards the center by the effort of the subtle matter to recede from
the center,
These two assumed effects of the Cartesian vortices—to carry
bodies in their stream, as straws are carried round by a whirlpool,
and to press bodies to the center by the centrifugal effort of the
whirling matter-must be considered separately, because they were
modified separately, as the progress of discussion drove the Carte-
sians from point to point. The former effect indeed, the dragging
force of the vortex, as we may call it, would not bear working out
on mechanical principles at all; for as soon as the law of motion
was acknowledged (which Descartes himself was one of the loudest
in proclaiming), that a body in motion keeps all the motion which it
has, and receives in addition all that is impressed upon it; as soon,
in short, as philosophers rejected the notion of an inertness in
matter which constantly retards its movements,—it was plain that
a planet perpetually dragged onwards in its orbit by a fluid moving
quicker than itself, must be perpetually accelerated; and therefore
could not follow those constantly-recurring cycles of quicker and
slower motion which the planets exhibit to us.
The Cartesian mathematicians, then, left untouched the calcu-
lation of the progressive motion of the planets; and, clinging to
the assumption that a vortex would produce a tendency of bodies
to the center, made various successive efforts to construct their
vortices in such a manner that the centripetal forces produced by
then should coincide with those which the phenomena required,
and therefore of course, in the end, with those which the Newtonian
theory asserted.
In truth, the Cartesian vortex was a bad piece of machinery for
producing a central force : from the first, objections were made to
the sufficiency of its mechanism, and most of these objections were
very unsatisfactorily answered, even granting the additional machi-
nery which its defenders demanded. One formidable objection was
soon started, and continued to the last to be the torment of the
Cartesians. If terrestrial gravity, it was urged, arise from the
centrifugal force of a vortex which revolves about the earth's axis,
terrestrial gravity ought to act in planes perpendicular to the
i Cartes. Princip, iF. 23.
TRANSFORMATION OF HYPOTHESES, &c. 495
earth's axis, instead of tending to the earth's center. This objec-
tion was taken by James Bernoulli?, and by Huyghens: not long
after the publication of Descartes's Principia. Huyghens (who
adopted the theory of vortices with modifications of his own) sup-
poses that there are particles of the fluid matter which move about
the earth in every possible direction, within the spherical space
which includes terrestrial objects; and that the greater part of
these motions being in spherical surfaces concentric with the earth,
produces a tendency towards the earth’s center.
This was a procedure tolerably arbitrary, but it was the best
which could be done. Saurin, a little later*, gave nearly the same
solution of this difficulty. The solution, identifying a vortex of
some kind with a central force, made the hypothesis of vortices
applicable wherever central forces existed; but then, in return, it
deprived the image of a vortex of all that clearness and simplicity
which had been its first great recommendation.
But still there remained difficulties not less formidable. Accord.
ing to this explanation of gravity, since the tendency of bodies to
the earth's center arose from the superior centrifugal force of the
whirling matter which pushed them inward as water pushes a light
body upward, bodies ought to tend more strongly to the center in
proportion as they are less dense. The rarest bodies should be the
heaviest; contrary to what we find.
Descartes's original solution of this difficulty has a certain degree
of ingenuity. According to him (Princip. IV. 23) a terrestrial body
consists of particles of the third element, and the more it has of such
particles, the more it excludes the parts of the celestial matter,
from the revolution of which matter gravity arises; and therefore
the denser is the terrestrial body, and the heavier it will be.
But though this inight satisfy him, it could not satisfy the mathe-
maticians who followed him, and tried to reduce his system to
calculation on mechanical principles. For how could they do this,
if the celestial matter, by the operation of which the phenomena of
force and motion were produced, was so entirely different from
ordinary matter, which alone had supplied men with experimental
2 Jac. Bernoulli, Nouvelles Pénsces
sur le Système de M. Descartes, op. t.
i. p. 239 (1686).
3 De la cause de la Pesantcur (1689),
P. 135.
4 Journal des Savans, 1703. Mém,
Acad. Par. 1709.
Bulfinger, in 1726 (Acad. Petrop.),
conceived that by makivg a sphere
revolve at the same time about two
axes at right angles to each other,
every particle would describe a great
circle; but this is not so.
496
APPENDIX G.
illustrations of mechanical principles? In order that the celestial
matter, by its whirling, might produce the gravity of heavy bodies,
it was mechanically necessary that it must be very dense; and dense
in the ordinary sense of the term; for it was by regarding density
in the ordinary sense of the term that the mechanical necessity had
been established,
The Cartesians tried to escape this result (Huyghens, Pesanteur,
p. 161, and John Bernoulli, Nouvelles Pensées, Art, 31) by saying
that there were two meanings of density and rarity; that some
fluids might be rare by having their particles far asunder, others, by
having their particles very small though in contact. But it is diffi-
cult to think that they could, as persons well acquainted with
mechanical principles, satisfy themselves with this distinction; for
they could hardly fail to see that the mechanical effect of any por-
tion of fluid depends upon the total mass moved, not on the size of
its particles.
Attempts made to exemplify the vortices experimentally only
showed more clearly the force of this difficulty. Huyghens had
found that certain bodies immersed in a whirling fluid tended to
the center of the vortex. But when Saulmon 5 a little later made
similar experiments, he had the mortification of finding that the
heaviest bodies had the greatest tendency to recede from the axis
of the vortex. “The result is," as the Secretary of the Academy
(Fontenelle) says, “exactly the opposite of what we could have
wished, for the [Cartesian] system of gravity: but we are not to
despair; sometimes in such researches disappointment leads to ulti-
mate success."
But, passing by this difficulty, and assuming that in some way or
other a centripetal force arises from the centrifugal force of the
vortex, the Cartesian mathematicians were naturally led to calcu-
late the circumstances of the vortex on mechanical principles; espe-
cially Huyghens, who had successfully studied the subject of centri-
fugal force. Accordingly, in his little treatise on the Cause of
Gravitation (p. 143), he calculates the velocity of the fluid matter of
the vortex, and finds that, at a point in the equator, it is 17 times
the velocity of the earth's rotation.
It may naturally be asked, how it comes to pass that a stream of
fluid, dense enough to produce the gravity of bodies by its centri-
fugal force, moving with a velocity 17 times that of the earth (and
therefore moving round the earth in 35 minutes), does not sweep
3 Acad. Tar. 1714, Hist. p. :05. ·
TRANSFORMATION OF HYPOTHESES, &c. 497
all terrestrial objects before it. But to this Huyghens had already
replied (p. 137), that there are particles of the fluid moving in all
directions, and therefore that they neutralize each other's action, so
far as lateral motion is concerned.
And thus, as early as this treatise of Huyghens, that is, in three
years from the publication of Newton's Principia, a vortex is made
to mean nothing more than some machinery or other for producing
a central force. And this is so much the case, that Huyghens com-
mends (p. 165), as confirming his own calculation of the velocity of
his vortex, Newton's proof that at the Moon's orbit the centripetal
force is equal to the centrifugal; and that thus, this force is less
than the centripetal force at the earth's surface in the inverse pro-
portion of the squares of the distances.
John Bernoulli, in the same manner, but with far less clearness
and less candour, las treated the hypothesis of vortices as being
principally a hypothetical cause of central force. He had repeated
occasions given him of propounding his inventions for propping up
the Cartesian doctrine, by the subjects proposed for prizes by the
Paris Academy of Sciences ; in which competition Cartesian specu-
lations were favourably received. Thus the subject of the Prize
Essays for 1730 was, the explanation of the Elliptical Form of the
planetary orbits and of the Motion of their Aphelia, and the prize
was assigned to John Bernoulli, who gave the explanation on Car-
tesian principles. He explains the elliptical figure, not as Descartes
himself had done, by supposing the vortex which carries the planet
round the sun to be itself squeezed into an elliptical form by the
pressure of contiguous vortices; but he supposes the planet, while
it is carried round by the vortex, to have a limited oscillatory
motion to and from the center, produced by its being originally,
not at the distance at which it would float in equilibrium in the
vortex, but above or below that point. On this supposition, the
planet would oscillate to and from the center, Bernoulli says, like
the mercury when deranged in a barometer: and it is evident that
such an oscillation, combined with a motion round the center,
might produce an oval curve, either with a fixed or with a move-
able aphelion. All this however merely amounts to a possibility
that the oval may be an ellipse, not to a proof that it will be so;
nor does Bernoulli advance further.
It was necessary that the vortices should be adjusted in such
a manner as to account for Kepler's laws; and this was to be done
by making the velocity of each stratum of the vortex depend in
a suitable manner on its radius.. The Abbé de Molières attempted
this on the supposition of elliptical vortices, but could not reconcile
K
K
498
APPENDIX G.
Kepler's first two laws, of equal elliptical areas in equal times, with
his third law, that the squares of the periodic times are as the cubes
of the mean distances. Bernoulli, with his circular vortices, could
accommodate the velocities at different distances so that they should
explain Kepler's laws. He pretended to prove that Newton's in-
vestigations respecting vortices (in the ninth Section of the Second
Book of the Principia) were mechanically erroneous; and in truth,
it must be allowed that, besides several arbitrary assumptions, there
are some errors of reasoning in them. But for the most part, the
more enlightened Cartesians were content to accept Newton's ac.
count of the motions and forces of the solar system as part of their
scheme; and to say only that the hypothesis of vortices explained
the origin of the Newtonian forces; and that thus theirs was a
philosophy of a higher kind. Thus it is asserted (Mém. Acad. 1734),
that M. de Molières retains the beautiful theory of Newton en-
tire, only he renders it in a sort less Newtonian, by disentangling
it from attraction, and transferring it from a vacuum into a plenum.
This plenum, though not its native region, frees it from the need of
attraction, which is all the better for it. These points were the
main charms of the Cartesian doctrine in the eyes of its followers;
--the getting rid of attractions, which were represented as a rėvival
of the Aristotelian "occult qualities," "substantial forms," or
whatever else was the most disparaging way of describing the bad
philosophy of the dark ages?;- and the providing some material
intermedium, by means of which a body may affect another at a
distance; and thus avoid the reproach urged against the Newton-
ians, that they made a body act where it was not. And we are the
less called upon to deny that this last feature in the Newtonian
theory was a difficulty, inasmuch as Newton himself was never
6 Acad. Par. 1733.
motions of the primary planets, all
7 Acad. Sc. 1709. If we abandon the motions of the satellites, and all
the clear principles of mechanics, the the motions of rotation, including
writer says, "toute la lumière que that of the sun, are in the same direc-
nous pouvons avoir est •éteinte, et tion, and nearly in the same plane;
nous voilà replongés de nouveau facts which have been urged by La-
dans les anciennes tenébres du Peri- place as so strongly recommending
patetisme, dont le Ciel nous veuille the Nebular Elypothesis; and that
preserver!”
hypothesis is, in truth, a hypothesis
It was also objected to the New- of vortices respecting the origin of
tonian system, that it did not account the system of the world.
for the remarkable facts, that all the
TRANSFORMATION OF HYPOTHESES, &c. 499
unwilling to allow that gravity might be merely an effect produced
by some ulterior cause.
With such admissions on the two sides, it is plain that the New-
tonian and Cartesian systems would coincide, if the hypothesis of
vortices could be modified in such a way as to produce the force
of gravitation. All attempts to do this, however, failed: and
even John Bernoulli, the most obstinate of the mathematical chan-
pions of the vortices, was obliged to give them up. In his Prize
Essay for 1734, (on the Inclinations of the Planetary Orbits 3,) he
says (Art. VIII.), “The gravitation of the Planets towards the center
of the Sun and the weight of bodies towards the center of the earth
kas not, for its cause, either the attraction of M. Newton, or the
centrifugal force of the matter of the vortex according to M. Des.
cartes ;” and he then goes on to assert that these forces are pro-
duced by a perpetual torrent of matter tending to the center on
all sides, and carrying all bodies with it. Such a hypothesis is very
difficult to refute. It has been taken up in more modern times by
Le Sage', with some modifications; and may be made to account
for the principal facts of the universal gravitation of matter. The
great difficulty in the way of such a hypothesis is, the overwhelming
thought of the whole universe filled with torrents of an invisible but
material and tangible substance, rushing in every direction in infi-
nitely prolonged straight lines and with immense velocity. Whence
can such matter come, and whither can it go? Where can be its
perpetual and infinitely distant fountain, and where the ocean into
which it pours itself when its infinite course is ended ? A revolv-
ing whirlpool is easily conceived and easily supplied; but the
central torrent of Bernoulli, the infinite streams of particles of
Le Sage, are an explanation far more inconceivable than the thing
explained.
But however the hypothesis of vortices, or some hypothesis sub-
stituted for it, was adjusted to explain the facts of attraction to
a center, this was really nearly all that was meant by a vortex
8 Nouvelle Physique Celeste, Op. t. at least rendered evident. Bernoulli's
i. p. 163.
explanation consists in supposing the
The deviation of the orbits of the planets to have a sort of lecway (dé-
planets from the plane of the sun's rive des vaisseaux) in the stream of
equator was of course a difficulty in the vortex.
the system which supposed that they 9 See Hist. Sc. Ideas, D. ii. c. is.
were carried round by the vortices Art. 7.
which the sun's rotation caused, or
K K 2
500
APPENDIX G.
or a "tourbillon," when the system was applied. Thus in the case
of the last act of homage to the Cartesian theory which the French
Academy rendered in the distribution of its prizes, the designa-
tion of a Cartesian Essay in 1741 (along with three Newtonian
ones) as worthy of a prize for an explanation of the Tides; the
difference of high and low water was not explained, as Descartes
has explained it, by the pressure, on the ocean, of the terrestrial
vortex, forced into a strait where it passes under the Moon; but
the waters were supposed to rise towards the Moon, the terrestrial
vortex being disturbed and broken by the Moon, and therefore less
effective in forcing them down. And in giving an account of a
Tourmaline from Ceylon (Acad. Sc. 1717), when it has been ascere
tained that it attracts and repels substances, the writer adds, as
a matter of course, “It would seem that it has a vortex.” As
another example, the elasticity of a body was ascribed to vortices
between its particles: and in general, as I have said, a vortex
implied what we now imply by speaking of a central force.
4. In the same manner vortices were ascribed to the Magnet,
in order to account for its attractions and repulsions. But we may
note a circumstance which gave a special turn to the hypothesis
of vortices as applied to this subject, and which may serve as a
further illustration of the manner in which a transition may be
inade from one to the other of two rival hypotheses.
If iron filings be brought near a magnet, in such a manner
as to be at liberty to assume the position which its polar action
assigns to them; (for instance, by strewing them upon a sheet of
paper while the two poles of the magnet are close below the paper;)
they will arrange themselves in certain curves, each proceeding
from the N. to the S. pole of the magnet, like the meridians in
a map of the globe. It is easily shown, on the supposition of
magnetic attraction and repulsion, that these magnetic curves, as
they are termed, are each a curve whose tangent at every point is
the direction of a small line or particle, as determined by the
attraction and repulsion of the two poles. But if we suppose a
magnetic vortec constantly to flow out of one pole and into the
other, in streams which follow such curves, it is evident that such a
vortex, being supposed to exercise material pressure and impulse,
would arrange the iron filings in corresponding streams, and would
thus produce the phenomenon which I have described. And the
hypothesis of central torrents of Bernoulli or Le Sage which I have
referred to, would, in its application to magnets, really become this
hypothesis of a magnetic vortex, if we further suppose that the
matter of the torrents which proceed to one pole and from the
TRANSFORMATION OF HYPOTHESES, &c. 501
other, mingles its streams, so as at each point to produce a stream
in the resulting direction. Of course we shall have to suppose two
sets of magnetic torrents ;-a boreal torrent, proceeding to the
north pole, and from the south pole of a magnet; and an austral
torrent proceeding to the south and from the north pole:-and
with these suppositions, we make a transition from the hypothesis
of attraction and repulsion, to the Cartesian hypothesis of vortices,
or at least, torrents, which determine bodies to their magnetic
positions by impulse.
Of course it is to be expected that, in this as in the other case,
when we follow the hypothesis of impulse into detail, it will need to
be loaded with so many subsidiary hypotheses, in order to accom-
modate it to the phenomena, that it will no longer seem tenable.
But the plausibility of the hypothesis in its first application cannot
be denied :-for, it may be observed, the two opposite streams
would counteract each other so as to produce no local motion,
only direction. And this case may put us on our guard against
other suggestions of forces acting in curve lines, which may at
first sight appear to be discerned in magnetic and electric phe-
nomena. Probably such curve lines will all be found to be only
resulting lines, arising from the direct action and combination of
elementary attraction and repulsion.
5. There is another case in which it would not be difficult
to devise a mode of transition from one to the other of two rival
theories; namely, in the case of the emission theory and the un-
dulation theory of Light. Indeed several steps of such a transi-
tion have already appeared in the history of optical speculation;
and the conclusive objection to the emission theory of light, as
to the Cartesian theory of vortices, is, that no amount of additional
hypotheses will reconcile it to the phenomena. Its defenders had
to go on adding one piece of machinery after another, as new
classes of facts came into view, till it became more complex and
unmechanical than the theory of epicycles and eccentrics at its
worst period. Otherwise, as I have said, there was nothing to
prevent the emission theory from migrating into the undulatory
theory, and as the theory of vortices did into the theory of attrac-
tion. For the emissionists allow that rays may interfere; and
that these interferences may be modified by alternate fits in the
rays; now these fits are already a kind of undulation. Then again
the phenomena of polarized light show that the fits or undulations
must have a transverse character : and there is no reason why emit-
ted rays should not be subject to fits of transverse modification as
well as to any other fits. In short, we may add to the emitted rays
502
APPENDIX G.
of the one theory, all the properties which belong to the undula-
tions of the other, and thus account for all the phenomena on the
emission theory; with this limitation only, that the emission will
have no share in the explanation, and the undulations will have
the whole. If, instead of conceiving the universe full of a sta-
tionary ether, we suppose it to be full of etherial particles moving
in erery direction; and if we suppose, in the one case and in the
other, this ether to be susceptible of undulations proceeding from
every luminous point; the results of the two hypotheses will be the
same; and all we shall have to say is, that the supposition of the
emissive motion of the particles is superfluous and useless.
6. This view of the manner in which rival theories pass into one
another appears to be so unfamiliar to those who have only slightly
attended to the history of science, that I have thought it might be
worth while to illustrate it by a few examples.
It might be said, for instance, by such persons !0, “Either the
planets are not moved by vortices, or they do not move by the law
by which heavy bodies fall. It is impossible that both opinions can
be true.” But it appears, by what has been said above, that the
Cartesians did hold both opinions to be true; and one with just as
much reason as the other, on their assumptions. It might be said
in the same manner, “Either it is false that the planets are made to
describe their orbits by the above quasi-Cartesian theory of Ber-
noulli, or it is false that they obey the Newtonian theory of gravi-
tation.” But this would be said quite erroneously; for if the hypo-
thesis of Bernoulli be true, it is so because it agrees in its result
with the theory of Newton. It is not only possible that both
opinions may be true, but it is certain that if the first be so, the
second is. It might be said again, “Either the planets describe
their orbits by an inherent virtue, or according to the Newton
theory.” But this again would be erroneous, for the Newtonian
doctrine decided nothing as to whether the force of gravitation
was inherent or not. Cotes held that it was, though Newton
strongly protested against being supposed to hold such an opinion.
The word inherent is no part of the physical theory, and will be
asserted or denied according to our metaphysical views of the
essential attributes of matter and force.
Of course, the possibility of two rival hypotheses being true,
one of which takes the explanation a step higher than the other,
is not affected by the impossibility of two contradictory asser-
10 Sce Mill's Logic, vol. i. p. 311. 2nd ed.
I
TRANSFORMATION OF HYPOTHESES, &c. 503
tions of the same order of generality being both true. If there
be a new-discovered comet, and if one astronomer asserts that
it will return once in every twenty years, and another, that it
will return once in every thirty years, both cannot be right.
But if an astronomer says that though its interval was in the last
instance 30 years, it will only be 20 years to the next return, in
consequence of perturbation and resistance, he may be perfectly
right.
And thus, when different and rival explanations of the same
phenomena are held, till one of them, though long defended by
ingenious men, is at last driven out of the field by the pressure of
facts, the defeated hypothesis is transformed before it is extin-
guished. Before it has disappeared, it has been modified so as to
have all palpable falsities squeezed out of it, and subsidiary provi.
sions added, in order to reconcile it with the phenomena. It has,
in short, been penetrated, infiltrated, and metamorphosed by the
surrounding medium of truth, before the merely arbitrary and erro.
neous residuum has been finally ejeoted out of the body of perma-
nent and certain knowledge.
APPENDIX H.
ON HEGEL'S CRITICISM OF NEWTON'S
PRINCIPIA.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. May 21, 1849.)
THE Newtonian doctrine of universal gravitation, as the cause of
the motions which take place in the solar system, is so entirely
. established in our minds, and the fallacy of all the ordinary argu-
mients against it is so clearly understood among us, that it would
undoubtedly be deemed a waste of time to argue such questions in
this place, so far as physical truth is concerned. But since in other
parts of Europe, there are teachers of philosophy whose reputation
and influence are very great, and who are sometimes referred to
among our own countrymen as the authors of new and valuable
views of truth, and who yet reject the Newtonian opinions, and deny
the validity of the proofs commonly given of them, it may be worth
while to attend for a few minutes to the declarations of such
teachers, as a feature in the present condition of European philo-
sophy. I the more readily assume that the Cambridge Philosophical
Society will not think a communication on such a subject devoid of
interest, in consequence of the favourable reception which it has
given to philosophical speculations still more abstract, which I have
on previous occasions offered to it. I will therefore proceed to
make some remarks on the opinions concerning the Newtonian
doctrine of gravitation, delivered by the celebrated Hegel, of Berlin,
than whom no philosopher in modern, and perhaps hardly any even
in ancient times, has had his teaching received with more reverential
submission by his disciples, or been followed hy a more numerous
and zealous band of scholars bent upon diffusing and applying his
principles.
The passages to which I shall principally refer are taken from one
of his works which is called the Encyclopædia (Encyklopädie), of
which the First Part is the Science of Logic, the Second, the Philosophy
of Nature, the Third, the Philosophy of Spirit. The Second Part,
CRITICISM OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA. 505
with which I am here concerned, has for an aliter title, Lectures on
Natural Philosophy (Vorlesungen über Natur-philosophie), and
would through its whole extent offer abundant material for criticism,
by referring it to principles with which we are here familiar : but I
shall for the present confine myself to that part which refers to the
subject which I have mentioned, the Newtonian Doctrine of Gravi-
tation, $ 269, 270, of the work. Nor shall I, with regard to this
part, think it necessary to give a continuous and complete criticism
of all the passages bearing upon the subject; but only such speci-
mens, and such remarks thereon, as may suffice to show in a general
manner the value and the character of Hegel's declarations on such
questions. I do not pretend to offer here any opinion upon the
value and character of Hegel's philosophy in general: but I think
it not unlikely that some impression on that head may be suggested
by the examination, here offered, of some points in which we can
have no doubt where the truth lies; and I am not at all persuaded
that a like examination of many other parts of the Hegelian
Encyclopædia would not confirm the impression which we shall
receive from the parts now to be considered.
Hegel both criticises the Newtonian doctrines, or what he states
as such; and also, not denying the truth of the laws of phenomena
which he refers to, for instance Kepler's laws, offers his own proof
of these laws. I shall make a few brief remarks on each of these
portions of the pages before me. And I would beg it to be under-
stood that wbere I may happen to put my remarks in a short, and
what may seem a peremptory form, I do so for the sake of saving
time; knowing that among us, upon subjects so familiar, a few
words will suffice. For the same reason, I shall take passages from
Hegel, not in the order in which they occur, but in the order in
which they best illustrate what I have to say. I shall do Hegel no
injustice by this mode of proceeding : for I will annex a faithful
translation, so far as I can make one, of the whole of the passages
referred to, with the context.
No one will be surprised that a German, or indeed any lover of
science, should speak with admiration of the discovery of Kepler's
laws, as a great event in the history of Astronomy, and a glorious
distinction to the discoverer. But to say that the glory of the dis-
covery of the proof of these laws has been unjustly transferred from
Kepler to Newton, is quite another matter. This is what Hegel
says (a)? And we have to consider the reasons which he assigns
for saying so.
These letters refer to passages in the Translation annexed to this Memoir:
506
APPENDIX H..
He says (6) that "it is allowed by mathematicians that the New-
tonian Formula may be derived from the Keplerian laws," and hence
he seems to infer that the Newtonian law is not an additional truth.
That is, he does not allow that the discovery of the cause which
produces a certain phenomenal law is anything additional to the
discovery of the law itself.
“The Newtonian formula may be derived from the Keplerian
law." It was professedly so derived; but derived by introducing
the Idea of Force, which Idea and its consequences were not intro-
duced and developed till after Kepler's time.
“The Newtonian formula may be derived from the Keplerian
law.” And the Keplerian law may be derived, and was derived,
from the observations of the Greek astronomers and their suc-
cessors; but was not the less a new and great discovery on that
account.
But let us see what he says further of this derivation of the New-
tonian "formula” from the Keplerian Law. It is evident that by
calling it a formula, he means to imply, what he also asserts, that it
is no new latv, but only a new form (and a bad one) of a previously
known truth.
How is the Newtonian "formula,” that is, the law of the inverse
squares of the central force, derived from the Keplerian law of the
cubes of the distances proportional to the squares of the times ?
This, says Hegel, is the “immediate derivation.” (c).—By Kepler's
law, A being the distance and T the periodic time, is constant.
But Newton calls universal gravitation; whence it easily follows
that gravitation is inversely as A².
This is Hegel's way of representing Newton's proof. Reading
it, any one who had never read the Principia might suppose that
Newton defined gravitation to be . We, who have read the
Principia, know that Newton proves that in circles, the central
force (not the universal gravitation) is as 72: that he proves this,
by setting out from the idea of force, as that which defects a body
from the tangent, and makes it describe a curved line: and that in
this way, he passes from Kepler's laws of mere motion to his own
law of Force.
But Hegel does not see any value in this. Such a mode of
treating the subject he says (*) " offers to us a tangled web, formed
of the Lines of the mere geometrical construction, to which a
CRITICISM OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA. 507
physical meaning of independent forces is given." That a measure
of forces is found in such lines as the sagitta of the arc described in
a given time, (not such a meaning arbitrarily given to them,) is
certainly true, and is very distinctly proved in Newton, and in all our
elementary books.
But, says Hegel, as further showing the artificial nature of the
Newtonian formulæ, (h) “ Analysis has long been able to derive the
Newtonian expression and the laws therewith connected out of the
Form of the Keplerian Laws;” an assertion, to verify which he
refers to Franceur's Mécanique. This is apparently in order to show
that the “lines” of the Newtonian construction are superfluous.
We know very well that analysis does not always refer to visible
representations of such lines : but we know too, (and Franceur
would testify to this also,) that the analytical proofs contain equi-
valents to the Newtonian lines. We, in this place, are too familiar
with the substitution of analytical for geometrical proofs, to be led
to suppose that such a substitution affects the substance of the
truth proved. The conversion of Newton's geometrical proofs of
his discoveries into analytical processes by succeeding writers, has
not made them cease to be discoveries : and accordingly, those
who have taken the most prominent share in such a conversion,
have been the most ardent admirers of Newton's genius and good
fortune.
So much for Newton's comparison of the Forces in different cir-
cular orbits, and for Hegel's power of understanding and criticising
it. Now let us look at the motion in different parts of the same
elliptical orbit, as a further illustration of the value of Hegel's
criticism. In an elliptical orbit the velocity alternately increases
and diminishes. This follows necessarily from Kepler's law of the
equal description of the areas, and so Newton explains it. Hegel,
however, treats of this acceleration and retardation as a separate
fact, and talks of another explanation of it, founded upon Centri-
petal and Centrifugal Force (c). Where he finds this explanation,
I know not; certainly not in Newton, who in the second and third
section of the Principia explains the variation of the velocity in a
quite different manner, as I have said; and nowhere, I think, em-
ploys centrifugal force in his explanations. However, the notion
of centrifugal as acting along with centripetal force is introduced
in some treatises, and may undoubtedly be used with perfect truth
and propriety. How far Hegel can judge when it is so used, we
may see from what he says of the confusion produced by such an
explanation, which is, he says, a maximum. In the first place, he
speaks of the motion being uniformly acoelerated and retarded in
508
APPENDIX H.
an elliptical orbit, which, in any exact use of the word uniformly,
it is not. But passing by this, he proceeds to criticise an explana-
tion, not of the variable velocity of the body in its orbit, but of the
Let us overlook this confusion also, and see what is the value of his
criticism on the explanation. He says (p), “ according to this ex-
planation, in the motion of a planet from the aphelion to the peri-
helion, the centrifugal is less than the centripetal force; and in the
perihelion itself the centripetal force is supposed suddenly to
become greater than the centrifugal;" and so, of course, the body
re-ascends to the aphelion.
Now I will not say that this explanation has never been given in
a book professing to be scientific; but I have never seen it given;
and it never can have been given but by a very ignorant and foolish
person. It goes upon the utterly unmechanical supposition that
the approach of a body to the center at any moment depends solely
upon the excess of the centripetal over the centrifugal force; and
reversely. But the most elementary knowledge of mechanics shows
us that when a body is moving obliquely to the distance from the
center, it approaches to or recedes from the center in virtue of this
obliquity, even if no force at all act. And the total approach to
the center is the approach due to this cause, plus the approach due
to the centripetal force, minus the recess due to the centrifugal force.
At the aphelion, the centripetal is greater than the centrifugal
force; and hence the motion becomes oblique; and then, the body
approaches to the center on both accounts, and approaches on
account of the obliquity of the path even when the centrifugal has
become greater than the centripetal force, which it becomes before
that when a person who cannot see this, writes on the subject with
an air of authority, I do not see what can be done but to point out
the oversight and leave it.
But there is, says Hegel (9), another way of explaining the mo.
tion by means of centripetal and centrifugal forces. The two forces
are supposed to increase and decrease gradually, according to dif-
ferent laws. In this case, there must be a point where they are equal,
and in equilibrio; and this being the case, they will always continue
equal, for there will be no reason for their going out of equilibrium.
This, which is put as another mode of explanation, is, in fact, the
same mode; for, as I have already said, the centrifugal force, which
is less than the centripetal at the aphelion, becomes the greater of
the two before the perihelion; and there is an intermediate position,
at which the two forces are equal. But at this point, is there no
CRITICISM OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA. 509
reason why, being equal, the forces should become unequal? Reason
abundant: for the body, being there, moves in a line oblique to the
distance, and so changes its distance; and the centripetal and cen-
trifugal force, depending upon the distance by different laws, they
forth with become unequal.
But these modes of explanation, by means of the centripetal and
centrifugal forces and their relation, are not necessary to Newton's
doctrine, and are nowhere used by Newton; and undoubtedly much
confusion has been produced in other minds, as well as Hegel's, by
speaking of the centrifugal force, which is a mere intrinsic geome-
trical result of a body's curvilinear motion round a center, in con-
junction with centripetal force, which is an extrinsic force, acting
upon the body and urging it to the center. Neither Newton, nor
any intelligent Newtonian, ever spoke of the centripetal and cen-
trifugal force as two distinct forces both extrinsic to the motion,
which Hegel accuses them of doing. (1)
I have spoken of the third and second of Kepler's laws; of New-
ton's explanations of them, and of Hegel's criticism. Let us now,
in the same manner, consider the first law, that the planets move
in ellipses. Newton's proof that this was the result of a central
force varying inversely as the square of the distance, was the solu-
tion of a problem at which his contemporaries had laboured in vain,
and is commonly looked upon as an important step. “But,” says
Hegel, (d) “ the proof gives a conic section generally, whereas the
main point which ought to be proved is, that the path of the body
is an ellipse only, not a circle or any other conic section.” Cer-
tainly if Newton had proved that a planet cannot move in a circle,
(which Hegel says he ought to have done), his system would have
perplexed astronomers, since there are planets which move in orbits
bardly distinguishable from circles, and the variation of the extre-
mity from planet to planet shows that there is nothing to prevent
the excentricity vanishing and the orbit becoming a circle.
“But,” says Hegel again, (e) "the conditions which make the
path to be an ellipse rather than any other conic section, are empi-
rical and extraneous;—the supposed casual strength of the in-
pulsion originally received." Certainly the circumstances which
determine the amount of excentricity of a planet's orbit are de-
rived from experience, or rather, observation. It is not a part of
Newton's system to determine à priori what the excentricity of a
planet's orbit must be. A system that professes to do this will
undoubtedly be one very different from his. And as our knowledge
of the excentricity is derived from observation, it is, in that sense,
empirical and casual. The strength of the original impulsion is a
510
APPENDIX H.
hypothetical and impartial way of expressing this result of observa-
tion. And as we see no reason why the excentricity should be of
any certain magnitude, we see none why the fraction which ex-
presses the excentricity should not become as large as unity, that
is, why the orbit should not become a parabola; and accordingly,
some of the bodies which revolve about the same appear to move
in orbits of this form : so little is the motion in an ellipse, as Hegel
says, (f) "the only thing to be proved.”
But Hegel himself has offered proof of Kepler's laws, to which,
considering his objections to Newton's proofs, we cannot help
turning with some curiosity.
And first, let us look at the proof of the Proposition which we
have been considering, that the path of a planet is necessarily an
ellipse. I will translate Hegel's language as well as I can; but
without answering for the correctness of my translation, since it
does not appear to me to conform to the first condition of transla-
tion, of being intelligible. The translation however, such as it
is, may help us to form some opinion of the validity and value of
Hegel's proofs as compared with Newton's. (7)
“For absolutely uniform motion, the circle is the only path....
are equal; there is, for it, only one determining quantity, the
radius.
“But in free motion, the determination according to space and
to time come into view with differences. There must be a dif-
ference in the spatial aspect in itself, and therefore the form re-
quires two determining quantities. Hence the form of the path
returning into itself is an ellipse.”
Now even if we could regard this as reasoning, the conclusion
does not in the smallest degree follow. A curve returning into
itself and determined by two quantities, may have innumerable
forms besides the ellipse; for instance, any oval form whatever,
. besides that of the conic section.
But why must the curve be a curve returning into itself ? Hegel
has professed to prove this previously (m) from “the determination
of particularity and individuality of the bodies in general, so that
they have partly a center in themselves, and partly at the same
time their center in another.” Without seeking to find any precise
meaning in this, we may ask whether it proves the impossibility of
the orbits with moveable apses, (which do not return into them-
selves,) such as the planets (affected by perturbations) really do
describe, and such as we know that bodies must describe in all
cases, except when the force varies exactly as the square of the
CRITICISM OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA. 511
distance? It appears to do so: and it proves this impossibility of
known facts at least as much as it proves anything.
Let us now look at Hegel's proof of Kepler's second law, that
the elliptical sectors swept by the radius vector are proportional to
the time. It is this: (s).
“In the circle, the arc or angle which is included by the two
radii is independent of them. But in the motion [of a planet] as
determined by the conception, the distance from the center and the
arc run over in a certain time must be compounded in one deter-
mination, and must make out a whole. This whole is the sector,
a space of two dimensions. And hence the arc is essentially a
Function of the radius vector; and the former (the arc) being
unequal, brings with it the inequality of the radii.”
As was said in the former case, if we could regard this as reason-
ing, it would not prove the conclusion, but only, that the arc is
some function or other of the radii.
Hegel indeed offers (t) a reason why there must be an arc in.
volved. This arises, he says, from “the determinateness [of the
nature of motion], at one while as time in the root, at another
while as space in the square. But here the quadratic character of
the space is, by the returning of the line of motion into itself,
limited to a sector.”
Probably my readers have had a sufficient specimen of Hegel's
mode of dealing with these matters. I will however add his proof
of Kepler's third law, that the cubes of the distances are as the
squares of the times.
Hegel's proof in this case (u) has a reference to a previous doc-
trine concerning falling bodies, in which time and space have, he
says, a relation to each other as root and square. Falling bodies
however are the case of only half-free motion, and the determina-
tion is incomplete..
“But in the case of absolute motion, the domain of free masses,
the determination attains its totality. The time as the root is a
mere empirical magnitude: but as a component of the developed
Totality, it is a Totality in itself: it produces itself, and therein has
a reference to itself. And in this process, Time, being itself the
dimensionless element, only comes to a formal identity with itself
and reaches the square: Space, on the other hand, as a positive
external relation, comes to the full dimensions of the conception of
space, that is, the cube. The Realization of the two conceptions
(space and time) preserves their original difference. This is the
third Keplerian law, the relation of the Cubes of the distances to
the squares of the times.”
512
APPENDIX H.
« And this,” he adds, (v) with remarkable complacency, “repre.
senis simply and immediately the reason of the thing :—while on
the contrary, the Newtonian Formula, by means of which the Law
is changed into a Law for the Force of Gravity, shows the distortion
and inversion of Reflexion, which stops half-way."
I am not able to assign any precise meaning to the Reflexion,
which is here used as a term of condemnation, applicable especially
to the Newtonian doctrine. It is repeatedly applied in the same
manner by Hegel. Thus he says, (g)“ that what Kepler expresses
in a siniple and sublime manner in the form of Laws of the Celes-
tial Motions, Newton has metamorphosed into the Reflexion-Form
of the Force of Gravitation.”
Though Hegel thus denies Newton all merit with regard to the
explanation of Kepler's laws by means of the gravitation of the
planets to the sun, he allows that to the Keplerian Laws Newton
added the Principle of Perturbations (R). This Principle he accepts
to a certain extent, transforming the expression of it after his
peculiar fashion. “It lies,” he says, (l) “in this: that matter in
general assigns a center for itself: the collective bodies of the sys-
tem recognise a reference to their sun, and all the individual bodies,
according to the relative positions into which they are brought by
their motions, form a momentary relation of their gravity. towards
each other."
This must appear to us a very loose and insufficient way of
stating the Principle of Perturbations, but loose as it is, it recognises
that the Perturbations depend upon the gravity of the planets one
to another, and to the sun. And if the Perturbations depend upon
these forces, one can hardly suppose that any one who allows this
will deny that the primary undisturbed motions depend upon these
forces, and must be explained by means of them; yet this is what
Hegel denies.
It is evident, on looking at Hegel's mode of reasoning on such
subjects, that his views approach towards those of Aristotle and the
Aristotelians; according to which motions were divided into na-
tural and unnatural ;-the celestial motions were circular and uni-
form in their nature;-and the like. Perhaps it may be worth
while to show how completely Hegel adheres to these ancient
views, by an extract from the additions to the Articles on Celes-
tial Motions, made in the last edition of the Encyclopedia. He
says (w),
"The motion of the heavenly bodies is not a being pulled this
way and that, as is imagined (by the Newtonians). They go along,
as the ancients said, like blessed gods. The celestial conformity is
CRITICISM OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA. 513
not such a one as has the principle of rest or motion external to
itself. It is not right to say because a stone is inert, and the whole
earth consists of stones, and the other heavenly bodies are of the
same nature as the earth, therefore the heavenly bodies are inert.
This conclusion makes the properties of the whole the same as
those of the part. Impulse, Pressure, Resistance, Friction, Pulling,
and the like, are valid only for other than celestial matter."
There can be no doubt that this is a very different doctrine from
that of Newton.
I will only add to these specimens of Hegel's physics, a specimen
of the logic by which he refutes the Newtonian argument which
has just been adduced; namely, that the celestial bodies are matter,
and that matter, as we see in terrestrial matter, is inert. He
says (a),
“Doubtless both are matter, as a good thought and a bad thought
are both thoughts; but the bad one is not therefore good, because
it is a thought.”
APPENDIX TO THE MEMOIR ON HEGEL'S CRITICISM
OF NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA.
HEGEL. Encyclopædia (2nd Ed. 1827), Part si. p. 250.
C. Absolute Mechanics.
$ 269.
YRAVITATION is the true and determinate conception of ma-
U terial Corporeity, which (Conception) is realized to the Idea (zur
Idee). General Corporeity is separable essentially into particular
Bodies, and connects itself with the Element of Individuality or
subjectivity, as apparent (phenomenal) presence in the Motion,
which by this means is immediately a system of several Bodies.
Universal gravitation must, as to itself, be recognised as a pro-
found thought, although it was principally as apprehended in the
sphere of Reflexion that it eminently attracted notice and confi-
dence on account of the quantitative determinations therewith con-
nected, and was supposed to find its confirmation in Experiments
(Erfahrung) pursued from the Solar System down to the phenomena
LL
514
APPENDIX H.
of Capillary Tubes. But Gravitation contradicts immediately the
Law of Inertia, for in virtue of it (Gravitation) matter tends out of
itself to the other (matter).- In the Conception of Weight, there
are, as has been shown, involved the two elements-Self-existence,
and Continuity, which takes away self-existence. These elements
of the Conception, however, experience a fate, as particular forces,
corresponding to Attractive and Repulsive Force, and are thereby
apprehended in nearer determination, as Centripetal and Centri-
fugal Force, which (Forces) like weight, act upon Bodies, independ-
ent of each other, and are supposed to come in contact accidentally
in a third thing, Body. By this means, what there is of profound
in the thought of universal weight is again reduced to nothing;
and Conception and Reason cannot make their way into the doc-
trine of absolute motion, so long as the so highly-prized discoveries
of Forces are dominant there. In the conclusion which contains the
Idea of Weight, namely, [contains this Idea] as the Conception
which, in the case of motion, enters into external Reality through
the particularity of the Bodies, and at the same time into this
[Reality) and into their Ideality and self-regarding Reflexion,
(Reflexion-in-sich), the rational identity and inseparability of the
elements is involved, which at other times are represented as inde-
pendent. Motion itself, as such, has only its meaning and existence
in a system of several bodies, and those, such as stand in relation to
each other according to different determinations.
$ 270.
As to what concerns bodies in which the conception of gravity
(weight) is realized free by itself, we say that they have for the
determinations of their different nature the elements (momente) of
their conception. One [conception of this kind] is the universal
center of the abstract reference (of a body] to itself. Opposite to
this [conception) stands the immediate, extrinsic, centerless In-
dividuality, appearing as Corporeity similarly independent. Those
(Bodies] however which are particular, which stand in the determi-
nation of extrinsic, and at the same time of intrinsic relation, are
centers for themselves, and (also] have a reference to the first as to
their essential unity.
The Planetary Bodies, as the immediately concrete, are
in their existence the most complete. Men are accustomed
to take the Sun as the most excellent, inasmuch as the under-
standing prefers the abstract to the concrete, and in like
manner the fixed stars are esteemed higher than the Bodies
EXTRACTS FROM HEGEL.
515
of the Solar System. Centerless Corporeity, as belonging to
externality, naturally separates itself into the opposition of the
lunar and the cometary Body. The laws of absolutely free
motion, as is well known, were discovered by Kepler;-a dis-
covery of immortal fame. Kepler has proved these laws in
this sense, that for the empirical data he found their general
expression. Since then, it has become a common way of
(a) speaking to say that Newton first found out the proof of these
Laws. It has rarely happened that fame has been more un-
justly transferred from the first discoverer to another person.
On this subject I make the following remarks.
1. That it is allowed by Mathematicians that the New-
tonian Formulæ may be derived from the Keplerian Laws.
(0) The completely immediate derivation is this: In the third
(c) Keplerian Law, ma is the constant quantity. This being put
AA?
as man, and calling, with Newton, universal Gravita-
tion, his expression of the effect of gravity in the reciprocal
ratio of the square of the distances is obvious.
(d) 2. That the Newtonian proof of the Proposition that a body
subjected to the Law of Gravitation moves about the central
body in an Ellipse, gives a Conic Section generally, while the
main Proposition which ought to be proved is that the fall
of such a Body is not a Circle or any other Conic Section,
but an Ellipse only. Moreover, there are objections which
may be made against this proof in itself (Princ. Math. 1. 1.
Sect. Il. Prop. 1); and although it is the foundation of the
(e) Newtonian Theory, analysis has no longer any need of it.
The conditions which in the sequel make the path of the
Body to a determinate Conic Section, are referred to an en-
pirical circumstance, namely, a particular position of the Body
at a determined moment of time, and the casual strength of an
(f) impulsion which it is supposed to have received originally; so
that the circunstance which makes the Curve be an Ellipse,
which alone ought to be the thing proved, is extraneous to the
Formula.
3. That the Newtonian Law of the so-called Force of Gra-
vitation is in like manner only proved from experience by
Induction.
The sum of the difference is this, that what Kepler ex-
pressed in a simple and sublime manner iu the form of Laws
LL 2
516
APPENDIX H.
of the Celestial Motions, Newton has metamorphosed into the
Reflection-Form of the Force of Gravitation. If the New-
topian Forn has not only its convenience but its necessity
in reference to the analytical method, this is only a difference
() of the mathematical formulæ; Analysis has long been able to
derive the Newtonian expression, and the Propositions there-
with conuected, out of the Form of the Keplerian Laws; (on
this subject I refer to the elegant exposition in Franceur's
(0) Traité Elém. de Mécanique, Liv. II. Ch. xi. n. 4.)–The old
method of so-called proof is conspicuous as offering to us a
tangled web, formed of the Lines of the mere geometrical
construction, to which a physical meaning of independent
Forces is given ; and of empty Reflexion-determinations of
the already mentioned Accelerating Force and Vis Inertiæ,
and especially of the relation of the so-called gravitation itself
to the centripetal force and centrifugal force, and so on.
The remarks which are here made would undoubtedly have
need of a further explication to show how well founded they
are: in a Compendium, propositions of this kind which do not
agree with that which is assumed, can only have the shape of
assertions. Indeed, since they contradict such higb authori.
ties, they must appear as something worse, as presumptuous
assertions. I will not, on this subject, support myself by say-
ing, by the bye, that an interest in these subjects has occupied
me for 25 years; but it is more precisely to the purpose to
remark, that the distinctions and determinations which Ma-
thematical Analysis introduces, and the course which it must
take according to its method, is altogether different from that
which a physical reality must have. The Presuppositions, the
Course, and the Results, which the Analysis necessarily has
and gives, remain quite extraneous to the considerations which
determine the physical value and the signification of those de-
terminations and of that course. To this it is that attention
should be directed. We have to do with a consciousness
relative to the deluging of physical Mechanics with an incon.
ceivable (unsäglichen) Metaphysic, which-contrary to ex-
perience and conception-has those mathematical determina-
tions alone for its source.
It is recognized that what Newton—besides the foundation
of the analytical treatment, the development of which, by the
bye, has of itself rendered superfluous, or indeed rejected
much which belonged to Newton's essential Principles and
glory-has added to the Keplerian Laws is the Principle of
EXTRACTS FROM HEGEL.
517
Perturbations,-a Principle whose importance we may here
accept thus far (hier in sofern anzufubren ist); namely, so
(16) far as it rests upon the Proposition that the so-called attrac-
tion is an operation of all the individual parts of bodies, as
(1) being material. It lies in this, that matter in general assigns
a center for itself (sich das centrum setzt), and the figure of
the body is an element in the determination of its place; that
collective bodies of the system recognize a reference to their
Sun (sich ihre Sonne setzen), but also the individual bodies
themselves, according to the relative position with regard to
each other into which they come by their general motion,
form a momentary relation of their gravity (schwere) towards
each other, and are related to each other not only in abstract
spatial relations, but at the same time assign to themselves a
joint center, which however is again resolved [into the general
center] in the universal system.
As to what concerns the features of the path, to show how
the fundamental determinations of Free Motion are connected
with the Conception, cannot here be undertaken in a satisfac-
tory and detailed manner, and must therefore be left to its fate.
The proof from reason of the quantitative determinations of
free motion can only rest upon the determinations of Concep-
tions of space and time, the elements whose relation (intrinsic
not extrinsic) motion is.
(m) That, in the first place, the motion in general is a motion
returning into itself, is founded on the determination of parti-
cularity and individuality of the bodies in general ($ 269), so that
partly they have a center in themselves, and partly at the same
time their center in another. These are the determinations of
Conceptions which form the basis of the false representatives
(n) of Centripetal Force and Centrifugal Force, as if each of
these were self-existing, extraneous to the other, and inde-
pendent of it; and as if they only came in contact in their
operations and consequently externally. They are, as has
already been mentioned, the Lines which must be drawn for
the mathematical determinations, transformed into physical
realities.
Further, this motion is uniformly accelerated, (and-as
returning into itself-in turn uniformly retarded). In motion
as free, Time and Space enter as different things which are to
make themselves effective in the determination of the motion
(S 266, note). In the so-called Explanation of the uniformly
accelerated and retarded motion, by means of the alternate
518
APPENDIX H.
decrease and increase of the magnitude of the Centripetal
Force and Centrifugal Force, the confusion which the assump-
tion of such independent Forces produces is at its greatest
(2) height. According to this explanation, in the motion of a
Planet from the Aphelion to the Perihelion, the centrifugal
is less than the centripetal force, and on the contrary, in the
Perihelion itself, the centrifugal force is supposed to become
greater than the centripetal. For the motion from the Peri.
helion to the Aphelion, this representation makes the forces
pass into the opposite relation in the same manner. It is ap-
parent that such a sudden conversion of the preponderance
which a force has obtained over another, into an inferiority to
the other, cannot be anything taken out of the nature of
Forces. On the contrary it must be concluded, that a pre-
ponderance which one Force has obtained over another must
not only be preserved, but must go onwards to the complete
annihilation of the other Force, and the motion must either,
by the Preponderance of the Centripetal Force, proceed till it
ends in rest, that is, in the Collision of the Planet with the
Central Body, or till by the Preponderance of the Centrifugal
(0) Force it ends in a straight line. But now, if in place of the
suddenness of the conversion, we suppose a gradual increase
of the Force in question, then, since rather the other Force
ought to be assumed as increasing, we lose the opposition
which is assumed for the sake of the explanation; and if the
increase of the one is assumed to be different from that of the
other, (which is the case in some representations,) then there
is found at the mean distance between the apsides a point in
which the Forces are in equilibrio. And the transition of the
Forces out of Equilibrium is a thing just as little without any
sufficient reason as the aforesaid suddenness of inversion.
And in the whole of this kind of explanation, we see that the
miode of remedying a bad mode of dealing with a subject leads
to newer and greater confusion.—A similar confusion makes
its appearance in the explanation of the phenomenon that
the pendulum oscillates more slowly at the equator. This
phænomenon is ascribed to the Centrifugal Force, which it is
asserted must then be greater; but it is easy to see that we
may just as well ascribe it to the augmented gravity, inasmuch
as that holds the pendulum more strongly to the perpendi-
cular line of rest.
EXTRACTS FROM HEGEL.
519
$ 240.
(r) And now first, as to what concerns the Form of the Path,
the Circle only can be conceived as the path of an absolutely
uniform motion. Conceivable, as people express it, no doubt
it is, that an increasing and diminishing motion should take
place in a circle. But this conceivableness or possibility means
only an abstract capability of being represented, which leaves
out of sight that Determinate Thing on which the question
turns.
The Circle is the line returning into itself in which all the
radii are equal, that is, it is completely determined by means of
the radius. There is only one Determination, and that is the
whole Determination,
But in free motion, in which the Determinations according
to space and according to time come into view with Differ-
ences, in a qualitative relation to each other, this Relation
appears in the spatial aspect as a Difference thereof in itself,
which therefore requires two Determinations. Hereby the
Form of the path returning into itself is essentially an
Ellipse.
(s). The abstract Determinateness which produces the circle
appears also in this way, that the arc or angle which is in-
cluded by two Radii is independent of them, a magnitude with
regard to them completely empirical. But since iu the motion
as determined by the Conception, the distance from the
center, and the arc which is run over in a certain time, must
be comprehended in one determinateness, [and] make out a
whole, this is the sector, a space-determination of two dimen-
sions: in this way, the arc is essentially a Function of the
Radius Vector; and the former (the arc) being unequal, brings
with it the inequality of the Radii. That the determination
with regard to the space by means of the time appears as a
Determination of two Dimensions,—as a Superficies-Determi.
(t) nation,-agrees with what was said before ($ 266) respecting
Falling Bodies, with regard to the exposition of the same
Determinateness, at one while as Time in the root, at another
while as Space in the Square. Here, however, the Quadratic
character of the space is, by the returning of the Line of
motion into itself, limited to a Sector. These are, as may be
seen, the general principles on which the Keplerian Law, that
in equal times equal sectors are cut off, rests.
This Law becomes, as is clear, only the relation of the arc
to the Radius Vector, and the Time enters there as the abstract
520
APPENDIX H.
Unity, in which the different Sectors are compared, because
as Unity it is the Determining Element. But the further
relation is that of the Time, not as Unity, but as a Quantity
in general, as the time of Revolution—to the magnitude of
the Path, or, what is the same thing, the distance from the
center. As Root and Square, we saw that Time and Space
had a relation to each other, in the case of Falling Bodies, the
case of half-free motion-because that (motion) is determined
on one side by the conception, on the other by external
[conditions]. But in the case of absolute motion-the domain
(u) of free masses—the determination attains its Totality. The
Time as the Root is a mere empirical magnitude; but as a
component (moment) of the developed Totality, it is a Total-
ity in itself,-it produces itself, and therein has a reference to
itself; as the Dimensionless Element in itself, it only comes
to a formal identity with itself, the Square ; Space, on the
other hand, as the positive Distribution (aussereinander)
[comes] to the Dimension of the Conception, the CUBE. Their
(v) Realization preserves their original difference. This is the
third Keplerian Law, the relation of the Cubes of the Dis-
tances to the Squares of the Times ;-a Law which is so great
on this account, that it represents so simply and immediately
Reason as belonging to the thing : while on the contrary the
Newtonian Formula, by means of which the Law is changed
into a Law for the Force of Gravity, shows the Distortion,
Perversion and Inversion of Reflexion which stops half-way.
Additions to new Edition. $269.
The center has no sense without the circumference, nor the
circumference without the center. This makes all physical
hypotheses vanish which sometimes proceed from the center,
sometimes from the particular bodies, and sometimes assign
this, sometimes that, as the original (cause of motion]... It is
silly (läppisch) to suppose that the centrifugal force, as a
tendency to ily off in a Tangent, has been produced by a
lateral projection, a projectile force, an impulse which they
have retained ever since they set out on their journey (von
Haus aus). Such casualty of the motion produced by ex-
ternal causes belongs to inert matter; as when a stone fasten-
ed to a thread which is thrown transversely tries to fly
from the thread. We are not to talk in this way of Forces.
If we will speak of Force, there is one Force, whose elements
EXTRACTS FROM HEGEL.
521
do not draw bodies to different sides as if they were two
(w) Forces. The motion of the heavenly bodies is not a being
pulled this way or that, such as is thus imagined; it is free
motion: they go along, as the ancients said, as blessed Gods
(sie gehen als selige Götter einher). The celestial corporeity
is not such a one as has the principle of rest or motion ex-
ternal to itself. Because stone is inert, and all the earth
consists of stones, and the other heavenly bodies are of the
same nature,-is a conclusion which makes the properties of
the whole the same as those of the part. Impulse, Pressure,
Resistance, Friction, Pulling, and the like, are valid only for
(2) an existence of matter other than the celestial. Doubtless
that which is common to the two is matter, as a good thought
and a bad thought are both thoughts; but the bad one is not
therefore good, because it is a thought.
APPENDIX K.
DEMONSTRATION THAT ALL MATTER IS
HEAVY.
(Cam. Phil. Soc. FEB. 22, 1841.)
THE discussion of the nature of the grounds and proofs of the
most general propositions which the physical sciences include,
belongs rather to Metaphysics than to that course of experimental
and mathematical investigation by which the sciences are formed.
But such discussions seem by no means unfitted to occupy the at-
tention of the cultivators of physical science. The ideal, as well as
the experimental side of our knowledge must be carefully studied
and scrutinized, in order that its true import may be seen; and
this province of human speculation has been perhaps of late un-
justly depreciated and neglected by men of science. Yet it can be
prosecuted in the most advantageous manner by them only: for no
one can speculate securely and rightly respecting the nature and
proofs of the truths of science without a steady possession of some
large and solid portions of such truths. A man must be a mathe.
matician, a mechanical philosopher, a natural historian, in order
that he may philosophize well concerning mathematics, and me-
chanics, and natural history; and the mere metaphysician who
without such preparation and fitness sets himself to determine
the grounds of mathematical or mechanical truths, or the prin-
ciples of classification, will be liable to be led into error at every
step. He must speculate by means of general terms, which he will
not be able to use as instruments of discovering and conveying
philosophical truth, because he cannot, in his own mind, habitually
and familiarly, embody their import in special examples.
Acting upon such views, I have already laid before the Philoso-
phical Society of Cambridge essays on such subjects as I here refer
to; especially a memoir “ On the Nature of the Truth of the Laws
of DLotion,” which was printed by the Society in its Transactions.
ALL MATTER IS HEAVY.
523
This memoir appears to have excited in other places, notice of such
a kind as to show that the minds of many speculative persons are
ready for and inclined towards the discussion of such questions.
I am therefore the more willing to bring under consideration
another subject of a kind closely related to the one just men-
tioned.
The general questions which all such discussions suggest, are
in the existing phase of English philosophy) whether certain pro-
posed scientific truths, (as the laws of motion,) be necessary truths;
and if they are necessary, (which I have attempted to show that in
a certain sense they are,) on what ground their necessity rests.
These questions may be discussed in a general form, as I have
elsewliere attempted to show. But it may be instructive also to
follow the general arguments into the form which they assume in
special cases ; and to exhibit, in a distinct shape, the incongruities
into which the opposite false doctrine leads us, when applied to parti.
cular examples. This accordingly is what I propose to do in the
present memoir, with regard to the proposition stated at the head
of this paper, namely, that all matter is heavy.
At first sight it may appear a doctrine altogether untenable to
assert that this proposition is a necessary truth : for, it may be
urged, we have no difficulty in conceiving matter which is not
heavy; so that matter without weight is a conception not incon-
sistent with itself; which it must be if the reverse were a necessary
truth. It may be added, that the possibility of conceiving matter
without weight was shown in the controversy which ended in the
downfall of the phlogiston theory of chemical composition ; for
some of the reasoners on this subject asserted phlogiston to be a
body with positive levity instead of gravity, which hypothesis, how-
ever false, shows that such a supposition is possible. Again, it
may be said that weight and inertia are two separate properties
of matter: that mathematicians measure the quantity of matter
by the inertia, and that we learn by experiment only that the
weight is proportional to the inertia ; Newton's experiments with
pendulums of different materials having been made with this very
object.
I proceed to reply to these arguments. And first, as to the
possibility of conceiving matter without weight, and the argument
thence deduced, that the universal gravity of matter is not a neces-
sary truth, I remark, that it is indeed just, to say that we cannot
even distinctly conceive the contrary of a necessary truth to be
true; but that this impossibility can be asserted only of those per-
fectly distinct conceptions which result from a complete develop.
524
APPENDIX K.
ment of the fundamental idea and its consequences. Till we reach
this stage of development, the obscurity and indistinctness may
prevent our perceiving absolute contradictions, though they exist.
We bave abundant store of examples of this, even in geometry and
arithmetic; where the truths are universally allowed to be neces-
sary, and where the relations which are impossible, are also incon-
ceivable, that is, not conceivable distinctly. Such relations, though
not distinctly conceivable, still often appear conceivable and pos-
sible, owing to the indistinctness of our ideas. Who, at the first
outset of his geometrical studies, sees any impossibility in suppos-
ing the side and the diagonal of a square to have a common mea-
sure ? Yet they can be rigorously proved to be incommensurable,
and therefore the attempt distinctly to conceive a common measure
of them must fail. The attempts at the geometrical duplication of
the cube, and the supposed solutions, (as that of Hobbes,) have
involved absolute contradictions; yet this has not prevented their
being long and obstinately entertained by men, even of minds acute
and clear in other respects. And the same might be shewn to
be the case in arithmetic. It is plain, therefore, that we cannot,
from the supposed possibility of conceiving matter without weight,
infer that the contrary may not be a necessary truth.
Our power of judging, from the compatibility or incompatibility
of our conceptions, whether certain propositions respecting the
relations of ideas are true or not, must depend entirely, as I have
said, upon the degree of development which such ideas have under-
gone in our minds. Some of the relations of our conceptions on
any subject are evident upon the first steady contemplation of the
fundamental idea by a sound mind: these are the axioms of the
subject. Other propositions may be deduced from the axions by
strict logical reasoning. These propositions are no less necessary
than the axioms, though to common minds their evidence is very
different. Yet as we become familiar with the steps by which these
ulterior truths are deduced from the axioms, their truth also be-
comes evident, and the contrary becomes inconceivable. When a
person has familiarized himself with the first twenty-six proposi-
tions of Euclid, and not till then, it becomes evident to him, that
parallelograms on the same base and between the same parallels
are equal; and he cannot even conceive the contrary. When he
has a little further cultivated his geometrical powers, the equality
of tbe square on the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle to the
squares on the sides, becomes also evident; the steps by which it is
demonstrated being so familiar to the mind as to be apprehended
ALL MATTER IS HEAVY.
525
truth cannot be distinctly conceived ; but the incapacity of forming
such a conception is a condition which depends upon cultivation,
being intimately connected with the power of rapidly and clearly
perceiving the connection of the necessary truth under consideration
with the elementary principles on which it depends. And thus,
again, it may be that there is an absolute impossibility of conceiving
matter without weight; but then, this impossibility may not be
apparent, till we have traced our fundamental conceptions of matter
into some of their consequences.
The question then occurs, whether we can, by any steps of rea-
soning, point out an inconsistency in the conception of matter
without weight. This I conceive we may do, and this I shall
attempt to show.
The general mode of stating the argument is this :-the quantity
of matter is measured by those sensible properties of matter which
undergo quantitative addition, subtraction and division, as the mat-
ter is added, subtracted and divided. The quantity of matter can-
not be known in any other way. But this mode of measuring the
quantity of matter, in order to be true at all, must be universally
true. If it were only partially true, the limits within which it is
to be applied would be arbitrary; and therefore the whole proce-
dure would be arbitrary, and, as a method of obtaining philosophi-
cal truth, altogether futile.
We may unfold this argument further. Let the contrary be sup-
posed, of that which we assert to be true: namely, let it be sup-
posed that while all other kinds of matter are heavy (and of course
heavy in proportion to the quantity of matter), there is one kind of
matter which is absolutely destitute of weight; as, for instance,
phlogiston, or any other element. Then where this weightless
element (as we may term it) is mixed with weighty elements, we
shall have a compound, in which the weight is no longer propor-
tional to the quantity of matter. If, for example, 2 measures of
heavy matter unite with one measure of phlogiston, the weight is
as 2, and the quantity of matter as 3. In all such cases, therefore,
the weight ceases to be the measure of the quantity of matter.
And as the proportion of the weighty and the weightless matter
may vary in innumerable degrees in such compounds, the weight
affords no criterion at all of the quantity of matter in them. And
the smallest admixture of the weightless element is sufficient to
prevent the weight from being taken as the measure of the quan-
tity of matter.
But on this hypothesis, how are we to distinguish such com-
pounds from bodies consisting purely of heavy matter? How are
526
APPENDIX K.
we to satisfy ourselves that there is not, in every body, some admix-
ture, small or great, of the weightless element? If we call this
element phlogiston, bow shall we know that the bodies with which
we have to do are, any of them, absolutely free from phlogiston ?
We cannot refer to the weight for any such assurance; for by
supposition the presence and absence of phlogiston makes no dif-
ference in the weight. Nor can any other properties secure us at .
least from a very small admixture; for to assert that a mixture of
1 in 100 or 1 in 10 of phlogiston would always manifest itself in
the properties of the body, must be an arbitrary procedure, till we
have proved this assertion by experiment: and we cannot do this
till we have learnt some mode of measuring the quantities of matter
in bodies and parts of bodies; which is exactly what we question
the possibility of, in the present hypothesis.
Thus, if we assume the existence of an element, phlogiston,
devoid of weight, we cannot be sure that every body does not con-
tain some portion of this element; while we see that if there be an
admixture of such an element, the weight is no longer any criterion
of the quantity of matter. And thus we have proved, that if there
be any kind of matter which is not heavy, the weight can no longer
avail us, in any case or to any extent, as a measure of the quantity
of matter.
I may remark, that the same conclusion is easily extended to the
case in which phlogiston is supposed to have absolute levity; for in
that case, a certain mixture of phlogiston and of heavy matter
would have no weight, and might be substituted for phlogiston in
the preceding reasoning.
I may remark, also, that the same conclusion would follow by
the same reasoning, if any kind of matter, instead of being void of
weight, were heavy, indeed, but not so heavy, in proportion to its
quantity of matter, as other kinds.
On all these hypotheses there would be no possibility of measur-
ing quantity of matter by weight at all, in any case, or to any extent.
But it may be urged, that we have not yet reduced the hypothe-
sis of matter without weight to a contradiction; for that mathe-
maticians measure quantity of matter, not by weight, but by the
other property, of which we have spoken, inertia.
To this I reply, that, practically speaking, quantity of matter is
always measured by weight, both by mechanicians and chemists :
and as we have proved that this procedure is utterly insecure in all
cases, on the hypothesis of weightless matter, the practice rests
upon a conviction that the hypothesis is false. And yet the prac-
tice is universal. Every experimenter measures quantity of matter
ALL MATTER IS HEAVY.
527
by the balance. No one has ever thought of measuring quantity of
matter by its inertia practically: no one has constructed a measure
of quantity of matter in which the matter produces its indications
of quantity by its motion. When we have to take into account the
inertia of a body, we inquire what its weight is, and assume this as
the measure of the inertia; but we never take the contrary course,
and ascertain the inertia first in order to determine by that means
the weight.
But it may be asked, Is it not then true, and an important
scientific truth, that the quantity of matter is measured by the
inertia? Is it not true, and proved by experiment, that the weight
is proportional to the inertia? If this be not the result of Newton's
experiments mentioned above, what, it may be demanded, do they
prove ?
To these questions I reply: It is true that quantity of matter is
measured by the inertia, for it is true that inertia is as the quantity,
of matter. This truth is indeed one of the laws of motion. That
weight is proportional to inertia is proved by experiment, as far as
the laws of motion are so proved: and Newton's experiments prove
one of the laws of motion, so far as any experiments can prove
them, or are needed to prove them.
That inertia is proportional to weight, is a law equivalent to that
law which asserts, that when pressure produces motion in a given
body, the velocity produced in a given time is as the pressure. For
if the velocity be as the pressure, when the body is given, the
velocity will be constant if the inertia also be as the pressure. For
the inertia is understood to be that property of bodies to which,
ceteris paribus, the velocity impressed is inversely proportional. One
body has twice as much inertia as another, if, when the same force
acts upon it for the same time, it acquires but half the velocity.
This is the fundamental conception of inertia.
In Newton's pendulum experiments, the pressure producing mo-
tion was a certain resolved part of the weight, and was proportional
to the weight. It appeared by the experiments, that whatever were
the material of which the pendulum was formed, the rate of oscil-
lation was the same; that is, the velocity acquired was the same.
Hence the inertia of the different bodies must have been in each
case as the weight: and thus this assertion is true of all different
kinds of bodies.
Thus it appears that the assertion, that inertia is universally
proportional to weight, is equivalent to the law of motion, that the
velocity is as the pressure. The conception of inertia (of which,
as we have said, the fundamental conception is, that the velocity
528
APPENDIX K.
impressed is inversely proportional to the inertia,) connects the
two propositions so as to make them identical.
Hence our argument with regard to the universal gravity of
matter brings us to the above law of motion, and is proved by
Newton's experiments in the same sense in which that law of mo-
tion is so proved.
Perhaps some persons might conceive that the identity of weight
and inertia is obvious at once; for both are merely resistance to
motion;—inertia, resistance to all motion (or change of motion)-
weight, resistance to motion upwards.
But there is a difference in these two kinds of resistance to
motion. Inertia is instantaneous, weight is continuous resistance.
Any momentary impulse which acts upon a free body overcomes its
inertia, for it changes its motion; and this change once effected,
the inertia opposes any return to the former condition, as well as
any additional change. The inertia is thus overcome by a momen-
tary force. But the weight can only be overcome by a continuous
force like itself. If an impulse act in opposition to the weight, it
may for a moment neutralize or overcome the weight; but if it be
not continued, the weight resumes its effect, and restores the con-
dition which existed before the impulse acted.
But weight not only produces rest, when it is resisted, but mo-
tion, when it is not resisted. Weight is measured by the reaction
which would balance it; but when unbalanced, it produces motion,
and the velocity of this motion increases constantly. Now what
determines the velocity thus produced in a given time, or its rate of
increase? What determines it to have one magnitude rather than
another? To this we must evidently reply, the inertia. When
weight produces motion, the inertia is the reaction which makes the
motion determinate. The accumulated motion produced by the
action of unbalanced weight is as determinate a condition as the
equilibrium produced by balanced weight. In both cases the con-
dition of the body acted on is determined by the opposition of the
action and reaction.
Hence inertia is the reaction which opposes the weight, when
unbalanced. But by the conception of action and reaction, (as
mutually determining and determined,) they are measured by each
other: and hence the inertia is necessarily proportional to the
weight.
But when we have reached this conclusion, the original objection
may be again urged against it. It may be said, that there must be
some fallacy in this reasoning, for it proves a state of things to be
necessary when we can so easily conceive a contrary state of things.
ALL MATTER IS HEAVY.
529
Is it. denied, the opponent may ask, that we can readily imagine
a state of things in which bodies have no weight? Is not the
uniform tendency of all bodies in the same direction not only not
necessary, but not even true ? For they do in reality tend, not
with equal forces in parallel lines, but to a center with unequal
forces, according to their position: and we can conceive these
differences of intensity and direction in the force to be greater
than they really are; and can with equal ease suppose the force to
disappear altogether.
To this I reply, that certainly we may conceive the weight of
bodies to vary in intensity and direction, and by an additional effort
of imagination, may conceive the weight to vanish: but that in all
these suppositions, even in the extreme one, we must suppose the
rule to be universal. If any bodies have weight, all bodies must
have weight. If the direction of weight be different in different
points, this direction must still vary according to the law of con-
tinuity; and the same is true of the intensity of the weight. For if
this were not so, the rest and motion, the velocity and direction,
the permanence and change of bodies, as to their mechanical con-
dition, would be arbitrary and incoherent: they would not be sub-
ject to mechanical ideas; that is, not to ideas at all: and hence
these conditions of objects would in fact be inconceivable. In
order that the universe may be possible, that is, may fall under the
conditions of intelligible conceptions, we must be able to conceive a
body at rest. But the rest of bodies (except in the absolute nega-
tion of all force) implies the equilibrium of opposite forces. And
one of these opposite forces must be a general force, as weight, in
order that the universe may be governed by general conditions.
And this general force, by the conception of force, may produce
motion, as well as equilibrium; and this motion again must be
determined, and determined by general conditions; which cannot
be, except the communication of motion be regulated by an inertia
proportional to the weight.
But it will be asked, Is it then pretended that Newton's experi-
ment, by which it was intended to prove inertia proportional to
weight, does really prove nothing but what may be demonstrated à
priori ? Could we know, without experiment, that all bodies,
gold, iron, wood, cork,--have inertia proportional to their weight?
And to this we reply, that experiment holds the same place in the
establishment of this, as of the other fundamental doctrines of
mechanics. Intercourse with the external world is requisite for
developing our ideas; measurement of phenomena is needed to fix
our conceptions and to render them precise: but the result of our
мм
530
APPENDIX K.
experimental studies is, that we reach a position in which our con-
victions do not rest upon experiment. We learn by observation
truths of which we afterwards see the necessity. This is the case
with the laws of motion, as I have repeatedly endeavoured to show.
The same will appear to be the case with the proposition, that
bodies of different kinds have their inertia proportional to their
weight.
For bodies of the same kind have their inertia proportional to
their weight, both quantities being proportional to the quantity of
matter. And if we compress the same quantity of matter into half
the space, neither the weight nor the inertia is altered, because
these depend on the quantity of matter alone. But in this way we
obtain a body of twice the density; and in the same manner we
obtain a body of any other density. Therefore whatever be the
density, the inertia is proportional to the quantity of matter. But
the mechanical relations of bodies cannot depend upon any dif-
ference of kind, except a difference of density. For if we suppose
any fundamental difference of mechanical nature in the particles.-or
component elements of bodies, we are led to the same conclusion,
of arbitrary, and therefore impossible, results, which we deduced
from this supposition with regard to weight. Therefore all bodies
of different density, and hence, all bodies whatever, must have their
inertia proportional to their weight.
Hence we see, that the propositions, that all bodies are heavy,
and that inertia is proportional to weight, necessarily follow from
those fundamental ideas which we unavoidably employ in all attempts
to reason concerning the mechanical relations of bodies. This con-
clusion may perhaps appear the more startling to many, because
they have been accustomed to expect that fundamental ideas and
their relations should be self-evident at our first contemplation of
them. This, however, is far from being the case, as I have already
shown. It is not the first, but the most complete and developed
condition of our conceptions which enables us to see what are
axiomatic truths in each province of human speculation. Our fun-
damental ideas are necessary conditions of knowledge, universal
forms of intuition, inherent types of mental development; they
may even be termed, if any one chooses, results of connate intel-
lectual tendencies; but we cannot term them innate ideas, without
calling up a large array of false opinions. For innate ideas were
considered as capable of composition, but by no means of simplifica-
tion: as most perfect in their original condition; as to be found, if
any where, in the most uneducated and most uncultivated minds;
as the same in all ages, nations, and stages of intellectual culture;
ALL MATTER IS HEAVY.
531
as capable of being referred to at once, and made the basis of our
reasonings, without any special acuteness or effort: in all which
circumstances the Fundamental Ideas of which we have spoken,
are opposed to Innate Ideas so understood.
I shall not, however, here prosecute this subject. I will only
remark, that Fundamental Ideas, as we view them, are not only
not innate, in any usual or useful sense, but they are not necessarily
ultimate elements of our knowledge. They are the results of our
analysis so far as we have yet prosecuted it; but they may them-
selves subsequently be analysed. It may hereafter appear, that
what we have treated as different Fundamental Ideas have, in fact,
a connexion, at some point below the structure which we erect
upon them. For instance, we treat of the mechanical ideas of force,
matter, and the like, as distinct from the idea of substance. Yet
the principle of measuring the quantity of matter by its weight,
which we have deduced from mechanical ideas, is applied to deter-
mine the substances which enter into the composition of bodies.
The idea of substance supplies the axiom, that the whole quantity
of matter of a compound body is equal to the sum of the quantities
of matter of its elements. The mechanical ideas of force and matter
lead us to infer that the quantity both of the whole and its parts
inust be measured by their weights. Substance may, for some pur-
poses, be described as that to which properties belong; matter in
like manner may be described as that which resists force. The
former involves the Idea of permanent Being; the latter, the Idea
of Causation. There may be some elevated point of view from
which these ideas may be seen to run together. But even if this be
so, it will by no means affect the validity of reasonings founded
upon these notions, when duly determined and developed. If we
once adopt a view of the nature of knowledge which makes neces-
sary truth possible at all, we need be little embarrassed by finding
how closely connected different necessary truths are; and how often,
in exploring towards their roots, different branches appear to spring
from the same stem.
END OF THE APPENDIX.
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