K-',I 91 ~4 7.KuA 15P CI,1 TH7 I X# I I 1-f 11J i i'.),IFT OF IN *~ ( MIENTAL SCIENCE ( A)1 11 I -,N M ET HO0D B3Y SAMUEL rTAYL~ORl COL-ERIIDGE LOGIC AND RHETORIC RICH1AR.D 'WHATEL.Y, ID.D. A ItC E B IL~i 0P O 1 (U BL I N ILONIDON CHARLES GRIFFIN AND COMPANY 10, STATIONERS' HALL COURT A DISSERTATION ON THE SCIENCE OF METHOD; OR, THE LAWS AND REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES OF E1)UCATION. BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 7 -NINTH EDITION. LONDO N: CHARLES GRIFFIN AND COMPANY, STATIONERS' HALL COURT. ", r I,,:1 - L", - ll"' I -1 I (-') -e,- -- I r) I-, g PRINTED BYl W. CLOWES AND SONS. STAMFOUD STIZEET AND CHIASING' CROSS. SYNOPSIS. SECTION 1. ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF METHOD. P'acke From disregard of the Principles of Method no Encyclopaedia has ever yet been methodically arranged - - - - - -13 It is fit to commence the present work by an explanation of the Principles, and an application of them to the chain of the Arts and Sciences - - - 14 This w rk claims to be a Methodical Compendium of human knowledge - - 14 The word Method, derived from the Greek, signifies a way of transit. Metho(d implies unity with progression. Method must be an act of the Mind itsel:; which alone unites or makes many one. An universal Method must in,, sought in the very centre of the Human Intellect. Method is never arbitrary 14 Relations of things are the materials of Method, which is-the way of transit froi one to the other of related things. --- —-- 15 Relation of Law is that whereby we understand that a thing must be; Relation of Theory that whereby we perceive that it is -.. - Relations of Law belong to the Pure Sciences, which deal with necessary truths, predetermined by the Mind itself, and ever existing in and for the Mind alone; and in a looser sense, to the Mixed Sciences, in which truths originating in the Mind are applied to the world without, and constitute the great Laws of Nature - - - - - - - - - - - - 6 Relations of Theory are subservient to the Scientific Arts, such as Medicine. Chemistry, Physiology - - -. - - - - - - - 1 The Method of the Fine Arts lies between Law and Theory. In it Laws of Taste predominate, but it contains other Laws dependent on external objects 16 Tinkling verse and the Harmonica are alike unsatisfactory, because in them the material encroaches on the mental, a proof how truly the Fine Arts involve Laws of the Mind and Relations of Law - - 16 Method implies a uniting and a progressive power. Law and Idea are correlative terms; the one (Law) is the laying down of the rule or mode of union, the mental act; the other (Idea) is the rule laid down, the mental object. Thus Idea and Law differ as Being and Truth; the mind objective and subjective, i. e., considered as self-beheld and beholding, the subject being that which, in all workings and movements, of which we are conscious, is inferred, as the agent, quod jacet subter, which lies under what appears: the object that in us, whence the subject is inferred, id quod jacet ob oculos - 17 B 2 IV SYNOPSIS. Pge The Idea may exist in a distinct form, or as an unconscious impulse - - 17 Language is well adapted to lead from the vague sense to the clear beholding of the Idea - -17 the Progression in Ideas, which is true Method, starts from a rightly chosen Initiative - - - - - -- - - 18 The habit of Method results from a certain education. Objects of sense stimulate the mind, which again acts on the food received from without - - 18 Excess in methodizing is opposed to the accumulation of fresh material of thought - - - - - - - - 19 According to the true Laws of Method, ideas of Reason and Faith must be held paramount, these of Physical Experience subordinate. This subordination is independent of immediate practical utility, which is determined by circumstances of the moment 19 Ideas have a certain relative rank among themselves - - - 20 Metaphysical Ideas relate to the essence of things as possible, and are independent of actual existence; these are of the highest class. Physical Ideas concern the nature of things actually existing - - 20 The word Nature signifies either the reality of a thing as existent, or the sum of sensuous things; a physical Idea, or a sensible Impression - - 21 Mere arrangement is not Method - - - - -21 Summary - - - -21 Method is founded on Relations. There are relations of Law and of Theory. The Method of the Fine Arts comprises both. The Principles of Method are Union and Progression. Progress requires in the Mind a due mean between passiveness under outward impression and activity of abstract reflection - 21 SECTION II. ILLUSTRATION OF THE PRECEDING PRINCIPLES. The Principles already stated are to be tested by particular references - - 23 Method is important generally, not in processes of intellect alone, but equally so in the ordering of active and domestic life - - -- 2 -The truly methodical man gives a life to Time, distinguishing its parts, which would otherwise glide on massed together like a stream; realizing its ideal dimensions, giving individuality to its moments - 24 Method in discourse is the sign of mental power and cultivated intellect - - 24 There must be Method in the performance of Moral Duty - - - - 25 Method in speculative meditation is conducive to worldly interest in the promotion and regulation of useful discovery - - -25 SYNOPSIS. v Page Columbus was led to success by a guiding Idea 25 In the strength of this Idea he conquered at last, though his noble hope was long contemned, both by Princes and the common People - - - - 2 An Initiative, or previous mental act, is indispensable in physical, as well as in mathematical studies - - - - - - - - - -2 In Mathematics the perfect Idea makes the object; the definition precedes the reasoning: in Physics the definition is representative not constitutive, and follows the reasoning - 27 Discoveries of Experimental Philosophy, till they lead to some Law, are insecure and unproductive - - 7 The Idea of the Theory of Electricity is one and sure amid various and insecure hypotheses. On this depends the method of arranging the phenomena. The Law of Polarity operates in all Electrical phenomena - - 28 Magnetism is contrasted with Electricity in furnishing no Idea, leading to no Law, and hence to no Method. There is an hypothesis which considers Magnetism, Electricity, and Galvanism, as results of one power essential to all material construction -...28 The Fictions of the Electrician contain an idea; the Suppositions of the Magnetists do but repeat the same fact in a magnified form. This leads us to recognise the importance of the enlightening fact, which proclaims an Idea. One fact is often as good as a thousand - - -- 30 Zoology was without unity or system till Hunter, in the preparations for his Museum, announced, though imperfectly, an Idea, and thereby led to noble results - - - - - - - - - - - - An Idea is wanted indispensably for methodical arrangement in Botany - - 31 Botany is obliged to Linnaeus for a serviceable scheme of arrangement. But for lack of an Initiative Idea, the true Idea of Sex and of Vegetation itself, he was unable to systematize the Vegetable with the Animal and Mineral Kingdoms -- - - 32 Want of insight into the Idea of Sex precludes a perfect methodical arrangement of vegetable productions. With all the multitude and variety of particular informations on the subject, brought together by numerous able investigators, Botany remains merely a vast nomenclature and catalogue, from default of a methodizing Idea -333 The Idea which has occurred to some, that the harmony between the Vegetable and Animal Worlds rests upon contrast, not likeness, if proved an objective truth, would produce scientific Method - - - 33 The charm of Chemistry consists in the anticipation of a Law, whereof the variety of substances, assumed to be indecomposable, are exponents. It is a pursuit after unity of principle through variety of forms - - 34 There is a correspondence between Physical Science and Poetry, Nature being idealized by the Poet, Poetry substantiated by the Natural Philosopher - 85 V1 SYNOPSIS. Page The position that Poetry is capable of Method is founded on the very Philosophy here set forth, and is evidenced in the Plays of Shakspeare - - 35 Shiakspeare's information has been shown to be extensive. But his knowledge was no rude mass, it was methodized by a perception of Relations. He studied Mankind in the Idea of the Race, and followed out that Idea into its varieties by a guiding Method - - 35 Compare Mrs. Quickly's account of Falstaffs debt, with Hamlet's narration to Horatio of what took place in his voyage to England - - 36 Both discourses are immethodical inform; but that of the hostess wants order resulting from power of thought, while that of Hamlet is governed by reflection. The former is a mere report of passive impressions; the latter is interrupted by the propensity to generalize - - - 38 1 Mrs. Quickly's want of method is common in real life; and, on the other hand, many intelligent men, from the disposition to generalize in excess, are apt to overlook the relation of objects to the apprehension and sympathies of hearers - - - - - - - - - 38 The habit of Method brings the Remote into Contiguity; the absence of it produces distance and disconnection between the parts of a discourse treating of things near in Time and Space - - - - - 39 Not only is there consistency in Shakspeare's Characters: his just display of Passion arose from the contemplation of Ideas. It was not in the former only that he followed an accurate philosophic Method - 39 Condemnatory criticism on Shakspeare may, for the most part, receive two answers; first that, working from an Idea, he better understood the fit mode of expressing Passion,-had a more methodical sense of Harmony, than his critics: secondly, that he pursued two Methods at once, the poetical and the psychological - -- 40 Shakspeare's moral conceptions are guided by philosophic Method. He exhibits crime in union with intellectual vigour, never, like less methodic moralists, conjoined with magnanimity, or as part of a character upon the whole amiable and admirable - - - - -41 Shakspeare is methodical in his style. No other man ever so exquisitely adapted the discourse of poetic personages to wide varieties of rank and character. It was Method that led him to the choice of such happy words and idioms, still fresh as in their first bloom - — 41 Shakspeare has been called " not methodical in the structure of his Fable;" but the contrary may be proved. He has been said to have violated the unities of time, place, and action. But Unity is the subject of Ideal Law, and this is Shakspeare's own peculiar ground, the ground of Idea. Who could alter the plan of one of his great plays, or transpose its parts, without destroying the sublime and moving effect of scenes and passages? - 42 If the wondrous excellence of Shakspeare, in all provinces of the poetic drama, was thus attributable to Method, let it never be said that Poetry is independent of philosophical principles of Method - - 43 SYNTOPSIS. T11 Philosophy, to which belongs the education of Mind, is herself wholly conversant with Method 44 The Ancients had their spurious intellectual Methods. But their Philosophers ipursued a different course from the Sophists. The species, Philosophy, is sufficiently exemplified by two varieties, Plato and Bacon - - - 44 The object of the better works of Plato is to teach the art of Method. This is the clue to guide us through his labyrinth. His aim was not so much to teach any particular truth, as to clear the way for the reception of Truth at large; to excite in the soul those faculties, by the operation whereof it becomes self-enriched, rather than to fill it with knowledge from without. Plato and Shakspeare dealt with ideas, but were only so much the more awake to actual existences. Plato's philosophy was most wrongfully accused of neglecting fact and experience; he pursued the false intellectualism of the Sophists, even oftener and more vehemently than the usurpation of the Senses --- -- - -- -- - -- -- -45 Lord Bacon, though he is strangely cited as authority against Plato, followed the Platonic method in his own scheme 46 Cicero, the great Philosopher of Rome, venerated Plato. Bacon's detraction from him is easier to explain than to justify. He was influenced by the Fathers of the Reformation and by misinterpreters - ------ 46 Bacon was invidious also to his contemporaries. But we are here concerned with his philosophical principles only 47 The superficial talkers about Bacon's Philosophy form a wrong and inadequate estimate of it, from considering only those parts the soundness of which may be fairly disputed -----— 47 Bacon collected Particulars in order to concentrate them into Universals; but by these means it would have been impossible to have arrived at Law, the sole object of bringing them together — 48 Bacon performed a worthier task by constructing a methodical system developed in his Novum Organum. If we extract from Plato and from Bacon what constitutes the true philosophy of each writer, we shall find it identical in regard to the Science of Method; although in both authors, from imperfect acquaintance with the laws of nature, the inductions are often erroneous and the proposed applications impracticable ---— 49 Bacon, as much as we, demands the mental initiative,-namely, as the motive and guide of philosophical experiment, some well-grounded purpose, some distinct impression of the probable results. With him, as with us, an Idea is an experiment proposed; an experiment is an Idea realized - - -49 What forms the purpose and adapts thereto the experiment? The understanding of the experimenter-lux Intellectus. This light, he argues, is obscured by idols or false opinions. He distinguishes the various kinds of idols, andl, like Plato, prescribes remedies for the blindness they produce: he shows that Idols are empty notions, whilst Ideas are the very impresses of Nature, corresponding perfectly to the outward things to which they belong. Bacon's style betrays in some respects a faulty Method- --- 5X) viii SYNOPSIS. Page Bacon teaches that there are innate idols or mental fallacies; that as the mind in every individual is more or less enfeebled and impaired, it misrepresents, like an imperfect mirror, what is presented to it; that consequently man is led to take the mechanism of his own reflective faculty for the measure of Nature and of Deity. According to Plato, as well as to Bacon, so long as tforms merely subjective are taken for the moulds of objective truth, no fruitful and secure method can be expected C Bacon suggests that the imperfection of the human Intellect may and must be remedied by a higher power. He assumes that the evidence of the Judgment, L set with Idols, may be corrected by the Judgment, enlightened by Ideas. This corrector and purifier is one and the same light of truth, the condition ot all pure science. Hence Plato calls Ideas living Laws: Bacon names the Laws of Nature Ideas. What Plato extolled under the title of Dialectic, is the discipline whereby the human mind is cleansed from Idols, and raised to the contemplation of Ideas, or distingwshable powers self-affirmed - - 52 Plato treated principally of Truth as manifested in the world of Intellect; Bacon of the same Truth in the world of Sense. The one cultivated Metaphysics most; the other Natural Philosophy. Botn proceeded on the same principles of Unity and Progression, and alike followed Method as here described S — ------- 52 That the Method treated of is founded in the laws and necessary conditions of human existence, may be inferred from the History of the Human Race, which has its Infancy, Youth, Manhood, and Middle Age - - - - - 54 In the first period the Obedience of the Will was taught to Man. Some in that Early Age cultivated the Moral Sense, gained spiritual knowledge and spiritual hopes, and therefore cared little to acquire Arts and Sciences and improve earthly possessions. The latter exclusively observed outward things as the sole realities. The vicious of Mankind receded from cultivation, while they hurried toward civilization. They worshipped the material elements, and finally bowed down before material Idols. Here were two opposite Methods; that of looking for the good and the true within the mind, and that of finding it only in the material -- ----- 54 In the second period Providence awakened Man to the pursuit of an idealized Method in the development of his faculties. Bards began to spiritualize Polytheism. Hence the Mysteries shaped themselves into Epic Poetry and History on one hand,-on the other into Tragedy and Philosophy. The Fine Arts shot up at once to perfection by a Method founded on a Mental Initiative. The progress of the Ancients in all things that originate in Mind was contrasted with their slow advance in Natural History and Philosophy - 55 The Romans were mere imitators of the Greeks in Science and Art. The Dark Ages, which brought the sensual Barbarians from the North to meet the influences of Christianity in the South, require no long consideration. But one effect of that influence must be noticed, namely, the gradual abolition of domestic slavery. The Idea of a Human Being, as a Person, in opposition to a Thing, excludes the Idea of property in that Being - - - - 56 SYNOPSIS. ix Page The Leaders of the Reformation were advocates of the Ideal and Internal against the External or Imaginative. The Revolution of Thought and its effects on the Science of Method became visible beyond the pale of the Church or the Cloister. Bacon's attempt to introduce a new method into Learning ~ was completely successful - 57 A complete and genuine Philosophy can only exist when one and the same Ideal Method is applied to external nature and to intellectual existence. The work of Bacon, in its general scope, contemplates physical Ideas. This fact, together with some of his expressions, misled many of his followers into the +~ belief that he hell the things of sense to be the only worthy objects of Man's attention. Hence the modern French school of Philosophy and the monstrous puerilities of Condillac and Condorcet, whose pupils are important only by their number - 57 SECTION III. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF METHOD TO THE GENERAL CONCATENATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF STUDIES. A savage Indian, unacquainted with letters, attempting to make use of the Bible, in the sense that his fate is in some way connected with its contents, may represent Arrangement guided by no Idea, Orderliness without Method- 59 When the Missionary, arriving, explains to him the nature of written words, he communes with the spirit of the volume. Thenceforth his vain Arrangement is discarded; the results of Method are to him light and truth - - - 60 The attempt to bind together the whole body of the Sciences has been, in some instances, worse than immethodical. The insinuation of sceptical principles into works of Science is full of danger to posterity - 60 The Encyclopaedia Metropolitana has been projected to keep up an interest in the nrinciples of Method -------— 61 An Universal Dictionary of Knowledge is not undertaken in this work, but to build, by a philosophical Method, the Useful on the Essential in Science,-the Elegant and Agreeable on both - - - - -61 This Method consists in subordinating particular things to a preconceived Idea, or to some lower form of the latter 61 The Moral Origin and Tendency of true Science is the master thought of the plan - - - - - - - - - - -61 The Pure Sciences are built on the Relations of Ideas to each other; the Mixed or Applied on the Relations of Ideas to the External World - - -62 The Pure Sciences represent pure Acts of Mind - - - - - 62 In them we distinguish between Formal and Real. The former teach the Forms of Thinking; the latter treat of Being itself, the true nature and existence of the External Universe, of the Guiding Principles within us, and of the Great Cause of all - 62 x SYNOPSIS. Page The Formal Sciences are Grammar, Logic, Mathematics; the Sciences that deal with substantial realities are Metaphysics, Morals, Theology. These Sciences are conversant about relations of Law, therefore have all the purity and certainty of the positive and absolute. In the proper philosophical Method the speculative knowledge of Metaphysics is united with the reality of ethical sentiments, and both are consummated in Theology - - - 62 The Mixed and Applied Sciences, as they concern our relations to the external world, not pure acts of mind alone, depart from Law to embrace Theory, and thus require a Method adapted to themselves - - - 64 Physical Theories, the materials of which they are constructed being supplied from without, continually change form, and are imperfect because necessarily progressive. The Initiative in such cases is supplied by an Hypothesis, an actual fact represented as universally present, or a fact imagined, being placed, as it were, centrally, to the support of other facts arranged by the theory into a certain form - 65 True Theory is always a locum tenens of Law. A Law occupying the centre, the circumference may be extended without derangement of the entire scheme, or alteration of its character - - - - 65 This will show the connexion of the Mixed and Applied with the Pure Sciences, and the reference of the former to the Human Mind. The terms Science and Law, however, are used in a less strict sense in reference to the Mixed and Applied Sciences than to the Pure, since they cannot have the absolute certainty of the others. The former might best be entitled Studies - - 66 The Mixed Studies or Sciences are those in which certain Ideas of the Mind are applied to the general properties of bodies, as Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Optics, and Astronomy- - - - - - - - - - 67 The Applied Sciences are those in which Ideas or Images that represent them are applied, not to the investigation of the general and permanent properties of all bodies, but of certain changes in those properties, or of properties existing in bodies partially. Such are Magnetism, Electricity, Galvanism, the laws of Light and Heat, &c. The uncertainty of the first principles in these Studies has already been shown - - - 68 The Fine Arts are Sciences applied to the purposes of Pleasure through the Imagination. They are Poetry, Painting, Music, Sculpture, Architecture. In these the Mental Initiative must proceed from within; in the Mixed and in the first class of Applied Sciences it may have been received from without. The Method to be observed in them, as before stated, lies between that ot Law and that of Theory. As operating by sensible impressions, they belong to the outward world; and yet the true Poet is impelled by an inward power, an impulse, which gradually brightens into an Idea - - - 68 Useful Pursuits-Political Economy, Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures-are reducible to Method, and refer to Ideas, being dependent on the Sciences already named - - - - -69 The failure of Linnaeus in fixing the three great kingdoms of Natural History on a firm basis is owing to the want of precision in the first Ideas of his Theory 70 SYNOPSIS. xi Pag;e Natural History is a rule for the dependent pursuits, such as Medicine, Surgery, and Anatomy. The desire to improve these should be regulated by a due regard to the place each holds in the circle of the Sciences, and by observing the only proper method that can be pursued in its cultivation - - - 70 The plan of this Encyclopaedia embraces the History of the Human Race. The great end of History is to acquaint us with the History of Man, and this end is best answered by giving the most exact portrait. But there must be some mode of grouping and connecting the Individuals, who are themselves the great landmarks in the map of Human Nature. Accordingly History will sometimes be presented in the form of Biography. The Uses of History will be treated in an Introduction, and there will be inter-connecting Chapters on the events of distinguishing periods, as well as on Political Geography and Chronology ---- 70 These views relate o the Philosophical and Historical branches of the Work. Of the Miscellaneous and Alphabetical it is not necessary to make any detailed statenent - - - - - - -72 To the Philosophical, as most important, every other part of the arrangement is subordinated. The Philosophical governs and regulates the Alphabetical - 73 Trade and Literature, the one of which has for its object the wants of the body, the other the wants of the mind, are the two great impulses of Modern times. Without these combined there can be no Nation; without Commerce and Science no bond of Nations. Our Method embraces this two-fold distinction of human activitv 74 This conducts us to the distinguishing object of the present undertaking, in explaining which we have dwelt on Method, the main characteristic of every just arrangement of Knowledge. To convey methodically the pure and unsophisticated knowledge of the Past, so as to aid the progress of the Future, has been already 4 announced as the distinguishing claim of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. WONTENTS. xiii PAGE Fallacies arising from the occasional, partial, and temporary variations in the acceptation of particular terms,. 5 ~ XII.-NN-LOGICAL (OR MATERIAL) FALLACIES,.. 75 Begging the Question, (Petitio principii,)... 75 Arguing in a Circle,... 76 Example in the science of Mechanics,..76 The English Language very suitable for the Fallacies of Petitio principii, from its abounding in synonymous expressions drawn from two distinct languages, and which have no resemblance in sound, nor connection in etymology,. 76 ~ XIII.-FALSITY, OR UNDUE ASSUMPTION OF A PREMISS when it is not equivalent to, or dependent on, the Conclusion,. 76 Investigation is a perfectly distinct business from Argumentation,.... 7 In philosophical Investigation, it is a necessary caution not to assume one thing to be the cause of another, when perhaps it is only an accidental concomitant,.. 77 Examples of the undue assumption of Premises,..77 Cause and Reason confounded together,... 77 Indirect Assumption of Premises,... 77 This Fallacy often combined with that of ignoratio elenchi,. 78 ~ XIV.-The FALLACY of IRRELEVANT CONCLUSION, commonly called ignoratio elenchi,.. 8 In this fallacy, various kinds of Propositions are, according to the occasion, substituted for the one of which proof is required,... 7 Examples of this Fallacy,. 79 Examples of the Combination of this Fallacy with that of Petitio principii,.... 80 Argumentum ad hominem,.... 80 Argumentum ad verecundiam,... 80 Argmentum adpopulum,.... 80 Argumentum ad rem,.... 80 Argumentum ad ignorantiam,... 80 Technical Analysis of these Arguments,.. 80 Use of ambiguous Terms in this Fallacy,... 81 ~ XV.-In PROTRACTED CONTROVERSY a party uses the FALLACY of Ignoratio elenchi, to SHIFT HIS GROUND,... 81 A similar practice is that of Combating both your opponent's Premises alternately-shifting from one to the other without deciding upon either,....81 Fallacy to the use of which many a guilty person placed on trial owes his acquittal,..... 82 ~ XVI.-FALLACY OF OBJECTIONS,.. 82 The Universal Fallacy of Infidels,....82 The Fallacy of Anti-Reformers,.... 82 ~ XVII.-The FALLACY of proving or disproving SOME PART of that which is required, suppressing all mention of the rest,.. 82 Precaution against ever advancing Arguments that cannot be well maintained,.8. 3. ~ XVIII.-STATEMENT of the method of proceeding most conducive to the success of this FALLACY, namely, by peculiar arrangement of the Premises and Arguments, and suppression of the Conclusion,........ 83 Xiv CONTENTS. PAGE ~ XIX.-JESTS ARE FALLACIES so palpable as not to deceive, yet bearing that resemblance to Argument which is calculated to amuse by the contrast,....... 83 CHAPTER VI. ESSAY ON THE PROVINCE OF REASONING. INTRODUCTION,........ 85 ~ I.-OF INDUCTION,....... 85 The alleged superiority of the Inductive to the Syllogistic method of seeking truth, is a mistake,... 85 The mistake has arisen from applying two different meanings to the word Induction, which is sometimes employed to designate the Process of Investigation and of Collecting Facts, and sometimes the Deducing of an Inference from those Pacts,...... 86 Induction may be stated syllogistically when it is an argument, but when it is a process of Inquiry, it is out of the province of Lo ic,....... 86 Great judgment and caution require to be exercised in the Assumption of Premises in Induction,... 87 The Laying down of Premises requires a competent knowledge of the nature of the subject discussed,... 87 The Degree of Evidence for any Proposition to be assumed as a Premiss, is a consideration in the province of the Science that furnishes the subject matter of the Argument, 87 The Rules of Logic have nothing to do with the Truth or Falsity of the Premises, but merely teach us to decide whether the Conclusion follows fairly from the Premises or not,....... 87 Investigation. The Inductive Process,... 87 In Induction, the more doubtful of the two Premises is usually suppressed,....... 88 Difference between Induction and Example,... 88 ~ II.-ON THE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH,..... 88 Consideration of the question, whether New Truths are brought to light merely by a process of Reasoning,. 88 This question decided negatively,.... 88 The objection to the syllogism urged by Professor Campbell on this ground,...... 89 Refutation of that Objection,..... 89 Difficulty of bringing before the Mind the several bearings,the various applications,-of any one Proposition,.. 89 Comprehensiveness of Terms. Division and Generalization in a great degree arbitrary. Consequences,.. 89 The Ten Categories or Predicaments of Aristotle and other Logical writers. Their use,.... 90 Double Meanings of the terms Discovery and New Truths:- 90 1st kind. Such Truths as were, before they were discovered, absolutely unknown; matters of fact, &c. These truths are gained from observation and testimony, and are commonly called Informnation,.... 90 2d kind. Discoveries elicited by Reasoning, and implied in that which we already know; not taken upon trust, nor ascertained by observation. These are called Instruction, 90 CONTENTS. xv PAGH Plato's Theory of Ideas,..... 9 Mathematical Propositions are not properly True or False in the same sense as any Proposition respecting real fact is so called,....... 91 Ethical Propositions,...... 91 Importance of distinguishing the two kinds of Discovery of Truth, Information and Instruction,.. 92 Employment of Reasoning in the establishment of Matters of Fact. Physical Discoveries,.... 93 Importance of ascertaining and keeping in mind the Degree of Evidence for the Facts which are to be used as Data, since, otherwise, the Conclusions could not be relied on, however accurate the Reasoning,... 93 Individual Facts may be elicited by skilfully combining, and Reasoning from, Facts already known,... 93 General Facts established by Reasoning from Induction,.93 Illustrated by Examples,..... 93 These operations distinct from Reasoning,... 94 Physical Discoveries compared with Logical Discoveries,. 94 The same Discovery may be of the nature of a Logical Discovery to one man, and a Physical Discovery to another, 94 Scientific Truths,...... 95 Mathematical Definitions cannot properly be called true or false,...... 95 Nominal and Real Definitions,.... 96 The question considered, whether such great Discoveries as have been made in Natural Philosophy, can be accomplished by Reasoning,...... 96 The word Reasoning used in this case ambiguously,. 96 The question may be answered affirmatively in one sense, and negatively in another,..... 96 The two senses in which the word Reasoning is used, are perpetually confounded together,.... 96 The Discoveries of General Laws of Nature, &c. are New Truths in Different Senses to Different Persons,.. 97 Particular Facts, the immediate result of observation and experiment, are frequently uninteresting and insignificant, till so combined as to lead to a grand general result,. 97 The skilful selection and combination of Truths, long and generally known, so as to elicit important and hitherto unthought of Conclusions, shows a Master Mind,. 98 Mathematical Discoveries always of the nature of Logical Discoveries,...... 98 The Operations strictly comprehended under the word "Reasoning" are not alone sufficient for Logical and Physical Discoveries,..... 98 In Logical Discoveries, is required a skilful Selection and Combination of known Truths,... 98 In Physical Discoveries, we must employ, generally in addition to the former, the operations of Observation and Experiment, 98 In the study of Nature, both kinds of Investigation are united, 99 In Mathematics, and in most discussions relating to Ethics and Jurisprudence, we employ only Logical Investigation,. 99 Mathematical Reasoning compared with Reasonings which regard matters of fact,.. 99 xvi CONTENTS. PAGE ~ III.-OF INFERENCE AND PROOF,....100 Proving defined, the assigning of a Reason or Argument for the support of a given Proposition,...101 Inferring defined, the deduction of a Conclusion from given Premises,......101 The Philosopher infers; the Advocate proves,. 101 These processes arise from, and generate, verydifferent Habits of Mind, and require a very different kind of Training and Precept,.......102 The Lawyer, Controversialist, or Rhetorician, who is, in his own province, the most skilful, may be but ill-fitted for philosophical investigation,....102 The ablest Philosopher may make an indifferent disputant, 102 It is of importance to comprehend this distinction, as it is a common fault to forget the Philosopher or Theologian, and to assume the Advocate,.... 102 The bare process of Reasoning is the same in both cases, but not so the preparatory processes requisite in order to employ Reasoning profitably,... 102 The Aristotelian and Baconian Logic,.. 103 The Fitness of Logic for Academical Education,. 103 ~ IV.-OF VERBAL AND REAL QUESTIONS,....104 A Verbal Question distinguished from a Real Question,. 104 A Verbal Question is one in which the parties employ the same Terms in different senses,...104 A Real Question is one in which the parties differ as to the Opinions they hold of the Things in question,..104 When Verbal questions are mistaken for Real, much confusion of thought and unprofitable wrangling,-Logomachy (dispace about words),-will be generally the result,.105 Real questions not to be stigmatised as Verbal controversies, 106 ~ V.-OF REALISM,. 106 Erroneous notion of the Realists, that Genus and Species are Real Things, existing independently of our conceptions and expressions,. 106 That notion sustained by the transferred and secondary use of the words same, one and the same, identical, &c.. o. A mass of confused Reasoning and Logomachy may be cleared away by attending to the proper use of such ambiguous terms,.... 107 INDEX,..... SECTION I. ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF METHOD. THE word ENCYCLOPEDIA is too familiar to Modern Literature Nature of the Work, to require, in this place, any detailed explanation. It is current amongst us as the title of various Dictionaries of Science, whose professed object is to furnish a compendium of Human Knowledge, whatever may be their plan. But to methodize such a compendium has either never been attempted, or the attempt has -failed, from the total disregard of those general connecting principles, on which Method essentially depends. In presenting, therefore, to the Public an entirely new Work, intended to be Methodically arranged, we are not insensible to the difficulties of our undertaking; but we trust that we have found a clue to the labyrinth in those considerations which we are now about to submit to the reader. As METHOD is thus avowed to be the principal aim and dis- The Encyclopadia tinguishing feature of our publication, it becomes us at the Metropolicommencement, clearly to explain in this Introduction what tana to be a Methodical we mean by that word; to exhibit the Principles on which Compendium of alone a correct Philosophical Method can be founded; to Human illustrate those principles by their application to distinct studies Kowledge and to the History of the Human Mind; and lastly to apply them to the general concatenation of the several Arts and Sciences, and to the most perspicuous, elegant, and useful manner of developing each particular study. Such are the objects of this Essay, which we conceive must form a necessary Introduction to a Work, that is designated in its title from the 14 INTRODUCTION. fSEC. I. place whence it originates,-ENCYCLOPEDIA METROPOLITANA; but claims from its mode of execution to be also called " a METHODICAL Compendium of Human Knowledge." The word The word METHOD (ueOo~oC) being of Grecian origin, first oMetho. frmed and applied by that acute, ingenious, and accurate People, to the purposes of Scientific arrangement, it is in the Greek Language that we must seek for its primary and fundamental signification. Now, in Greek, it literally means a way, or path, of transit. Hence the first idea of Method is a progressive transition from one step in any course to another; and where the word Method is applied with reference to many such transitions in continuity, it necessarily implies a Principle of UNITY WITH PROGRESSION. But that which unites, and makes many things one in the Mind of Man, must be an act of the Mind itself, a manifestation of intellect, and not a spontaneous and uncertain production of circumstances. This act of the Mind, then, this leading thought, this " key note" of the harmony, this " subtile, cementing, subterraneous" power, borrowing a phrase from the nomenclature of legislation, we may not inaptly call the INITIATIVE of all Method. It is manifest, that the wider the sphere of transition is, the more comprehensive and commanding must be the initiative: and if we would discover an universal Method, by which every step in our progress through the whole circle of Art and Science should be directed, it is absolutely necessary that we should seek it in the very interior and central essence of the Human intellect. The Science To this point we are led by mere reflection on the meaning of Method. of the word Method. We discover that it cannot, otherwise than by abuse, be applied to a dead and arbitrary arrangement, containing in itself no Principle of progression. We discover, that there is a Science of Method; and that that Science, like all others, must necessarily have its Principles; which it therefore becomes our duty to consider, in so far at least as they SEC. I.] PRINCIPLES JF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 15 may be necessary to the arrangement of a Methodical Encyclopaedia. All things, in us, and about us, are a Chaos, without Method: Its Objects and and so long as the mind is entirely passive, so long as there is Relations. an habitual submission of the Understanding to mere events and images, as such, without any attempt to classify and arrange them, so long the Chaos must continue. There may be transition, but there can never be progress; there may be sensation, but there cannot be thought: for the total absence of Method renders thinking impracticable; as we find that partial defects of Method proportionably render thinking a trouble and a fatigue. But as soon as the mind becomes accustomed to contemplate, not things only, but likewise relations of things, there is immediate need of some path or way of transit from one to the other of the things related;-there must be some law of agreement or of contrast between them; there must be some mode of comparison; in short, there must be Method. We may, therefore, assert that the relations of things form the prime objects, or, so to speak, the materials of Method; and that the contemplation of those relations is the indispensable condition of thinking Methodically. Of these relations of things, we distinguish two principal kinds. One of them is the relation by which we understand that a thing must be: the other, that by which we merely perceive that it is. The one, we call the relation of LAW, using that word in its highest and original sense, namely, that of laying down a rule to which the subjects of the LAW must necessarily conform. The other, we call the relation of THEORY. The relation of LAW is in its absolute perfection conceivable Relation of only of GOD, that Supreme Light, and Living Law, " in whom Law. we live and move, and have our being;" who is iv iravrL, and rrpo wv s, rcvrwv. But yet the Human Mind is capable of viewing 16 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. 1. some relations of things as necessarily existent; that is to say, as predetermined by a truth in the Mind itself, pregnant with the consequence of other truths in an indefinite progression. Of such truths, some continue always to exist in and for the Mind alone, forming the Pure Sciences, moral or intellectual; whilst others, though originating in the Mind, constitute what are commonly called the great Laws of Nature, and form the groundwork of the Mixed Sciences, such as those of Mechanics and Astronomy. )Relation of The second relation is that of THEORY, in which the existing Theory. forms and qualities of objects, discovered by observation, suggest a given arrangement of them to the Mind, not merely for the purposes of more easy remembrance and communication; but for those of understanding, and sometimes of controlling them. The studies to which this class of relations is subservient, are more properly called Scientific Arts than Sciences. Medicine, Chemistry, and Physiology are examples of a Method founded on this second sort of relation, which, as well as the former, always supposes the necessary connection of cause and effect. Middle or The relations of Law and Theory have each their Methods. compound MIethod o Between these two, lies the Method of the FINE ARTS, a thesFine Method in which certain great truths, composing what are usually called the Laws of Taste, necessarily predominate; but in which there are also other Laws, dependent on the external objects of sight and sound, which these Arts embrace. To prove the comparative value and dignity of the first relation, it will be sufficient to observe that what is called "tinkling" verse is disagreeable to the accomplished Critic in Poetry, and that a fine Musical taste is soon dissatisfied with the Harmonica, or any similar instrument of glass or steel, because the body of the sound, (as the Italians phrase it,) or that effect which is derived from the materials, encroaches too far on the effect derived from the proportions of the notes, which proportions EEC. I.] PRINCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 17 are, in fact, Laws of the Mind, analogous to the Laws of Arithmetic and Geometry. We have stated, that Method implies both an uniting and a Principle progressive power. Now the relations of things are not united of Union. in Human conception at random-humano capiti-cervicem equinam; but there is some rule, some mode of union, more or less, strictly necessary. Where it is absolutely necessary, we have called it a relation of Law; and as by Law we mean the laying down the rule, so the rule laid down we call, in the ancient and proper sense of the word, an Idea; and conse- Ideas, quently the words Idea and Law are correlative terms, differing only as object and subject, as Being and Truth. It is extremely necessary to advert to this use of the word Idea; since, in Modern Philosophy, almost any and every exercise of any and every mental faculty has been abusively called by this name, to the utter confusion and unmethodizing of the whole Science of the Human Mind, and indeed of all other Knowledge whatsoever. The Idea may exist in a clear, distinct, definite form, as that Definite or Instinctive, of a circle in the Mind of an accurate Geometrician; or it may be a mere instinct, a vague appetency towards something which the Mind incessantly hunts for, but cannot find, like a name which has escaped our recollection, or the impulse which fills the young Poet's eye with tears, he knows not why. In the infancy of the Human Mind all our ideas are instincts; and Language is happily contrived to lead us from the vague to the distinct, from the imperfect to the full and finished form: the boy knows that his hoop is round, and this, in after years, helps to teach him, that in a circle, all the lines drawn from the centre to the circumference are equal. It will be seen, in the sequel, that this distinction between the instinctive approach toward an Idea, and the Idea itself, is of high importance in Methodizing Art and Science.,, 18 INTRODUCTION. LSEC I. There is a From the first, or initiative Idea, as from a seed, successive ogriiple of Ideas germinate. Thus, from the Idea of a triangle, necessarily il Ideas. follows that of equality between the sum of its three angles and two right angles. This is the Principle of an indefinite, not to say infinite, Progression; but this progression, which is truly Method, requires not only the proper choice of an initiative, but also the following it out through all its ramifications. It requires, in short, a constant wakefulness of Mind; so that if we wander but in a single instance from our path, we cannot reach the goal, but by retracing our steps to the point of divergency, and thence beginning our progress anew. Thus, a ship beating off and on an unknown coast, often takes, in nautical phrase, " a new departure;" and thus it is necessary often to recur to that regulating process, which the French Language so happily expresses by the word s'orienter, i. e. to find out the East for ourselves, and so to put to rights our faulty reckoning. State of The habit of Method should always be present and effective; adapted to but in order to render it so, a certain training, or education of Method. the Mind, is indispensably necessary. Events and images, the lively and spirit-stirring machinery of the external world, are like light, and air, and moisture, to the seed of the Mind, which would else rot and perish. In all processes of mental evolution the objects of the senses must stimulate the Mind; and the Mind must in turn assimilate and digest the food which it thus receives from without. Method, therefore, must result from the due mean, or balance, between our passive impressions and the Mind's reaction on them. So in the healthful state of the Human body, waking and sleeping, rest and labour, reciprocally succeed each other, and mutually contribute to liveliness, and activity, and strength. There are certain stores proper, and, as it were, indigenous to the Mind, such as the Ideas of number and figure, and the logical forms and corn SEC.. I PRINCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 19 binations of conception or thought. The Mind that is rich Excess in methodizand exuberant in this intellectual wealth, is apt, like a miser, ing opposed to dwell upon the vain contemplation of its riches, is disposed to theaccumulation to generalize and methodize to excess, ever philosophizing, and of fresh material of never descending to action;-spreading its wings high in the thought. air above some beloved spot, but never flying far and wide over earth and sea, to seek food, or to enjoy the endless beauties of Nature; the fresh morning and the warm noon, and the dewy eve. On the other hand, still less is to be expected, toward the Methodizing of Science, from the man who flutters about in blindness, like the bat; or is carried hither and thither, like the turtle sleeping on the wave, and fancying, because he moves, that he is in progress. The paths in which we may pursue a Methodical course are Proper direction of manifold: at the head of each stands its peculiar and guiding Method. Idea; and those Ideas are as regularly subordinate in dignity, as the paths to which they point are various and eccentric in direction. The world has suffered much, in modern times, from a subversion of the natural and necessary order of Science: from elevating the terrestrial, as it has been called, above the celestial; and from summoning Reason and Faith to the bar of that limited Physical experience, to which, by the true laws of Method, they owe no obedience. The subordination, of which we here speak, is not that which depends on immediate practical utility: for the utility of Human powers, in their practical application, depends on the circumstances of the moment; and at one time strength is essential to our very existence, at another time skill: and even Caesar in a fever could cry, Give me some drink, Titinius, As a sick girl. In truth there is scarcely any one of the powers or faculties with which the Divine Goodness has endowed his creatures, which may not in its turn be a source of paramount benefit and c2 20 IN TRODU CTLON. [SEC. I. usefulness; for every thing around us is full of blessings: nor is there any line of honest occupation in which we would dare to affirm, that by a proper exercise of the talent committed to his charge, an individual might not justly advance himself to highest praise. But we now allude to the subordination which necessarily arises among the different branches of Knowledge, according to the difference of those Ideas by which they are Gradation initiated and directed; for there is a gradation of Ideas, as of of Ideas. ranks in a well-ordered State, or of commands in a well-regulated army; and thus above all partial forms, there is one universal form of GOOD and FAIR, the KaXorKcyaov of the Platonic Philosophy. Hence the expressions of Lord Bacon, who in his great Work, the Novum Organum, speaks so much and so often of the lumen siccum, the pure light, which from a central focus, as it were, diffuses its rays all around, and forms a lucid sphere of Knowledge and of Truth. Metaphy- We distinguish Ideas into those of essential property, and ~ical and Physical those of natural existence; in other words, into Metaphysical.deas. and Plysical Ideas. Metaphysical Ideas, or those which relate to the essence of things as Dossible, are of the highest class. Thus, in accurate language, we say, the essence of a circle, not its nature; because, in the conception of forms purely Geometrical, there is no expression or implication of their actual existence: and our reasoning upon them is totally independent of the fact, whether any such forms ever existed in Nature, or not. Physical Ideas are those which we mean to express, when we speak of the nature of a thing actually existing and cognizable by our faculties, whether the thing be material or immaterial, bodily or mental. Thus, the laws of memory, the laws of vision, the laws of vegetation, the laws of crystallisation, are all Physical Ideas, dependent for their accuracy, on the more or less careful observation of things actually existing. In speaking of the word Nature, however, we must dis EEC. I.] PRINCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 21 tinguish its two principal uses, viz. first, that to which we have Two uses of the word adverted, and according to which it signifies whatever is Nature. requisite to the reality of a thing as existent, such as the nature of an animal or a tree, distinguished from the animal or tree itself: and secondly, the sum total of things, as far as they are objects of our senses. In the first of these two meanings, the word Nature conveys a Physical Idea, in the other only a material or sensible Impression. Even natural substances, it is true, may be classed and Mere arrangement arranged for various purposes, in a certain order. Such mere is not arrangement, however, is not properly Methodical, but rather a Method preparation toward Method; as the compilation of a Dictionary is a preparation for classical study. The limits of our present Essay will not allow us to do more Summarr. than briefly to touch the chief topics of a general dissertation on Method; but enough we trust has here been said, to render intelligible the principles on which our Methodical Encyclopedia must be constructed. We have shown that a Method, which is at all comprehensive, must be founded on the relations of things: that those relations are of two sorts, according as they present themselves to the Human Mind as necessary, or merely as the result of observation. The former we have called relations of Law, the latter of Theory. Where the former alone are in question, the Method is one of necessary connection throughout; where the latter alone, though the connection be considered as one of cause and effect, yet the necessity is less obvious, and the connection itself less close. We have observed, that in the Fine Arts there is a sort of middle Method, inasmuch as the first and higher relations are necessary, the lower are only the results of observation. The great principles of all Method we have shown to be two, viz. Union and Progression. The relations of things cannot be united by accident: they are united by an Idea either definite 22 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. I. Union and or instinctive. Their union, in proportioh as it is clear, is also Progrossion arie the progressive. The state of Mind adapted to such progress holds principlesd a due mean between a passiveness under external impression, of Method. and an excessive activity of mere reflection; and the progress itself follows the path of the Idea from which it sets out; requiring, however, a constant wakefulness of Mind, to keep it within the due limits of its course. Hence the orbits of Thought, so to speak, must differ among themselves as the initiative Ideas differ; and of these latter, the great distinctions are into Physical and Metaphysical. Such, briefly, are the views by which we have been guided, in our present attempt to Methodize the great mass of Human Knowledge. ( 23 ) SECTION II. ILLUSTRATION OF THE PRECEDING PRINCIPLES, THE Principles which have been exhibited in the preceding Test of the Section, and in respect to which we claim no otner merit, the pricithan that of having drawn them from the purest sources of res alread stated. Philosophy, ancient and modern, are, we trust, sufficiently plain and intelligible in themselves; but as the most satisfactory mode of proving their accuracy, we proceed to illustrate them by a consideration of some particular studies, pursuits, and opinions; and by a reference to the general History of the Human Mind. And first, as to the general importance of Method;-what General importance need have we to dilate on this fertile topic? For it is not of Method, solely in the formation of the Human Understanding, and in the constructions of Science and Literature, that the employment of Method is indispensably necessary; but its importance is equally felt, and equally acknowledged, in the whole business and economy of active and domestic life. From the cottager's in the hearth or the workshop of the artisan, to the Palace or the Oaderingf Arsenal, the first merit, that which admits neither substitute domestic life. nor equivalent, is, that every thing is in its place. Where this charm is wanting, every other merit either loses its name, or becomes an additional ground of accusation and regret. Of one, by whom it is eminently possessed, we say proverbially, that he is like clockwork. The resemblance extends beyond the point of regularity, and yet falls short of the truth. Both do, indeed, at once divide and announce the silent and otherwise 24 LNTRODUCTION. LSEC. IL Character indistinguishable lapse of time; but the man of Methodical of the truly methodical industry and honourable pursuits, does more; he realizes its man. ideal divisions, and gives a character and individuality to its moments. If the idle are described as killing time, he may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the consciousness, but of the conscience. He organizes the hours, and gives them a soul: and to that, the very essence of which is to fleet, and to have been, he communicates an imperishable and a spiritual nature. Of the good and faithful servant, whose energies, thus directed, are thus methodized, it is less truly affirmed, that he lives in Time, than that Time lives in him. His days, months, and years, as the stops and punctual marks in the records of duties performed, will survive the wreck of worlds, and remain extant when Time itself shall be no more. Method in Let us carry our views a step higher. What is it that first tiscourse strikes us, and strikes us at once in a man of education, and tile sign of mental which, among educated men, so instantly distinguishes the man power, of superior Mind? Not always the weight or novelty of his remarks, nor always the interest of the facts which he communicates; for the subject of conversation may chance to be trivial, and its duration to be short. Still less can any just admiration arise from any peculiarity in his words and phrases; for every man of practical good sense will follow, as far as the matters under consideration will permit him, that golden rule of Casar-Insolens verbum, tanquam scopulum, evitare. The true cause of the impression made on us is, that his mind is and of methodical. We perceive this in the unpremeditated and cultivated ntellect, evidently habitual arrangement of his words, flowing spontaneously and necessarily from the clearness of the leading Idea; from which distinctness of mental vision, when men are fully accustomed to it, they obtain a habit of foreseeing at the beginning of every instance how it is to end, and how all its SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 25 parts may be brought out in the best and most orderly succession. However irregular and desultory the conversation may happen to be, there is Method in the fragments. Let us once more take an example which must come "home Method in to every man's business and bosom." Is there not a Method in fo ance of the discharge of all our relative duties? And is not he the moral duty truly virtuous and truly happy man, who seizing first and laying hold most firmly of the great first Truth, is guided by that divine light through all the meandring and stormy courses of his existence? To him every relation of life affords a prolific Idea of duty; by pursuing which into all its practical consequences, he becomes a good servant or a good master, a good subject or a good sovereign, a good son or a good father; a good friend, a good patriot, a good Christian, a good man! It cannot be deemed foreign from the purposes of our Method in pcilation Disquisition, if we are anxious, before we leave this part of the Scoilucive subject, to attract the attention of our readers to the importance to worldy interest in of speculative meditation (which never will be fruitful unless it the promotion and be methodical) even to the worldly interests of mankind. We regulation can recall no incident of human history that impresses the discoery.f imagination more deeply than the moment, when Columbus, on an unknown ocean, first perceived that startling fact, the change of the magnetic needle! How many such instances occur in History, where the Ideas of Nature (presented to chosen minds by a Higher Power than Nature herself) suddenly unfold, as it were, in prophetic succession, systematic views destined to produce the most important revolutions in the state of Man! The clear spirit of Columbus was doubtless eminently Columbus led to sue. methodical. He saw distinctly that great leading Idea, which cess by a authorized the poor pilot to become "a promiser of kingdoms:" giding and he pursued the progressive development of the mighty truth with an unyielding firmness, which taught him to " rejoice in lofty labours." Our readers will perhaps excuse us for 26 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. II. quoting, as illustrative of what we have here observed, some lines from an Ode of Chiabrera's, which, in strength of thought and lofty majesty of Poetry, has but " few peers in ancient or in modern Song." COLUMBUS. In the Certo da cor, ch' alto destin non scelse, strength of Son l'imprese magnanime neglette; an Idea he an Idea he Ma le bell' alme alle bell' opre elette co nquers, Sanno gioir nelle fatiche eccelse: at last, though long Ne biasmo popolar, frale catena, contemned Spirto d'onore, il suo cammin raffrena. both by Cosi lunga stagion per modi indegni Prntces Europa disprezz6 l'inclita speme, and the Populace Schernendo il vulgo, e seco i Regi insieme, Nudo nocchier, promettitor di Regni; Ma per le sconosciute onde marine L'invitta prora ei pur sospinse al fine. Qual uom, che torni alla gentil consorte, Tal ei da sua magion spiega l'antenne; L'ocean corse, e i turbini sostenne, Vinse le crude immagini di morte; Poscia, dell' ampio mar spenta la guerra, Scorse la dianzi favolosa terra. Allor dal cavo pin scende veloce, E di grand' orma il nuovo mondo imprime; Ne men ratto per 1' aria erge sublime, Segno del Ciel, l'insuperabil Croce; E porge umile esempio, onde adorarla Debba sua gente. CHIABRERA, P. I. 12. An initia- We do not mean to rest our argument on the general utility tive or previous or importance of Method. Every Science and every Art mental act attests the value of the particular principles on which we have indispensable in above insisted. In Mathematics they will, doubtless, be readily physical as well as in admitted; and certainly there are many marked differences rtihemal between mathematical and physical studies; but in both a studies. previous act and conception of the mind, or what we have called an initiative, is indispensably necessary, even to the mere semblance of Method. In Mathematics, the definition makes the object, and pre-establishes the terms, which alone can occur in the after reasning. If an existing circle, or what SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 27 is supposed to be such, be found not to have the radii from the In Mathematics the centre to the circumference perfectly equal, it will in no perfect Idea manner affect the Mathematician's reasoning on the properties makes the object, the of circles; it will only prove that the figure in question is not definition precedes the a circle according to the previous definition. A Mathematical reasoning. Idea, therefore, may be perfect. But the place of a perfect Idea cannot be exactly supplied, in the sciences of experiment and observation, by any theory built on generalization. For what shall determine the mind to one point rather than another; within what limits, and from what number of individuals, shall the generalization be made? The theory must still require a prior theory for its own legitimate construction. The Physical in Physics the definidefinition follows and does not precede the reasoning. It is tion is representarepresentative, not constitutive, and is indeed little more than tiveS not an albbreviature of the preceding observation, and the deduc- constitun tions therefrom. But as the observation, though aided by follows the experiment, is necessarily limited and imperfect, the definition must be equally so. The history of theories, and the frequency of their subversion by the discovery of a single new fact, supply the best illustrations of this truth. But in Experimental Philosophy, it may be said, how much Discoveries of experido we not owe to accident? Doubtless: but let it not be for- mental gotten, that if the discoveries so made stop there; if they do Philosophy not excite some master IDEA; if they do not lead to some till they lead toLAW; (in whatever dress of theory or hypothesis the fashions some Law. and prejudices of the time may disguise or disfigure it;) the discoveries may remain for ages limited in their uses, insecure and unproductive. How many centuries, we might have said millennia, have passed since the first accidental discovery of the attraction and repulsion of light bodies by rubbed amber, &c. Compare the interval with the progress made within less than a century, after the discovery of the pcenomena that led immediately to a theory of ELECTRICITY. That here, as in 28 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. II Electricity. many other instances, the theory was supported by insecure hypotheses; that by one theorist two heterogeneous fluids were assumed, the vitreous and the resinous; by another, a plus and minus of the same fluid; that a third considered it a mere modification of light; while a fourth composed the electrical aura of oxygen, hydrogen, and caloric: all this does but place the truth we have been insisting on in a stronger and clearer light. For, abstract from all these suppositions, or rather imaginations, that which is common to, and involved in them all; and there will remain neither notional fluid or fluids; nor chemical compounds, nor elementary matter,but the Idea of two-opposite-forces, tending to rest by equilibrium. These are the sole factors of the calculus, alike in all the theories: these give the Law and with it the Method of arranging the phcenomena. For this reason it may not be rash to anticipate the nearest approaches to a correct system of Electricity from those Philosophers, who, since the year 1798, have presented the Idea most distinctly as such, rejecting the hypothesis of any material substratum, and contemplating in all Electrical phenomena the operation of a Law which reigns through all Nature, viz. the law of polarity, or the manifestation of one power by opposite forces. Magnetism. How great the contrast between Electricity and MAGNETISM! From the remotest antiquity, the attraction of iron by the magnet was known, and noticed; but century after century it remained the undisturbed property of poets and orators. The fact of the magnet, and the fable of the phoenix, stood on the same scale of utility, and by the generality of mankind, the latter was as much credited as the former, and considered far more interesting. In the XIIIth century, however, or perhaps earlier, the polarity of the magnet, and its communicability to iron, were discovered. We remain in doubt whether this discovery were accidental, or the result of theory; if the former, SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 29 the purpose which it soon suggested was so grand and important, that it may well be deemed the proudest trophy ever yet raised by accident in the service of mankind. But still it furnished no genuine Idea; it led to no Law, and, consequently, to no Method: though a variety of phenomena, as startling as they are at present mysterious, have forced on us a presentiment of its intimate connection with other great agencies of Nature. We would not be understood to assume the power of predicting to what extent, or in what directions, that connection may hereafter be traced; but amidst the most ingenious hypotheses that have yet been formed on the subject, we may notice that which, combining the three primary Laws of Magnetism, Hvpothesis Electricity, and Galvanism,' considers them all as the results of considers one common power, essential to all material construction in the E1aegcti1, works of Nature. It is, perhaps, more an operation of the and Galvanism as Fancy than of the Reason, which has suggested that these three results of material powers are analogous to the three dimensions of space. essential to Hypothesis, be it observed, can never form the groundwork of all materl ' ' construica true scientific method, unless when the hypothesis is either a tion. true Idea proposed in an hypothetical form, or at least the symbol of an Idea as yet unknown, of a Law as yet undiscovered; and in this latter case the hypothesis merely performs the function of an unknown quantity in Algebra, and is assumed for the purpose of submitting the phcenomena to a scientific calculus. But to recur to the contrast presented by Electricity and Magnetism, in the rapid progress of the former, and the stationary condition of the latter: What is the cause of this diversity? Fewer theories, fewer hypotheses have not been advanced in the one than in the other; but the theories and fictions of the Electricians contained an Idea, and all the same Idea, which has necessarily led to METHOD; I See the experiments of Coulomb, Brugmans, and Goethe. To which may be added, should they be confirmed, the curious observations on crystallisation, first made in Corsica, and since pursued in France. 30 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. If. implicit indeed, and only regulative hitherto, but which requires little more than the dismission of the imagery to become constitutive, like the Ideas of the Geometrician. On the contrary, the assumptions of the Magnetists (as, for instance, the hypothesis that the earth itself is one vast magnet, or that an immense magnet is concealed within it; or that there is a concentric globe within the earth, revolving on its own independent axis) are but repetitions of the same fact or phAcomenon, looked at through a magnifying glass; the reiteration of the importance problem, not its solution. This leads to the important conof" the enlightening sideration, so often dwelt upon, so forcibly urged, so powerfully fartclaich amplified and explained by our great countryman Bacon, that an Idea. one fact is often worth a thousand. Satis scimus, says he, axiomata recte inventa, tota agmina operum secum trahere. Hence his indignant reprobation of the vis experimentalis, coeca, stupida, vaga, prcerupta! Hence his just and earnest exhortations to pursue the experimenta lucifera, and those alone; discarding, for their sakes, even the fructifera experimenta. The Natural Philosopher, who cannot, or will not see, that it is the "enlightening " fact, which really causes all the others to be facts, in any Scientific sense-he who has not the head to comprehend, and the soul to reverence this parent experiment -he to whom the eiprka is not an exclamation of joy and rapture, a rich reward for years of toil and patient sufferingto him no auspicious answer will ever be granted by the Oracle of Nature. Zoology. We have said that improgressive arrangement is not Method. and in proof of this we appeal to the notorious fact, that ZOOLOGY, soon after the commencement of the latter half of the last century, was falling abroad, weighed down and crushed as it were by the inordinate number and multiplicity of facts and phcenomena apparently separate, without evincing the least promise of systematizing itself by any inward combination of its SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 31 parts. JOHN HUNTER, who had appeared, at times, almost a stranger to the grand conception, which yet never ceased to work in him, as his genius and governing spirit, rose at length in the horizon of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy. In his printed Works, the finest elements of system seem evermore to flit before him, twice or thrice only to have been seized, and after a momentary detention, to have been again suffered to escape. At length, in the astonishing preparations for his Museum, he constructed it, for the Scientific apprehension, out of the unspoken alphabet of Nature. Yet notwithstanding the imperfection in the annunciation of the Idea, how exhilarating have been the results! It may, we believe, be affirmed, with safety, that whatever is grandest in the views of CUVIER, is either a reflection of this light, or a continuation of its rays, well and wisely directed, through fit media, to its appropriate object. From Zoology, or the laws of animal life, to BOTANY, or Botany. those of vegetable life, the transition is easy and Natural. In this pursuit, how striking is the necessity of a clear Idea, as initiative of all Method! How obvious the importance of attention to the conduct of the Mind in the exercise of Method itself! The lowest attempt at Botanical arrangement consists in an artificial classification of plants, for the preparatory purpose of a nomenclature; but even in this, some antecedent must have been contributed by the Mind itself; some purpose must be in view; or some question at least must have been proposed to Nature, grounded, as all questions are, upon some Idea of the answer. As for instance, the assumption, That two great sexes animate the world. For no man can confidently conceive a fact to be universally true who does not proportionally anticipate its necessity, and who does not believe that necessity to be demonstrable by an insight into its nature, whenever and wherever such insight 32 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. [I. Obligations can be obtained. We acknowledge, we reverence, the obligato intinus tions of Botany to LINN^US, who adopting from Bartholinus for able |and others the sexuality of plants, grounded thereon a scheme serviceable scheme of of classific and distinctive marks, by which one man's experience arrangement. may be communicated to others, and the objects safely reasoned on while absent, and recognized as soon as and wherever they occur. He invented an universal character for the Language of Botany, chargeable with no greater imperfections than are to be found in the alphabets of every particular Language. The first requisites in investigating the works of Nature, as in studying the Classics, are a proper Accidence and Dictionary; and for both of these Botany is indebted to the illustrious Swede. But the inherent necessity, the true Idea of Sex, was never fully contemplated by Linnaus, much less that of vegetation itself. Wanting these master-lights, he was not only unable to discern the collateral relations of the Vegetable to the Mineral and Animal Worlds; but even in respect to the doctrine which gives name and character to his system, he only avoided Scylla to fall upon Charybdis: and such must be the case of every one, who in this uncertain state of the initiative Idea, ventures to expatiate among the subordinate notions. If we adhere to the general notion of sex, as abstracted from the more obvious modes in which the sexual relation manifests itself, we soon meet with whole classes of plants to which it is found inapplicable. If, arbitrarily, we give it indefinite extension, it is dissipated into the barren truism, that all specific products suppose specific means of production. Thus a growth and a birth are distinguished by the mere verbal definition, that the latter is a whole in itself, the former not: and when we would apply even this to Nature, we are bafflcd by objects (the flower polypus, &c. &c.) in which each is the fother. All that can be done by the most patient and active industry, by the wi lest and most continuous researches: all SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF vME'fIOD. 33 that the amplest survey of the vegetable realm, brought under immediate contemplation by the most stupendous collections of species and varieties, can suggest; all that minutest dissection and exactest chemical analysis can unfold; all that varied experiment and the position of plants and their component parts in every conceivable relation to light, heat, and whatever else we distinguish as imponderable substances; to earth, air, water; to the supposed constituents of air and water, separate and in all proportions-in short, all that chemical agents and reagents can disclose or adduce;-all these have been brought, as conscripts, into the field, with the completest accoutrement, in the best discipline, under the ablest commanders. Yet after all that was effected by Linnseus himself, not to mention the labours of Caesalpinus, Ray, Gesner, Tournefort, and the other heroes who preceded the general adoption of the Sexual system, as the basis of artificial arrangement-after all the successive toils and enterprises of HEDWIG, JUSSIEU, MIRBEL, SMITH, KNIGHT, ELLIS, &c. &c.-what is BOTANY at this present hour? Little more than an enormous nomenclature; a huge catalogue, bien arrange, yearly and monthly augmented, in various editions, each with its own scheme of technical memory and its own conveniences of reference! The innocent amusement, the healthful occupation, the ornamental accomplishment of amateurs; it has yet to expect the devotion and energies of the philosopher. Whether the Idea which has glanced across some minds, that the harmony between the Vegetable and Animal World is not a harmony of resemblance, but of contrast, may not lead to a new and more accurate Method in this engaging Science, it becomes us not here to determine: but should its objective truth be hereafter demonstrated by induction of facts in an unbroken series of correspondences in Nature, we shall then receive it as a Law of organic existence; and shall thence obtain another splendid proof, that with the knowledge of Law D 34 INTRODUCTION. rSEC. II. L alone dwell power and prophecy, decisive experiment, and scientific Method. Chermistry. Such, too, is the case with the substances of the LABORATORY, which are assumed to be incapable of decomposition. They are mere exponents of some one Law, which the Chemical Philosopher, whatever may be his Theory, is incessantly labouring to discover. The Law, indeed, has not yet assumed the form of an Idea in his Mind; it is what we have called an Instinct; it is a pursuit after unity of principle, through a diversity of forms. Thus as " the lunatic, the lover, and the poet," suggest each other to Shakspeare's Theseus, as soon as his thoughts present to him the ONE FORM, of which they are but varieties; so water and flame, the diamond, the charcoal, and the mantling champagne, with its ebullient sparkles, are convoked and fraternized by the theory of the Chemist. This is, in truth, the first charm of Chemistry, and the secret of the almost universal interest excited by its discoveries. The serious complacency which is afforded by the sense of truth, utility, permanence, and progression, blends with and ennobles the exhilarating surprise and the pleasurable sting of curiosity, which accompany the propounding and the solving of an enigma. It is the sense of a principle of connection given by the mind, and sanctioned by the correspondency of Nature. Hence the strong hold which in all ages Chemistry has had on the imagination. If in the greatest poets we find Nature idealized through the creative power of a profound yet observant meditation, so through the meditative observation of a DAVY, a WOLLASTON, a HATCHETT, or a MURRAY, By some connatural force, Powerful at greatest distance to unite With secret amity things of like kind, we find poetry, as it were, substantiated and realized. This consideration leads us from the paths of Physical SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF fHE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 35 Science into a region apparently very different. Those who Poetry capable of tread the enchanted ground of POETRY, oftentimes do not even aol, od. suspect that there is such a thing as Method to guide their steps. Yet even here we undertake to show that it not only has a necessary existence, but the strictest Philosophical application; and that it is founded on the very Philosophy whicl has furnished us with the Principles already laid down. It may surprise some of our readers, especially those who have been brought up in Schools of foreign taste, to find that we rest our proof of these assertions on one single evidence, and that that evidence is SHAKSPEARE, whose Mind they have, probably, been taught to consider as eminently immethodicai. evidenced in the In the first place, Shakspeare was not only endowed with great plays (of native genius, (which indeed he is commonly allowed to iave Shbakhs1,:, been,) but what is less frequently conceded, he had much acquired knowledge. "His information," says Professor WILDE, " was great and extensive, and his reading as great ais his knowledge of Languages could reach. Considering the bar which his education and circumstances placed in his way, lie had done as much to acquire knowledge as even Milton. A thousand instances might be given of the intimate knowledge ShlakSpeare's that Shakspeare had of facts. I shall mention only one. I do knwll]e(,i, not say, he gives a good account of the Salic law, though a b. his perccptwol: much worse has been given by many antiquaries. But he who,:r.i}tio,, reads the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech in HRenry the Fifth, and who shall afterwards say that Shakspeare was not a man of great reading and information, and who loved the thing itself, is a person whose opinion I would not ask or trust upon any matter of investigation." Then was all this reading, all this information, all this knowledge of our great dramatist, a mere rudis indigestaque moles? Very far from it. Method, we have seen, demands a knowledge of the relations which things bear to each other, or to the observer, or to the state and D2 36 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. II. apprehension of the hearers. In all and each of these was Shakspeare so deeply versed, that in the personages of a play, he seems " to mould his mind as some incorporeal material alternately into all their various forms."2 In every one of his various characters we still feel ourselves communing with the same human nature. Everywhere we find individuality: nowhere mere portrait. The excellence of his productions consists in a happy union of the universal with the particular. But the universal is an Idea. Shakspeare, therefore, studied mankind in the Idea of the human race; and he followed out that Idea into all its varieties, by a Method which never failed to guide his steps aright. Let us appeal to him to illustrate, by example, the difference between a sterile and an exuberant mind, in respect to what we have ventured to call the Science Comni.arison of Method. On the one hand observe Mrs. Quickly's relation of Mrs. ofiil~y's of the circumstances of Sir John Falstaff's debt: relation of FALSTAFF. What is the gross sum that I owe thee? 'ealstaff s Mrs. QUICKLY. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my dolphin chamber, at the roand table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the prince broke thy head for likening his father to a singing man in Windsor-thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the Butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly?-coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar: telling us she had a good dish of prawns-whereby thou didst desire to eat some-whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound," &c. &c. &c. (Henry IV. P. I. Act IT. Scene.) On the other hand consider the narration given by Hamlet to Horatio, of the occurrences during his proposed transportation to England, and the events that interrupted his voyage. (Act V. Scene II.) a narration HAM. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting of Hamlet That would not let me sleep: methought I lay to Horatio. Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly, And prais'd be rashness for it- Let us know, 2 v efTOUavroD 4tu^X 8 &Tsi V'AIv TNva a&ejaTov op cals _rotS lKIAaLs /AopH^ c6o'as. THEMIST IUS. SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do fail: and that should teach us There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. HOR. That is most certain. HAM. Up from my cabin, My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark Grop'd I to find out them; had my desire; Finger'd their packet; and, in fine, withdrew To my own room again: making so bold, My fears forgetting manners, to unseal Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio, A royal knavery-an exact command, Larded with many several sorts of reasons, Importing Denmark's health, and England's too, With ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, That on the supervise, no leisure bated, No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, My head should be strucK off! HOR. Is't possible? IIAM. Here's the commission.-Read it at more leisure. I sat me down; Devis'd a new commission; wrote it fair. I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much How to forget that learning; but, sir, now It did me yeoman's service. Wilt thou know The effect of what I wrote? HOR. Ay, good my lord. HAM. An earnest conjuration from the king, As England was his faithful tributary; As love between them, like the palm, might flourish; As peace should still her wheaten garland wear, And many such like As's of great chargeThat, on the view and knowing of these contents, He should the bearers put to sudden death, No shriving time allowed. HOR. How was this sealed? HAM. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. I had my father's signet in my purse, Which was the model of that Danish seal: Folded the writ up in the form of the other; Subscribed it; gave't the impression; plac'd it safely, The changeling never known. Now, the next day Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent Thou knowest already 37 38 INTROI)JCT'ION. [SEC. II L Both dim- If, overlooking the different value of the matter in these two courses immethodical narrations, we consider only the form, it must be confessed that in form. both are immethodical. We have asserted that Method results from a balance between the passive impression received from outward things, and the internal activity of the mind in reflecting and generalizing; but neither Hamlet nor the Hostess Tlhat of holds this balance accurately. In Mrs. Quickly, the memory Mrs. Quickly alone is called into action, the objects and events recur in the wants order rantsuito r narration in the same order, and with the same accompani-i"om the ments, however accidental or impertinent, as they had first power of tiLoug'Tt. occurred to the narrator. The necessity of taking breath, the efforts of recollection, and the abrupt rectification of its failures, produce all her pauses, and constitute most of her connections. That of But when we look to the Prince of Denmark's recital the case Hoverned by is widely different. Here the events, with the circumstances refletion of time and place, are all stated with equal compression and rapidity; not one introduced which could have been omitted without injury to the intelligibility of the whole process. If any tendency is discoverable, as far as the mere facts are in question, it is to omission: and accordingly the reader will observe that the attention of the narrator is called back to one material circumstance, which he was hurrying by, by a direct question (How WAS THIS SEALED?) from the friend to whom the story is communicated. But by a trait, which is indeed peculiarly characteristic of Hamlet's mind, ever disposed to generalize, and meditative to excess, all the digressions and enlargements consist of reflections, truths, and principles of general and permanent interest, either directly expressed or disguised in playful satire. Instances of the want of generalization are of no rare occur rence; and the narration of Shakspeare's Hostess differs from those of the ignorant and unthinking in ordinary life, only by its superior humour, the poet's own gift and infusion, not by SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 39 its want of Method, which is not greater than we often meet The Hostess' w:anit with in that class of minds of which she is the dramatic repre- ofmetllclt sentative. Nor will the excess of generalization and reflection coalt1,1, in have escaped our observation in real life, though the great Poet has more conveniently supplied the illustrations. In attending too exclusively to the relations which the past or passing events and objects bear to general truth, and the moods of his own mind, the most intelligent man is sometimes in danger of overlooking that other relation, in which they are likewise to be placed to the apprehension and sympathies of his hearers. His discourse appears like soliloquy intermixed with dialogue. But the uneducated and unreflecting talker overlooks all mental relations, and consequently precludes.all Method that is not purely accidental. Hence, the nearer the things and incidents in time and place, the more distant, disjointed, and impertinent to each other, and to any common purpose, will they appear in his narration: and this from the absence of any leading thought in the narrator's own mind. On the contrary, where the habit of Method is present and effective, things the most remote and diverse in time, place, and outward circumstance, are brought into mental contiguity and succession, the more striking as the less expected. But while we would impress the necessity of this habit, the illustrations adduced give proof that in undue preponderance, and when the prerogative of the mind is stretched into despotism, the discourse may degenerate into the wayward, or the fantastical. Shakspeare needed not to read Horace in order to give his Consistency characters that Methodical Unity which the wise Roman so speare', strongly recommends:- characters. Si quid inexpertum scenae committis, et audes Personam formare novam; servetur ad imum Qualis ab inccepto processerit, et sibi constet. But this was not the only way in which he followed an accurate Philosophic Method we quote the expressions of SCirE 40 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. II. His just GEL, a foreign critic of great and deserved reputation:-" If t 'Passion Shakspeare deserves our admiration for his characters, he is alose from equally deserving of it for his exhibition of Passion, taking temph!tion this word in its widest signification as including every mental condition, every tone, from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He gives us the history of minds: he lays open to us, in a single word, a whole series of preceding conditions." This last is a profound and exquisite remark: and it necessarily implies, that Shakspeare contemplated Ideas, in which alone are involved conditions and consequences ad infinitum. Purblind critics, whose mental vision could not reach far enough to comprise the whole dimensions of our poetical Hercules, have busied themselves in measuring and spanning him muscle by muscle, till they fancied they had Condemna- discovered some disproportion. There are two answers applitwry criti*,isms on cable to most of such remarks. First, that Shakspeare underShakspeare stood the true language and external workings of Passion better than his critics. He had a higher, and a more Ideal, and consequently a more Methodical sense of harmony than they. A very slight knowledge of Music will enable any one to detect discords in the exquisite harmonies of HAYDN or MOZART; and Bentley has found more false grammar in the PARADISE LOST than ever poor boy was whipped for through all the forms of Eton or Westminster; but to know why the minor note is introduced into the major key, or the nominative case left to seek for its verb, requires an acquaintance with some preliminary steps of the Methodical scale, at the top of which sits the author, His and at the bottom the critic. The second answer is, that Methods, Shakspeare was pursuing two Methods at once; and besides poetical and psycholo- the Psychological3 Method, he had also to attend to the gical. s We beg pardon for the use of this insolens verbum; but it is one of which our Language stands in great need. We have no single term to express the Philosophy of the Human Mind: and what is worse, the Principles of that Philosophy art commonly called Metaphysical, a word of very different meaning. SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 41 Poetical. Now the Poetical Method requires above all things a preponderance of pleasurable feeling: and where the interest of the events and characters and passions is too strong to be continuous without becoming painful, there Poetical Method requires that there should be what Schlegel calls " a musical alleviation of our sympathy." The Lydian mode must temper the Dorian. This we call Method. We said that Shakspeare pursued two Methods. Oh! he pursued many, many more-" both oar and sail"-and the guidance of the helm, and the heaving of the lead, and the watchful observation of the stars, and the thunder of his grand artillery. What shall we say of his Moral conceptions? Not made up of miserable clap-traps, and the tag-ends of mawkish Novels and endless sermonizing;-but furnishing lessons of profound meditation to frail and fallible Human Nature. He shows us Crime and Want of Principle clothed not with a Shakspurious greatness of soul, but with a force of intellect which pmal contoo often imposes but the more easily on the weak, misjudging ceptions multitude. He shows us the innocent mind of Othello plunged philosophical method. by its own unsuspecting, and therefore unwatchful confidence, into guilt and misery not to be endured. Look at Lear, look at Richard, look in short at every Moral picture of this mighty Moralist! Whoso does not rise from their attentive perusal " a sadder and a wiser man"-let him never dream that he knows anything of Philosophical Method. Nay, even in his style, how Methodical is our " sweet His style Shakspeare." Sweetness is, indeed, its predominant character- methodical. istic; and it has a few immethodical luxuriances of wit; and he may occasionally be convicted of words, which convey a volume of thought, when the business of the scene did not absolutely require such deep meditation. But pardoning him these dulcia vitia, who ever fashioned the English Language, or any Language, ancient or modern, into such variety of appro 42 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. I. priate apparel, from " the gorgeous pall of scepter'd tragedy," to the easy dress of flowing pastoral? More musical than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green and hawthorn buds appear. Who, like him, could so Methodically suit the very flow and tone of discourse to characters lying so widely apart in rank, and habits, and peculiarities, as Holofbrnes and Queen Katharine, Falstaff and Lear? When we compare the pure English style of Shakspeare with that of the very best writers of his day, we stand astonished at the Method by which he was directed in the choice of those words and idioms, which are as fresh now as in their first bloom; nay, which are at the present moment at once more energetic, more expressive, more natural, and more elegant, than those of the happiest and most admired living speakers or writers. But Shakspeare was "not Methodical in the structure of his Fable." Oh, gentle critic! be advised. Do not trust too much to your professional dexterity in the use of the scalping knife and tomahawk. Weapons of diviner mould are wielded by your adversary: and you are meeting him here on his own peculiar ground, the ground of Idea, of Thought, and of inspiShak- ration. The very point of this dispute is Ideal. The question spearo's alleged is one of Unity: and Unity, as we have shown, is wholly the toelaUitiof subject of Ideal law, There are said to be three great Unities examined. which Shakspeare has violated; those of Time, Place, and Action. Now the Unities of Time and Place we will not dispute about. Be ours the Poet, qui pectus inaniter angit Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet Ut magus, et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis. The Dramatist who circumscribes himself within that Unity of Time which is regulated by a stop-watch, may be exact, but is not Methodical; or his Method is of the least and lowest class. But SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 43 Where is he living clipt in with the sea, That chides the banks of England, Wales, or Scotland, who can transpose the scenes of Macbeth, and make the seated heart knock at the ribs with the same force as now it does, when the mysterious tale is conducted from the open heath, on which the Weird Sisters are ushered in with thunder and lightning, to the fatal fight of Dunsinane, in which their victim expiates with life, his credulity and his ambition? To the disgrace of the English Stage, such attempts have, indeed, been made on almost all the Dramas of Shakspeare. Scarcely a season passes which does not produce some verrpov 7rporEpov of this kind, in which the mangled limbs of our great Poet are thrown together " in most admired disorder." There was once a noble Author, who, by a refined species of murder, cut up the play of Julius Caesar into two good set Tragedies. Voltaire, we believe, had the grace to make but one of it; but whether his Brutus be an improvement on the model from which it was taken, we trust, after what we have already said, we shall hardly be expected to discuss. Thus we have seen that Shakspeare's mind, rich in stores of Poetry owes its acquired knowledge, commanded all these stores and rendered whole them disposable, by means of his intimate acquaintance with the arm to great laws of Thought, which form and regulate Method. We have seen him exemplifying the opposite faults of Method in two different characters; we have seen that he was himself Methodical in the delineation of character, in the display of Passion, in the conceptions of Moral Being, in the adaptations of Language, in the connection and admirable intertexture of his ever-interesting Fable. Let it not after this be said that Poetry-and under the word Poetry we will now take leave to include all the Works of the higher Imagination, whether operating by measured sound, or by the harmonies of form and colour, or by words, the more immediate and universal repre 44 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. II. sentatives of Thought-is not strictly Methodical; nay, does not owe its whole charm, and all its beauty, and all its power, to the Philosophical Principles of Method. Philosophy But what of Philosophy herself? Shall she be exempted wholly conversant from the Laws, which she has imposed on all the rest of the with Method. known Universe? Longe absit! To Philosophy properly belongs the EDUCATION of the Mind: and all that we have hitherto said may be regarded as an indication (we have room for no more) of the chief Laws and regulative Principles of that education. Philosophy, the " Parent of Life," according to the expression of the wise Roman Orator; the "Mother of Good Deeds and of Good Sayings," the "Medicine of the Mind," is herself wholly conversant with Method. True it is that the Ancients, as well as the Moderns, had their machinery for the extemporaneous coinage of intellect, by means of which the scholar was enabled to make a figure on any and all subjects, on any and all occasions. They too had their glittering vapours, which (as the Comic Poet tells us) fed a host of Sophists-:elydXAaL Oeal avs'pda' apyois, alrep yv&,u7Jv Kal taLdheLv Kal vowv 7tAPv irapXeouvat, Kal TepaTeiav, Kal 7repleiv, Kal KpoVorV, al KaTrdc74q+v. APIIrTO4. Ne>. 316. Great goddesses are they to lazy folks, Who pour down on us gifts of fluent speech, Sense most sententious, wonderful fine effect, And how to talk about it and about it, Thoughts brisk as bees, and pathos soft and thawy. But the Philosophers held a course very different from that of the Sophists. We shall not trouble our readers with a comparative view of many Systems, but we shall present to their admiration one mighty Ancient, and one illustrious Modern, PLATO and BACON. These two varieties will sufficiently exemplify the species. Of PLATO'S Works, the larger and more valuable portion SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 45 have all one common end, which comprehends and shines Plato through the particular purpose of each several Dialogue; and ta of this is, to establish the sources, to evolve the Principles, and to Method. exemplify the Art of METHOD. This is the clue, without which it would be difficult to exculpate the noblest productions of the " Divine" Philosopher from the charge of being tortuous and labyrinthine in their progress, and unsatisfactory in their ostensible results. The latter, indeed, appear not seldom to have been drawn, for the purpose of starting a new problem, rather than of solving the one proposed as the subject of previous discussion. But with the clear insight that the purpose of the writer is not so much to establish any particular truth, as to remove the obstacles, the continuance of which is preclusive of all truth, the whole scheme assumes a different aspect, and justifies itself in all its dimensions. We see that the EDUCATION of the Intellect, by awakening the Method of self-developement, was his proposed object, not any specific information that can be conveyed into it from without. He desired not to assist in storing the passive Mind with the various sorts of knowledge most in request, as if the Human Soul were a mere repository, or banqueting-room, but to place it in such relations of circumstance as should gradually excite its vegetating and germinating powers to produce new fruits of Thought, new Conceptions, and Imaginations, and Ideas. Platoas a. Poetic Philosopher, as Shakspeare was a Philosophic Poet. In the Poetry, as well as in the Philosophy, of both, there was a necessary predominance of Ideas; but this did not make them regardless of the actual existences around them. They were not visionaries, nor mystics; but dwelt in " the sober certainty" of waking knowledge. It is strange, yet characteristic of the spirit that was at Plato work during the latter half of the last century, that the writings cudouI of PLATO should be accused of estranging the Mind from plain neclectin experience and substantial matter-of-fact, and of debauching it experience. 46 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. IT by fictions and generalities. Plato, whose Method is inductive throughout, who argues on all subjects not only from, but in and by, inductions of' facts! who warns us, indeed, against the usurpation of the Senses, but far oftener, and with more unmitigated hostility, pursues the assumptions, abstractions, generalities, and verbal legerdemain of the Sophists. Strange! but still more strange, that a notion so groundless should be Bacon. entitled to plead in its behalf the authority of Lord BACON, whose scheme of Logic, as applied to the contemplation of Nature, is Platonic throughout! It is necessary that we should explain this circumstance at some length, in order to establish, by the concurrence of authorities, vulgarly supposed to be contradictory, the truth of a System which we have already maintained on so many other grounds. What Lord Bacon was to England, Cicero was to Romethe first and most eloquent advocate of Philosophy. It is need less to remind the classical scholar of that almost religious veneration with which the accomplished Roman speaks of Plato, whom indeed he calls, in one instance, des ille noster, and in other places "the Homer of Philosophers;" their "Prince;" the " most weighty of all who ever spoke, or ever wrote;" "most wise, most holy, divine." This last appellation, too, it is well known, long remained, even among Christians, as a distinguishing epithet of the great ornament of the Socratic School. Why Bacon should have spoken detractingly of such a man,IIis deprecl- why he should have stigmatized him with the name of ation of PlaJto. "Sophist," and described his Philosophy (with the tyrant Dionysius), as verba otiosorum senum ad imperitos juvenes, it is much easier to explain than to justify, or even to palliate. He was, perhaps, influenced in part by the tone given to thinking Minds by the Reformation; the founders and fathers of which saw in the Aristotelians, or Schoolmen, the antagonists of Protestantism, and in the Italian Platonists (as they conceived) the SEC. II.J ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 47 secret enemies of Christianity itself. In part, too, Bacon may have formed his notions of Plato's doctrines from the absurdities of his misinterpreters, rather than from an unprejudiced and diligent study of his Works. Be it remembered, however, that this unfairness was not less manifested to his contemporaries; that his treatment of GILBERT was cold, invidious, and unjust; and that he seems to have disdained to learn either the existence or the name of Shakspeare. At this conduct no one can be surprised who has studied the life of this wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind. But our present business is not with his weaknesses, or his failings, but with those Philosophical Principles which, especially as displayed in the Novum Organum, have deservedly obtained for him the veneration of succeeding Ages. Those who talk superficially about Bacon's Philosophy, that is to say, nineteen-twentieths of those who talk about it at all, know little more than his induction, and the application which he makes of his own Method to particular classes of Physical facts; applications which are at least as crude, for the Age of Gilbert, Galileo, and Kepler, as were those of Aristotle (whom he so superciliously reprehends) for the Age of Philip and Alexander. Or they may, perhaps, have been struck with his recommendation of tabular collections of particulars, and hence have placed him at the head of a Body of men, but too nume- The Minute rous in modern days-the Minute Philosophers. We need piherls scarcely say that this is venturing his reputation on a very tottering basis. Let any unprejudiced Naturalist turn to Bacon's questions and proposals for the investigation of single problems; to his - Discourse on the Winds;" or to what may almost be called a caricature of his scheme, in the " Method of improving Natural Philosophy," by ROBERT HOOKE4 (the 4 We refer particularly to p. 22 to 42 of the above-mentioned Work; and we would, above all, notice the following admirable specimen of confused and dis 48 INTRODUCTION. SEC. II. history of whose Philosophical life is alone a sufficient answer to all such schemes)-and then let him fairly say whether any desirable end could reasonably be hoped for, from this processwhether by this mode of research any important discovery ever was made, or ever could be made? Bacon, indeed, always takes care to tell us that the sole purpose and object of collecting together these particulars is to concentrate them, by careful selection, into universals; but so immense is their number, and so various and almost endless the relations in which each is to be separately considered, that the life of an antediluvian Patriarch would be expended, and his strength and spirits wasted, long before he could commence the process of simplification, or arrive in sight of the Law, which was to reward the toils of the over-tasked PSYCHE.5 orderly minuteness:-" The history of potters, tobacco-pipe-makers, glaziers, glass-grinders, looking-glass-makers or foilers, spectacle-makers and optic-glass makers, makers of counterfeit pearl and precious stones, bugle-makers, lampblowers, colour-makers, colour-grinders, glass-painters, enamellers, varnishers, colour-sellers, painters, limners, picture-drawers, makers of baby-heads, of little bowling stones or marbles, fustian-makers, (query, whether Poets are included in this trade?) music-masters, tinsey-makers, and taggers;-the history of schoolmasters, writing-masters, printers, book-binders, stage-players, dancing-masters, and vaulters, apothecaries, chirurgeons, seamsters, butchers, barbers, laundresses, and cosmetics! &c. &c. &c. (the true nature of each of which being exactly determined,) WILL HUGELY FACILITATE OUR INQUIRIES IN PHILOSOPHY!!!" In parallel, or rather in contrast, with the advice of Mr. Robert Hooke, may be fairly placed that of the celebrated Dr. WATTS, which was thought by Dr. Knox to be worthy of insertion in the Elegant Extracts, vol. ii. p. 456, under the head of DIRECTIONS CONCERNING OUR IDEAS. "Furnish yourselves with a rich variety of Ideas. Acquaint yourselves with things ancient and modern, things Natural, Civil, and Religious; things of your native land, and of foreign countries; things domestic and national; things present, past, and future; and above all, be well acquainted with God and yourselves; with animal nature, and the workings of your own spirits. Such a general acquaintance with things will be of very great advantage." 5 See the beautiful allegoric tale of Cupid and Psyche in the original of Apuleius. The tasks imposed on the hapless nymph, through the jealousy of her mother-inlaw, and the agency by which they are at length self-performed, are noble instances of that hidden wisdom " where more is meant than meets the ear!" SEC. II.'I ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 49 Had Bacon done no more than propose these impracticable Bacon,'s projects, we should have been far from sharing the sentiments Orgaliln. of respect everywhere attached to his Philosophical character. But he has performed a task of infinitely greater importance, by constructing that Methodical System, which is so elegantly developed in the Novum Organum. It is this which we propose to compare with the Principles long before enunciated by Plato. In both cases the inductions are frequently as crude and erroneous as might readily be anticipated from the infant state of Natural History, Chemistry, and Physiology, in their several Ages. In both cases the proposed applications are often impracticable; but setting aside these considerations, and extracting from each writer that which constitutes his true Philosophy, we shall be convinced that it is identical, in reaard to the Science of Method, and to the grounds and conditions of that Science. We do not see, therefore, how we can more appropriately conclude this section of our inquiry than by a brief statement of our renowned Countryman's own Principles of Method, conveyed, for the greater part, in his own words; or in what more precise form we can recapitulate the substance of the doctrines asserted and vindicated in the preceding pages. For we rest our strongest pretensions to approbation on the fact, that we have only re-proclaimed the coinciding precepts of the Athenian Verulam and the British Plato. In the first instance, Lord Bacon, equally with ourselves, The c(n,mon Svsivin demands, as the motive and guide of every Philosophical experi- of Piatol ment, what we have ventured to call the intellectual or mental and; "' ",, initiative; namely, some well-grounded purpose, some distinct impression of the probable results, some self-consistent anticipation, the ground of the prudens qucestio, (the forethoughtfiil inquiry,) which he affirms to be the prior half of the knowledge sought, dimidium scientice. With him, therefore, as with us, an Idea is an experiment proposed, an experiment is an Idea 50 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. IL f realized. For so he himself informs us:-Neque scientiam molimur tam 8nsu, vel im'trumentis, quam experimentis; etenim experimentorum longe major est subtilitas, quam sensus ipsius, licet instrumentis exquisitis adjuti. Nam de iis loquimur experimentis, quce, ad intentionem ejus quod quoeritur, perite, et secundum artem excogitata et apposita sunt. Itaque perceptioni sensus immediate et proprice non multum tribuimus: sed eo rem deducimus, ut sensus tantum de experimento, experimentum de re judicet. The meaning of this last sentence is intelligible enough, though involved in antithesis, merely because Bacon did not possess, like Shakspeare, a good Method in his style. What he means to say is, that we can apprehend, through the organs of sense, only the sensible phenomena produced by the experiment; but by the mental power, in virtue of which we shaped the experiment, we can determine tihe true import of the phcenomena. B:con's Now, he had before said, that he was speaking only of thpse!r.ols of the i:i.0l. experiments, which were skilfully adapted to the intention or purpose of him who conducted the research. But what is it that forms the intention, or purpose, and adapts thereto the experiment? What Bacon calls lux intellectuis; viz. the Understanding of the individual man, who makes the experiment. This light, however, as he argues at great length, is obscured by Idols, which are false and spurious notions. His peculiar use of the word Idols is again a proof of faulty Method in his style, for it gives a sort of pedantic air to his reasonings; but, in truth, he means no more by it than what Plato means by Opinion, (3oda,) which the latter calls "a medium between knowledge and ignorance." So, Bacon distinguishes the Idols of the Mind into various kinds, (Idola specus, tribus, fori, theatri,) that is, Opinions derived from the passions, prejudices, and peculiar habits of each man's Understanding: and as these Idols, or Opinions, confessedly produce a sort of mental obscu SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 51 rity, or blindness, so the ancient and the modern master of Philosophy both agree in prescribing remedies and operations calculated to remove this disease; to couch the " Mind's eye," and to restore it to the enjoyment of a purer vision. Bacon establishes an unerring criterion between the Ideas and the Idols of the Mind; namely, that the latter are empty notions, Difference between but the former are the very seals and impresses of Nature; Ideas and empty that is to say, they always fit and cohere with those classes of notions. things to which they belong; as the Idea of a circle fits and coheres with all true circles. His words are these: Non lece quiddam interest inter humance Mentis Idola, et divince Mentis Ideas, hoc est, inter placita qucedam inania, et vera. signaturas atque impressiones factas in creaturis, prout ratione sand et sicci luminis, quam, docendi causa, interpretem Naturce vocare conuevimus, inveniuntur.-Novum Organum, xxiii. and xxvi. Some Idols, says Bacon, are adventitious to the Mind; others innate. And here, we may observe, that he goes somewhat further than the mere doctrine of innate Ideas, by holding that of innate Idols. However, we say not this in disparagement of his system, which is clear and correct; nor, on the other hand, do we mean to espouse all its parts, which must be left to speak for themselves. What he means by innate Idols, he thus illustrates:-not only do the rays of Truth, from without, fall obliquely on the mirror of the Mind, but that mirror itself is not pure and plane; it discolours, it magnifies, it diminishes, it distorts. Hence, he uses the words intellectus humanus, mens hominis, &c. in a sense now peculiar, but in his day conformable to the language of the Schools, to signify not Intellect in general, or Mind in its perfection, but the Intellect or Mind of man weakened and corrupted, as it is, more or less, in every individual. A necessary consequence of this corruption, is the arrogance which leads Man to take the forms and mechanism E2 52 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. II. of his own reflective faculty as the measure of Nature and of the Deity. Of all Idols, or of all Opinions, this is the most difficult to remedy or extirpate; and therefore, in this view, the Intellect of Man is more prone to error than even his Senses. Such is the sound and incontrovertible doctrine of Bacon; but herein he does no more than repeat what both Plato and Heraclitus had long before urged with most impressive argument. The forms of the reflective faculty are subjective; the truths to be embraced are objective: but according to Plato, as well as to Bacon, there can be no hope of any fruitful and secure Method, so long as forms, merely subjective, are arbitrarily assumed to be the moulds of objective Truth, the seals and impresses of Nature. b:,ioAn's What then! Does Bacon abandon the hope of rectifying the r e:tifying obliquities of the Human Intellect; or does he suggest, that l'teile an they will be remedied by the casual operation of external impressions? Neither of these. He considers that its weaknesses and imperfections require to be strengthened and made perfect by a higher power; and that this is possible to be done. He supposes, that the Intellect of the individual, or homme particulier, may be refined by the Intellect of the Ideal Man, or homme ge'nral. Ile assumes, that as the evidence of the Senses is corrected by the Judgment, so the evidence of the Judgment, beset with Idols, may be corrected by the Judgment, walking in the light of Ideas. It is surely superfluous to urge, that this corrector and purifier of all reasoning, this inextinguishable Pole-starWhich never in the ocean waves was wet: whether it be called, as by Bacon, lumen siccum, or as by Plato, vovc, or Sac,oepv', is one and the same light of Trgth, the indispensable condition of all pure Science, contemplative or experimental. Hence, it will not surprise us, that Plato so often denominates Ideas living Laws, in and by which the SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF TIE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 53 Mind has its whole true being and permanence; or that Bacon, vice versa, names the Laws of Nature, Ide.,.; and represents the great leading facts of Science as signatures, impressions, and s of those Ideas,_ A distinguishable power selfaffirmed, and seen in its unity with the Eternal Essence, is, according to Plato, an IDEA: and the discipline by which the Human Mind is purified from its Idols, and raised to the contemplation of Ideas, and thence to the secure and progressive investigation of truth and reality, by Scientific Method, comprehends what the same Philosopher so highly extols, under the title of Dialectic. According to Lord Bacon, as describing the same Truth, applied to Natural Philosophy, an Idea would be defined as-Intuitio, sive inventio, quce in perceptione sensors non est (ut quce puree et sicci luminis Intellectioni sit propria) Idearum Divince Mentis, prout in creaturis, per signaturas suas, sese patefaciant. " That," saith the judicious HOOKER, "which doth assign to each thing the kind, that which determineth the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a LAW." From all that has been said, it seems clear, that the only Difference difference between Plato and Bacon was, that, to speak in between Plato and popular language, the one more especially cultivated Natural Bacon. Philosophy, the other Metaphysics. Plato treated principally t of Truth, as manifested in the world of Intellect; Bacon of the same Truth, as manifested in the world of Sense; but far from disagreeing, as to the mode of attaining that Truth, far from differing in their great views of the education of the Mind, they both proceeded on the same principles of unity and progression; and consequently both cultivated alike the Sczence of Method, such as we have here described it. If we are correct in these statements, then may we boast to have solved the great problem of conciliating ancient and modern Philosophy. 54 INTRODUCTION. [SEG. II. Historical That the Method, of which we have hitherto treated, is not view. arbitrarily assumed in any, or all of the pursuits, to which we have adverted; nor is peculiar to these in particular, but is founded in the Laws and necessary conditions of Human existence, is further to be inferred from a general view of the History of the Human race. As in the individual, so in the whole community of Mankind, our cogitations have an infancy of aimless activity; and a youth of education and advance towards order; and an opening manhood, of high hopes and expectations; and a settled, staid, and sober middle age, of ripened and deliberate judgment. First " The antiquity of time was the youth of the world and iod of knowledge," said Bacon. In that early age, the obedience of the will was first taught to Man. He was required to look up, in submission, to that Spirit of Truth, which, after all, we find to be at the head of wisdom. This innocent age was happily prolonged among those whose first care was to cultivate the Moral sense, and to seek in Faith the evidence of things not seen. To them were propounded a Spiritual Creator, and a Spiritual worship, and the assured hope of a future and Spiritual existence; and therefore they were less curious to watch the motions of the stars, or to become " artificers in brass and iron," or to "handle the harp and the organ." They were less wise in their generation than the " mighty men of old, the men of renown;" but their Ideas were plain and distinct; they were "just and perfect men;" and they "walked with God;" whilst, of the others, "every imagination of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually." For the latter wilfully chose an opposite Method: they determined to shape their convictions and deduce their knowledge from without, by exclusive observation of outward things, as the only realities. Hence they became rapidly civilized. They built cities, and refined on the means of sensual SEC. II] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 55 gratification, and the conveniences of courtly intercourse. They became the great masters of the agreeable, which fraternized readily with cruelty and rapacity; these being, indeed, but alternate moods of the same sensual selfishness. Thus, both before and after the Flood, the vicious of Mankind receded from all true cultivation, as they hurried towards civilization. Finally, as it was not in their power to make themselves wholly beasts, and to remain without a semblance of Religion, and yet, as they were faithful to their original maxim,-determined to receive nothing as true, but what they derived, or believed themselves to derive, from their senses, or (in modem phrase) what they could prove a posteriori,-they became Idolaters of the Heavens, and of the material elements; and finally, out of the Idols of the Mind, they formed material Idols: and bowed down to stocks and stones, as to the unformed incorporeal Divinity. A new era next appeared, representative of the youth and Second approaching manhood of the Human Intellect: and again, period. Providence, as it were, awakened men to the pursuit of an Idealized Method, in the development of their faculties. Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, and the other Mythological Bards, or perhaps Brotherhoods of Bards impersonated under individual names, whether deriving their light, imperfectly and indirectly, from the inspired writings of the Hebrews, or graciously visited, for high and important purposes, by a dawning of Truth in their own breasts, began to spiritualize Polytheism, and thereby to prevent it from producing all its natural, barbarizing effects. Hence the Mysteries and Mythological Hymns; which, on the one hand, gradually shaped themselves into Epic Poetry and History, and, on the other, into Tragedy and Philosophy: whilst to the lifeless Statuary of the Egyptians was superadded a Promethean animation; and the Ideal in Sculpture soon extending itself to Painting and to Archi 56 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. II. tecture, the Fine Arts at once shot up to perfection by a Method founred wholly on a mental initiative, and conducted throughout its progress by the development of Ideas. This rapid advance, in all things which owe their existence and character to the Mind's own acts, intellectual or imaginative, fbrms a singular contrast with the rude and imperfect manner in which those acts were applied to the investigation of Physical Laws and phenomena. While Phidias, Apelles, Homer, Demosthenes, Thucydides, and Plato, had, each in his individual sphere, attained almost the summit of conceivable excellence, the Natural History and the Natural Philosophy of the whole World may be said to have lain dormant; especially if we compare them with the efforts which the Moderns made in these directions, in the very morning of their strength. (cmnns. Of the Roman era it is scarcely necessary to speak at large, inasmuch as the Romans were confessedly mere imitators of the Greeks in everything relative to Science and Art. They sustained a very important part in the Civil, and Military, and Ecclesiastical History of Mankind; and their devotion to these objects was, in their own eyes, a sufficient apology for their want of originality in what they held to be far inferior pursuits. Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera: Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus: Tn regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. Dark Ages. Still less will it be expected, that we should devote much space to the consideration of those Dark Ages, which brought the countless hordes of sensual Barbarians from their Northern forests to meet, in the Southern and middle parts of Europe, the spiritualizing influence of Christianity: but one remarkable effect of that influence we cannot suffer to pass unnoticed. We allude to the gradual abolition of domestic slavery, in virtue of a Principle essential to Christianity, by which a person is SEC. II.] ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 57 eternally differenced from a thing; so that the Idea of a Human Being necessarily excludes the Idea of property in that Being. We come down, then, to the great period of the REFORMA- Reiilma. TION, which, regarded as an epoch in the education of the tiol. Human Mind, was second to none for its striking and durable effects. The defenders of a simple and Spiritual worship, against one which was full of outward forms and ceremonies; the partisans of Religious liberty, against the dominion of a Visible Head over the whole Christian Church; and, generally speaking, the advocates of the Ideal and internal against the external or imaginative,-maintained a zealous, and in great part of Europe, a prosperous conflict. But the revolution of Thought, and its effects on the Science of Method, were soon visible beyond the pale of the Church or the Cloister: and the Schoolmen were attacked as warmly in their Philosophical, as they had before been in their Ecclesiastical character. It is needless to dwell on the various attempts towards introducing into Learning a totally new Method. That of our illustrious countryman, BACON, was completely successful: and we have already shown that it was, in truth, the completion of the Ideal System, by applying the same Method to external Nature which Plato had before applied to intellectual existence. It is only in the union of these two branches of one and the Modern same Method that a complete and genuine Philosophy can be Philosohy1. said to exist. To this consideration the great mind of Bacon does not seem to have been fully awake; and hence, not only is the general scope of his Work directed almost exclusively to the contemplation of Physical Ideas, but there are occasional expressions which seem to have misled many of his followers into a belief that he considered all Wisdom and all Science both to begin and to end with the objects of the senses. In this gross error are laid the foundations of the modern French 58 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. T. School, which has grown up into the monstrous puerilities of CONDILLAC and CONDORCET; men whose names it would be absolutely ridiculous to mention in a History of Science, if their pupils did not unhappily compensate, in number, what their Works want in common sense and intelligibility; and if upon such Writers, the French Nation did not mainly rest its pretensions to give the law to Europe in matters of Science and Philosophy. ( 59 j SEC(TION Ill. APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF METHOD TO THE GENERAL CONCATENATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF STUDIES. WE have already dwelt so much on the general importance of Systematic Ignoranc2 Method-we have recurred to it so frequently-we have illustrated. placed it in so many various lights, that we ought perhaps to apologize for venturing on one more attempt to illustrate our meaning, partly in the way of simile, and partly of example. Let us, however, imagine an unlettered African, or rude, but musing Indian, poring over an illumined manuscript of the inspired volume; with the vague, yet deep impression, that his fates and fortunes are, in some unknown manner, connected with its contents. Every tint, every group of characters, has its several dream. Say that, after long and dissatisfying toils, he begins to sort, first, the paragraphs that appear to resemble each other; then the lines, the words; nay, that he has at length discovered, that the whole is formed by the recurrence and interchange of a limited number of ciphers, letters, marks, and points, which, however, in the very height and utmost perfection of his attainment, he makes twenty-fold more numerous than they are, by classing every different form of the same character, intentional or accidental, as a separate element. And yet the whole is without soul or substance, a talisman of superstition, or a mockery of Science; or is employed perhaps, at last, to feather the arrows of death, or to shine and flutter amid the plumes of savage vanity. The poor 60 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. III. Indian too truly represents the state of learned and systematic Orderliness ignorance-arrangement guided by the light of no leading without lMethod. Idea; mere orderliness without METHOD! But see, the friendly missionary arrives! He explains to him the nature of written words, translates them fbr him into his native sounds, and thence into the thoughts of his heart: how many of these thoughts are then first unfolded into consciousness, which yet the awakening disciple receives not as aliens! Henceforward the book is unsealed for him; the depth is opened; he communes with the spirit of the volume, as with a living oracle. The words become transparent: he sees them, as though he saw them not; whilst he mentally devours the meaning they contain. From that moment, his former chimerical and useless arrangement is discarded, and the results of Method are to him life and truth. If some particular studies are yet confessedly deficient in the vivifying power of Method, we much fear that the attempts to bind together the whole Body of Science have been, in certain instances, worse than immethodical. A slight glance at the particular department of Literature which we have chosen, especially as it has been filled on the Continent, from the memorable combination of Deistical talent in the Dictionnaire Eneyclopedique, to a Work on the same principles, said to be now publishing in France, will demonstrate, that the best interests of Mankind have suffered serious injury from this cause; that the fountains of education may be poisoned, where the stream appears to flow on with increasing power and smoothness; and that the insinuation of sceptical principles into Works of Science is fraught with the greatest danger to posterity. To oppose an effectual barrier to the rage for desultory knowledge, on the one hand, and to support that body of independent attachment to the best principles of all knowledge, SEC. III.] APPLICATION OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 61 which happily distinguishes this country, on the other, the Encyclopaedia MeENCYCLOPIEDIA METROPOLITANA has been projected. tropoltan. We do not undertake, what the most gigantic efforts of Man foulded on the could not achieve, a Universal Dictionary of Knowledge, in principles of Method. the most absolute sense of the terms. But estimating the importance of our task rather by the principles of unity and compression than by those of variety and extent, we have laboured to build upon what is essential that which is obviously useful, and upon both whatever is elegant or agreeable in Science; and this, we conceive, cannot be well and usefully effected, but by such a Philosophical Method as we have already indicated. We have shown that this METHOD consists in placing one or more particular things or notions, in subordination, either to a preconceived universal Idea, or to some lower form of the latter; some class, order, genus, or species, each of which derives its intellectual significancy, and scientific worth, from being an ascending step toward the universal; from being its representative, or temporary substitute. Without this masterthought, therefore, there can be no true Method: and according as the general conception more or less clearly manifests itself throughout all the particulars, as their connective and bond of unity; according as the light of the Idea is freely diffused through, and completely illumines, the aggregate mass the Method is more or less perfect. The first preconception, or master-thought, on which our The moral plan rests, is the moral origin and tendency of all true Science; terln and in other words, our great objects are to exhibit the Arts and of true Science, Sciences in their Philosophical harmony; to teachl Philosophy thlemaster ~. thought of in union with Morals; and to sustain Morality by Revealed thie pii,. Religion. There are, as we have before noticed, two sorts of relation, on the due observation of which all Method depends. Tihe 62 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. III first is that which the Ideas or Laws of the Mind bear to each other; the second, that which they bear to the external world: on the former are built the Pure Sciences; on the latter those which we call Mixed and Applied. Pure The Pure Sciences, then, represent pure acts of the Mind, Sciences. and those only; whether employed in contemplating the forms under which things in their first elements are necessarily viewed and treated by the Mind, or in contemplating the substantial reality of those things. Formal Hence, in the Pure Sciences, arises the known distinction of and Real. formal and real: and of the first, some teach the elementary forms, which the Mind necessarily adopts in the processes of reasoning; and others, those under which alone all particular objects can be grasped and considered by the Mind; either as distinguishable in quantity and number, or as occupying parts of space. The real Sciences, on the other hand, are conversant with the true nature and existence, either of the created Universe around us, or of the guiding Principles within us, in their various modifications and distinguishing movements; or, lastly, with the real nature and existence of the great Cause of all. Grammar. We begin, then, with that class of Pure Sciences which we have called formal; and of these, the first two that present themselves to us are GCrammar and Logic. By Grammar we are taught the rules of that speech which serves as the medium of Mental intercourse between man and man; by Logic, the Mental operations are themselves regulated and bound together in a certain Method or order. As the communication of knowledge is the more immediate object of our present discussion, so we begin with that Science by which it is regulated in its forms. Grammar, then, apart from the mere material consideration of the sound of words, or shape of letters, and regarding speech only as a thing significant, teaches that there SEC. 111.1 APPLICATION OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 63 are certain laws regulating that signification; laws which are immutable in their very nature; for the relation which a noun bore to a verb, or a substantive to an adjective, was the same in the earliest days tdporwov avOpwrwv, in the first intelligible conversations of men, as it is now; nor can it ever vary so long as the powers of Thought remain the same in the Human Mind. This, then, is a Pure Science proceeding from a simple or elementary Idea of the form necessary for the conveyance of a single thought, and thence spreading and diffusing itself over all the relations of significant Language. Grammar brings us, naturally, to the Science of Logic, or Logic. the knowledge of those forms which the conceptions of the Mind assume in the processes of reasoning. And it is manifest that this Science is no less subject than the former to fixed laws; for the reasoning power in Man can operate only within those limits which Almighty Wisdom has thought fit to prescribe. It is a discursive faculty, moving in a given path, and by allotted means. There is no possibility of subverting or altering the elementary rules of Logic; for they are not hypothetical, or contingent, or conventional, but positive and necessary. Under the general term Mathematics are comprised the MatheSciences of Geometry, which is conversant about the laws ofmatics figure, or limitations of space; and Arithmetic, which concerns the laws of number. Now these laws are purely Ideal. It is not externally to us that the general notion of a square, or a triangle, of the number three, or the number five, exists; nor do we seek for external proof of the relations of those notions; but on the contrary, by contemplating them as Ideas in the Mind, we discover truths which are applicable to external existence. The Sciences which we have hitherto noticed relate to the forms of our Mental conceptions; but it is natural for Man to 64 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. IIL seek to comprehend the principles and conditions of real existence, both with regard to the Universe in general, with regard to his own internal mover, or conscience, and, above all, with regard to the cause by which conscience and the whole Universe were called into being, and continue to exist, namely, Meta- GOD. Hence, as we advance from form to reality, the Sciences physics, Morals, and of Metaphysics and Morals first present themselves to view, Tlology, and these lead us forward to the summit of Human Knowledge; for at the head of all Pure Science stands Theology, of which the great fountain is Revelation. It is obvious that both Metaphysics and Morals are conversant solely about those relations which we have called Relations of Law; for it would be a contradiction to say, that a real existence could be, at the same time, a mere theory or hypothesis. These Sciences have, therefore, all the purity and all the certainty which belong to that which is positive and absolute; and as far as they are distinctly apprehended by the Mind, they approach the nearest to that clear intellectual light which, in the peculiar phraseology of Lord Bacon, is called lumen siccum. In the proper Philosophical Method, the reality of our speculative knowledge, exhibited in the Science of Metaphysics, unites itself at last with the reality of our Ethical sentiments displayed in that of Morals; and both together are at once lost and consummated in Theology, which rises above the light of Reason to that of Faith. Mixed and These are all the Sciences which embrace solely relations of Applied Sciences. Law: and it is plain that in these, not only the initiative, but every subsequent step, must be an act of the Mind alone. But when we descend to the second order of relations, namely, those which we bear to the external world, Theory is immediately introduced; new Sciences are formed, which, in contradistinction from the Pure, are called the MIixed and Applied Sciences; and in these, new considerations relative to Method necessarily find a place. SEC. III.] APPLICATION OF THE SCIENCE Of METHOD. 65 Every Physical Theory is in some measure imperfect, because Physical Theories it is of necessity progressive; and because we can never be imperfect assured that we have exhausted the terms, or that some new because necessarily discovery may not affect the whole scheme of its relations. progressive The discoveries of the ponderability of air, of its compound nature, of the increased weight of the calces, of the gases in general, of Electricity, and more recently the stupendous influences of Galvanism on the successive Chemical Theories; are all so many exemplifications of this truth. The doctrines of vortices, of an universal ether, of a two-fold magnetic fluid, &c., are Theories of Gravitation: but the Science of Astronomy is founded on the Law of Gravitation, and remains unaffected by the rise and fall of the Theories. In the lowest condition of Method, the initiative is supplied by an hypothesis; of which we may distinguish two degrees. In the former, a fact of actual experience is taken, and placed experimentally as the common support of certain other facts, as equally present in all: thus, that oxygen is a principle of acidification and combustion is an experienced fact, and became a hypothesis by the assumption that it is the sole principle of acidification and combustion. In the latter, a fact is imagined: as, for instance, an atom or physical point, preternaturally hard, and therefore infrangible, in the Corpuscular Philosophy; or a primitive unalterable figure, in some systems of Crystallisation. In all this we see, that Knowledge is a matter not of neces- True sary connection, but of a connection arising from observation Tlocry a or supposition; that is, it consists not of Law, but of Theory tenaes of or Hypothesis. True Theory is always in the first and purest sense a locum tenens of Law; when it is not, it degenerates into hypothesis, and hypothesis melts away into conjecture. Both in Law and in Theory there must be a mental antecedent; but in the latter, it may be an image or conception received through the senses, and originating from without; 6-6 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. III. yet even then there is an inspiring passion, or desire, or instinctive feeling of the truth, which is the immediate and proper offspring of the Mind. Now, we may consider the facts which are to be reduced to Theory, as arranged over the whole surface of a plane circle. If; by carrying the power of Theory to a near identity with Law, we find the centre of the circle, then, proceeding toward the circumference, our insight into the whole may be enlarged by new discoveries; it never can be wholly changed. A magnificent example of this has been realized in the Science of Astronomy; a recent addition of facts has been effected by the discovery of other Planets, and our views have been rendered more distinct by the solution of the apparent irregularities of the Moon's motion, and their subsumption under the general Law of Gravitation. But the Newtonian was not less a system before than since the discovery of the Georgium Sidus; not by having ascertained its circumference, but by having found its centre; the living and salient point, from which the Method of discovery diverges, the Law in which endless discoveries are contained implicitly, and to which, as they afterwards arise, they may be referred in endless succession. Transition These reasonings, it is hoped, will sufficiently explain the Prom the nature of the transition from the Pure Sciences to the Mixed tiences to and Applied Sciences, and will serve to trace the inseparable and Applied connection of the latter with the constitution of the Human *ences. Mind. And as each of these great divisions of Knowledge has its own department in the grand Moral Science of Man, it is obvious that a scheme, which, like our own, not only contains each separately, but combines both as indivisible, the one from the other, must present, in the most advantageous point of view, whatever is useful and beautiful in either. In speaking of the Mixed and Applied Sciences we must be permitted, however, to remark that the word Science is evidently used in SEC. III.] APPLICATION OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 67 a looser and more popular form than when we denominate Mathematics, or Metaphysics, a Science; for we know not, for instance, the truth of any general result of observation in Nosology, as we know that two and two make four, or that a Human person cannot be identical with another Human person. And, in like manner, when the word Law is used with relation to the Mixed and Applied Sciences, as when we speak of any supposed Law of Vegetation, we use a more popular language than when we speak of a Law of the Conscience, which is not to be prevaricated. The strictness of ancient Philosophy, therefore, refused the name of Science to these pursuits; and it might at least be convenient, if in speaking generally of the Pure, the Mixed, and the Applied Sciences, we gave them the common name of Studies, inasmuch as we study them all alike, but we do not know them all with the same sort of knowledge. Of these, then, (be they Studies or Sciences,) we call those Mixed fixed in which certain.Ideas of the Mind are applied to the general properties of bodies, solid, fluid, and aerial; to the power of vision, and to the arrangement of the Universe; whence we obtain the Sciences of liechanics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Optics, and Astronomy. It is matter, not of '" certain Science, but of' observation, that such properties do really exist in bodies, that vision is effected in such or such a manner, and that the Universe is disposed in this or that relative position, and subjected to certain movements of its parts. Therefore, these Sciences may vary, and notoriously have varied; and though Kepler would demonstrate that Euclid Copernicised, or had some knowledge of the System afterwards adopted by Copernicus; yet of this there is little proof: and certainly, for many ages after Euclid, it was the universal opinion, that the Earth was the fixed and immoveable centre of the Universe. Nor have we here unadvisedly used F2 68 INTRODUCTION. LSEC. III the word opinion; since, as we before showed, it is the ancient expression signifying a medium between Knowledge and Ignorance: and well did that acute Italian exclaim, Opinione, regina del mondo!-for, as it is impossible that Ignorance, which cannot govern itself, should govern anything else, so to expect that all the world should be wise enough to submit to the government of Wisdom, would be to show that we had followed very little Method in our study either of History, of living men, or even of ourselves. Applied When certain Ideas, or images representative of Ideas, are applied still more particularly, not to the investigation of the general and permanent properties of all bodies, but of certain changes in those properties, or of properties existing in bodies partially, then we popularly call the Studies relative to such matters by the name of Applied Sciences; such are Magnetism, Electricity, Galvanism, Chemistry, the Laws of Light and Experi- Heat, &c. We have already so fully shown the uncertainty of mental Philosoplly. the first Principles in these Studies, and have so distinctly traced the cause of that uncertainty, in every case, to a want of clearness in the first Idea or Mental initiative of the Science, that it will be unnecessary here to do more than refer to our preceding observations. Fine Arts. We come now to another class of Applied Sciences, namely, those which are applied to the purposes of pleasure through the medium of the Imagination; and which are commonly called the FINE ARTS. These are Poetry, Painting, Music, Sculpture, Architecture. We have before said, that the Method to be observed in these, holds a sort of middle place between the Method of Law, or Pure Science, and the Method of Theory. In regard to the Mixed Sciences, and to the first class of Applied Sciences, the Mental initiative may have been received from without; but it has escaped some Critics, that in the Fine Arts the Mental initiative must necessarily proceed SEC. III.] APPLICATION OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 69 from within. Hence we find them giving, as it were, recipes to form a Poet, by placing him in certain directions and positions; as if they thought that every deer-stealer might, if he pleased, become a Shakspeare, or that Shakspeare's mind was made up of the shreds and patches of the books of his day, which by good fortune he happened to read in such an order that they successively fitted into the scenes of Macbeth, Othello, The Tempest, As you like it, &c. Certainly the Fine Arts belong to the outward world, for they all operate by the images of sight and sound, and other sensible impressions; and without a delicate tact for these, no man ever was, or could be, either a Musician or a Poet; nor could he attain to excellence in any one of these Arts: but as certainly he must always be a poor and unsuccessful cultivator of the Arts if he is not impelled first by a mighty, inward power, a feeling, quod nequeo monstrare, et sentio tantum; nor can he make great advances in his Art, if, in the.course of his progress, the obscure impulse does not gradually become a bright, and clear, and living Idea! Pursuits of utility, we daily find are capable of being reduced Useful to Method. Thus Political Economy, and A.qriculture, and Arts. Commerce, and Manufactures. are now considered scientifically, or, as the more prevalent expression is, Philosophically. It may, perhaps, be difficult, at first, to persuade the experimental Agriculturist that he also pursues, or ought to pursue, an Ideal Method; nor do we mean by this that he must deal only in ideal sheep and oxen, and in the groves and meads of Fairy Land. But these Studies, soberly considered, will be found wholly dependent on the Sciences of which we have already stated. It is not, surely, in the Country of ARKWRIGHT, that the Philosophy of Commerce can be thought independent of Mechanics: and where DAVY has delivered Lectures on Agriculture, it would be folly to say that the most Philosophic 70 INTRODUCTION. LSEC. I I. views of Chemistry were not conducive to the making our valleys laugh with corn. Natural We have already spoken of LrNNElUS, the illustrious Swede, History. to whom the three kingdoms, as they are aptly called, of Natural History are so deeply indebted; and if, with all his great talents, he yet failed in establishing the united empire of those three mighty monarchies on firm laws and a fixed constitution, we have shown, that it was only owing to a want of precision in the first Ideas of his theory. Appli- Natural History itself becomes a rule for dependent purNatU-oal1 suits, such as those of Medicine (under which are Pharmacy History and the Materia Medica) and Surgery, in which is included Anatomy. That hi these and the other theoretical studies so much still remains to be done, ought not to be a subject for regret, but, on the contrary, for a laudable and generous ambition. Yet that ambition should be regulated and moderated by a due consideration of the place which the particular pursuit in question holds in the great circle of the Sciences, and by observing the only proper Method which can be pursued for its improvement. If, in what we have here said, we have done anything towards the excitement, the regulation, and the assistance of that ambition; if we have faintly sketched an outline of the great laws of Method, which bind together the various branches of Human Knowledge, we may not improperly indulge a hope that the ensuing Work, in its progress, will be found conducive to the promotion of the best interests of Mankind. History and Our Plan would not completely meet the views of those to Blograplv. whom such Works as the following are eminently useful and agreeable, if, besides the Philosophic Method already described, we did not present some view of the actual History of Mankind. We have therefore devoted a large portion of our labours to the History of the Human Race, on a new, and, we SEC. III.] APPLICATION OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 71 trust it will be found, an improved System. Biography and History tend to the same points of general instruction, in two ways: the one exhibiting Human Principles and Passions, acting upon a large scale; the other showing them as they move in a smaller circle, but enabling us to trace the orbit which they describe with greater precision. The one brings Man into contact with Society, actuated by the interests which agitate and stimulate him in the various social combinations of his existence; and Human Nature presents itself in the varied shapes impressed upon it by the different ranks which it occupies. The other brings before us the individual when he stands alone, his passions asleep, his native impulses under no external excitement; in the undress of one who has retired from the stage, on which he felt he had a part to sustain; and even the Monarch, forgetting the pomp and circumstance of his royalty, remembers here only that he is a Man. Assuredly the great use of History is to acquaint us with the Nature of Man. This end is best answered by the most faithful portrait; but Biography is a collection of portraits. At the same time there must be some mode of grouping and connecting the individuals, who are themselves the great landmarks in the Map of Human Nature. It has therefore occurred to us, that the most effectual mode of attaining the chief objects of Historical knowledge will be occasionally to present History in the form of Biography, chronologically arranged. This will be preceded by a general Introduction on the Uses of History, and on the line which separates its early Facts from Fable; and it will, in the course of its progress, be interspersed with connecting Chapters on the events of large and distinguishing periods of time as well as on Political Geography and Chronology. Thus will a large portion of History be conveyed, not only in its most interesting, but in its most philo sophical and real form; while the remaining facts will be 72 INTRODUCTION. [SEC. III. interwoven in the preliminary and connecting Chapters. If in tracing thus the "eventful History " of Man, and particularly of our own Country, we should perceive, as we must necessarily do in all that is human, evils and imperfections, these will not be without their uses, in leading us back to the importance of intellectual Method as their grand and sovereign remedy. Hence shall we learn its proper national application, namely, the education of the Mind, first in the Man and Citizen, and then, inclusively, in the State itself. Alphabetio Such are our views in the Philosophical and Historical arrange branches of our Work. Of the Miscellaneous or Alphabetical Division we have little to add. But well aware that Works of this nature are not solely useful to those who have leisure and inclination to study Science in its comprehensiveness and unity, but are also valuable for daily reference on particular points, suggested by the desires or business of the individual, we could not hold ourselves dispensed from consulting the convenience of a numerous and most respectable class of Readers, while the preceding remarks will go to prove that, for many local and supplementary illustrations of Science, no other depository could be furnished. As the Philosophical arrangement is, however, most conducive to the purposes of intellectual research and information; as it will most naturally interest men of Science and Literature; will present the circle of Knowledge in its harmony; will give that unity of design and of elucidation, the want of which we have most deeply felt in other Works of a similar kind, where the desired information is divided into innumerable fragments scattered over many volumes, like a mirror broken on the ground, presenting, instead of one, a thousand images, but none entire,-this Division must, of necessity, have that prominence in the prosecution of our design which our con SEC. III.] APPLICATION OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 73 viction of its importance to the due execution of the plan demands: and every other part of the arrangement must be considered as subordinate to this principal organization. With respect to the whole Work, it should be observed, that in what concerns references we are guided by principle, not by caprice; nor do we ever recur to them as our only means of escape from an exigency. Throughout the ENCYCLOPEDIA METRO- The PhiPOLITANA, the Philosophical arrangement predominates and losophieal regulates the Alphabetical arrangement; and the references, ment governs and whether to it or from it, are auxiliary. We never refer regulates the Alphafrom the first and second Divisions to the fourth, or from the betical. first to the second, for the explanation of a term, the establishment of a Principle, or the demonstration of a Proposition. The reference, whenever it occurs, unless it be retrospective, is not for the purpose of essential information, but for that which is collateral and subordinate. The theory of the Balance, for example, is given where it ought to be in the Treatise on Mechanics; but they who wish to acquaint themselves with the various constructions of Balances for the purposes of Commerce or Philosophy, knowing that these cannot be introduced into a Scientific Treatise without destroying the symmetry of its parts by a suspension of the Logical order, will naturally turn, whether there be a reference or not, to the Alphabetical Department of the Work. So again, the Principles of the Telescope are given in the Treatise on Optics; the varieties of construction in the Alphabetical Department: the Principles Gf the Thermometer, when treating of the effects of Heat; its varieties of construction in the Alphabetical Department. Practical detail, and niceties or peculiarities of construction, can seldom be interwoven with propriety among the regular deductions of a Methodical Treatise: in all cases where they cannot, our general Principle, as it comprehends proportion, accuracy, utility, and convenience, demands a reference, whether 74 INTRODUCTION. LSEC. III. expressed or not, to the appropriate place for all that is subservient; that is, to the fourth or Alphabetical Division. Trade and This final Division of our Work will bring the whole into essential to unison with the two great impulses of Modern times, Trade the exist- and Literature These, after the dismemberment of the Roman ence of a Nation. Empire, gradually reduced the conquerors and the conquered at once into several nations and a common Christendom. The natural Law of increase, and the instincts of Family, may produce Tribes, and, under rare and peculiar circumstances, Settlements and Neighbourhoods; and Conquests may form Empires. But without Trade and Literature combined, there can be no Nation; without Commerce and Science, no bond of Nations. As the one has for its object the wants of the body, real or artificial, the desires for which are for the greater part excited from without, so the other has for its origin, as well as for its object, the wants of the Mind, the gratification of which is a natural and necessary condition of its growth and sanity. In the pursuits of Commerce the Man is called into action from without, in order to appropriate the outward world, as far as he can bring it within his reach, to the purposes of his corporeal nature. In his Scientific and Literary character he is internally excited to various studies and pursuits, the groundwork of which is in himself. Distin- This, again, will conduct us to the distinguishing object of gunishing, object of the present undertaking, in endeavouring to explain which we the Ency- have dwelt long upon General Principles; but not too long, if ttlopiedia Metropo- we have established the necessity of what we conceive to be litana. the main characteristic of every just arrangement of Knowledge. Our Method embraces the twofold distinction of Human activity to which we have adverted,-the two great directions of Man and Society, with their several objects and ends. Without advocating the exploded doctrine of perfectibility, we cannot but regard all that is Human in Human Nature, and all SEC. III.] APPLICATION OF THE SCIENCE OF METHOD. 75 that in Nature is above herself, as together working forward that far deeper and more permanent revolution in the Moral World of which the recent changes in the Political World may be regarded as the pioneering whirlwind and storm. But woe to that revolution which is not guided by the historic sense; by the pure and unsophisticated knowledge of the past: and to convey this Methodically, so as to aid the progress of the future, has been already announced as the distinguishing claim of the ENCYCLOPEDIA METROPOLITANA. Jainuary, 1818. 1,ON I)ON: PKINTFD) BY WIIIIAM CLOWES ANDI) SONS, ST'AMIORD STREET AN]) CHAI:ING C)ROSS. IPLAN OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA METROPOLITANA. - SECOND EDITION PLAN OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA METROPOLITANA. The INTRODUCTION.-On the Laws and regulative Principles of EDUCATION; or il the Language of the Schools, the Elements of METHODOLOGY. FIRST DIVISION. PURE SCIENCES. SECTION I.-FORMAL SCIENCES Law: — General Princqples of Law. Philosophy of Language. Roman Law. Logic. English LawMathematics:- Laws of England. Geometry. Laws of Ireland. AGeometry. Laws of Scotland. Arithmetic. Colonial Law. Algebra. Canon Law. Geometrical Analysis. Politics: Theory of Numbers. Law of NationsTrigonometry. Diplomacy. nalytical Geometry Political PhilosophyConic Sections. Statistics Statistics. Differential and Integral Calculus. Political EconomyCalculus of Variations. Commerce Calculus of Finite Differences. Theology Calculus of Functions. N Theology. Natural Theology. Theory of Probabilities. Evidences of Revelation. Definite Integrals. Scripture Doctrine. Biblical Literature. SECTIO II.-REAL Siblical Antiquities. Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. Religions and Religious Custome SECOND DIVISION. MIXED AND APPLIED SCIENCES. SECTION I. SECTION II. MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHYI. EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY. (Mixed Mathematics.) Magnetism. Light. Mechanics. Electro-Magnetism. Cnemistry. Hydrodynamics. Electricity. Sound. Pneumatics. Galvanism. Meteorology. Optics. Heat. Astronomy:Plane Astronomy. SECTION III.-THE FINE ARTS, Nautical Astronomy. Architecture. N umismatics. Physical Astronomy. Sculpture. Poetry. Figure of the Earth. Painting. Music. Tides and Waves. Heraldry. Enraving. E ngaig SECTION IV.-TIE USEFUL AT'rS. Agriculture. Horticulture. Floriculture. Arboriculture. Carpentry and Joinery. Fortification. Engineering. Naval Architecture. Manufactures. Mechanical Arts. Chemical Alts. SECTION V.-NATURAL HISTORY. Inanimate: —Crystallography. Mineralogy. Geology. Insentient:-Botany. Animate:-Zoology. Physiology. Comparative AnatomyVertebrals:-Mammalia Birds. Reptiles. Fishes. Invertebrals:Molluscs. Sp Insects. e a Crustaceans. Inf Arachnidans. Po Myriapods. SECTION VI. APPLICATIONS OF NATUR ined Skins. a Nettles. usories. lyps. AL HISTORr, Anatomy. Materia Medica: Pharmacy. Medicine. Surgery. Veterinary Art. THIRD DIVISION. HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY INTRODUCTION:Dissertation on the Uses of Iistory. Chronology. Chronological Tables. hTHNOLOGY. ANCIENT HISTORY: Sacred History. Greece. Greek Literature. Greek Philosophy and Art. Ancient Oriental Nations. Rome. Roman Literature. Roman Philosophy. Classical Antiquities. Heathen Mythology. MIDDLE AGES. ]MODERN HISTORY: The Christian Church. (;reek Empire. AND GEOGRAPHY. Ottoman Empire. The Crusades. Italy. Germany. France. Spain. Portugal. Netherlands. Switzerland. Britain. Northern Europe. America. India. Popular Antiquities PIHYSICAL GEOGRAPHm. POLITICAL. GEOGRAPHY:European. American. Oriental. Afiican. Classical. British Topography. FOURTH DIVISION. LEXICOGRAPHICAL. INDEX VOLUME. i 3 015 01229 9080 f13 AK