1858.] Wo7nen on the Progress of Knowledge. ' 505 



period of life, that we are unconscious of it. Hence we are justified 

 in terming geometry a deductive science, even if we admit that its 

 origin is inductive ; because the great labour consists in the subse- 

 quent process of working deductively from ideas, which (according 

 to this view) we have inductively obtained. 



In England it is constantly stated that since Bacon all great 

 physical discoveries have been made by induction, in opposition to 

 the more ideal method. If this be true, the deductive influence of 

 women must, in reference to such discoveries, have done more harm 

 than good. But Mr. Buckle asserted that it is not true ; and he 

 corroborated his assertion by an analysis of the method adopted by 

 Newton, Haiiy, and Gothe, in regard to their discoveries of the 

 law of Gravitation, the law of the Derivation of the Secondary 

 Forms of Crystals, the Morphological Law of Vegetables, and the 

 law of the Vertebral Composition of the Cranium. 



Finally, Mr. Buckle observed, that an exclusive employment of 

 the inductive philosophy was contracting the minds of physical 

 inquirers ; gradually shutting out speculations respecting causes and 

 entities ; limiting the student to questions of distribution, and for- 

 bidding to him questions of origin ; making everything hang on 

 two sets of laws, namely those of co-existence and of sequence ; and 

 declaring beforehand how far future knowledge can carry us. But 

 we shall not always be satisfied with seeing the laws of nature rest 

 on this empirical basis ; and the most advanced thinkers are look- 

 ing to a period when we shall deal with problems of a much higher 

 kind than any yet solved ; when we shall incorporate mind and 

 matter into a single study ; when we shall seek to raise the veil and 

 penetrate into the secrets of things. Everything indicates that a 

 struggle of this sort is impending, and to achieve success the 

 imagination will have to aid the understanding more than it has yet 

 done. We shall need every faculty, every resource, and every 

 method. The intellectual peculiarities of both sexes must be com- 

 bined, before we can expect to conduct to a prosperous issue that 

 great contest between Man and Nature, of which this generation 

 may witness the beginning, but of which our distant posterity can 

 hardly hope to see the end.* 



[H. T. B.] 



* Mr. Buckle's Discourse is given in full in "Fraser's Magazine," for 

 April 1858. 



