Dh. whewell, on the fundamental antithesis of philosophy. 181 



and thus deprives it of reality ; because, as we have said, the subjective and the objective 

 elements are inseparably bound together in the fundamental antithesis. 



29. It would be easy to apply the.se remarks to other cases, for instance, to the case of the 

 principle we have just mentioned, that the differences of elementary composition of different kinds of 

 bodies must be definite. We have stated that this principle is necessarily true; — that the contrary 

 proposition cannot be distinctly conceived. But by whom ? Evidently, according to the preceding 

 reasoning, by a person who distinctly conceives Kinds, as marked by intelligible names, and Composi- 

 tion, as determining the kinds of bodies. Persons new to chemical and classiflcatory science may not 

 possess these ideas distinctly ; or rather, cannot possess them distinctly ; and therefore cannot appre- 

 hend the impossibility of conceiving the opposite of tlie above principle ; just as the schoolboy cannot 

 apprehend the impossibility of the numbers in his multiplication table being other than they are. 

 But this inaptitude to conceive, in either case, does not alter the necessary character of the truth : 

 although, in one case, the truth is obvious to all except schoolboys and the like, and the other is pro- 

 bably not clear to any except those who have attentively studied the philosophy of elementary com- 

 positions. At the same time, this difference of apprehension of the truth in different persons does 

 not make the truth doubtful or dependent upon personal qualifications ; for in proportion as persons 

 attain to distinct ideas, they will see the truth ; and cannot, with such ideas, see anything as truth 

 which is not truth. When the relations of elements in a compound become as familiar to a person 

 as the relations of factors in a multiplication table, he will then see what are the necessary axioms 

 of chemistry, as he now sees the necessary axioms of arithmetic. 



30. There is also one other remark which I will here make. In the progress of science, both 

 the elements of our knowledge are constantly expanded and augmented. By the exercise of observa- 

 tion and experiment, we have a perpetual accumulation of facts, the materials of knowledge, the 

 objective element. By thought and discussion, we have a perpetual development of man's ideas 

 going on : theories are framed, the materials of knowledge are shaped into form ; the subjective 

 element is evolved ; and by the necessary coincidence of the objective and subjective elements, the 

 matter and the form, the theory and the facts, each of these processes furthers and corrects the 

 other : each element moulds and unfolds the other. Now it follows, from this constant develop- 

 ment of the ideal portion of our knowledge, that we shall constantly be brought in view of new 

 Necessary Principles, the expression of the conditions belonging to the Ideas which enter into our 

 expanding knowledge. These principles, at first dimly seen and hesitatingly asserted, at last be- 

 come clearly and plainly self-evident. Such is the case with the principles which are the basis of the 

 laws of motion. Such may soon be the case with the principles which are the basis of the philosophy 

 of chemistry. Such may hereafter be the case with the principles which are to be the basis of the 

 philosophy of the connected and related polarities of chemistry, electricity, galvanism, magnetism. 

 That knowledge is possible in these cases, we know ; that our knowledge may be reduced to prin- 

 ciples gradually more simple, we also know; that we have reached the last stage of simplicity of our 

 principles, few cultivators of the subject will be disposed to maintain ; and that the additional steps 

 which lead toward very simple and general principles will also lead to principles which recommend 

 themselves by a kind of axiomatic character, those who judge from the analogy of the past history 

 of science will hardly doubt. That the principles thus axiomatic in their form, do also express 

 some relation of our ideas, of which experiment and observation have given the true and real interpic- 

 tation, is the doctrine which I have here attempted to establish and illustrate in the most clear and 

 undoubted of the existing sciences ; and the evidence of this doctrine in those cases seems to be 

 unexceptionable, and to leave no room to doubt that such is the universal type of the progress of 

 science. Such a doctrine, as we have now .seen, is clo.sely connected with the views here presented of 

 the nature of the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy, which I have endeavoured to illustrate. 



W. WHEWELL. 



AA2 



