620 Db. whewell's second memoir, etc. 



scene by scene, learning as much as we can of the action and the characters, but knowing that we shall 

 not be allowed to see the denouraent, and that to do so is probably not the lot of our species on earth. 

 So far as any philosopher has thus followed the historical progress of the grand spectacle offered to 

 the eyes of speculative man, in which the Phenomena of Nature are the Scenes, and the Theory of 

 them the Plot, he has taken the course by which knowledge really has made its advances. But 

 those who have partially done this, have often, like Hegel, assumed that they had divined the 

 whole course and end of the story, and have thus criticized the scenes and the characters in a spirit 

 quite at variance with that by which any real insight into the import of the representation can be 

 obtained*. 



I will only offer one more illustration of the relative position of these successive philosophies. 

 Kant compares the change which he introduced into philosophy to the change which Copernicus 

 introduced into astronomical theory. When Copernicus found that nothing could be made of 

 the phenomena of the heavens so long as everything was made to turn about the spectator, he 

 tried whether the matter might not be better explained if he made the spectator turn, and 

 left the stars at rest. So Kant conceives that our experience is regulated by our own faculties, 

 as the phenomena of the heavens are regulated by our own motions. But accepting and 

 carrying out this illustration, we may say that Kant, in explaining the phenomena of the 

 heavens by means of the motions of the earth, has almost forgotten that the planets have 

 their own proper motions, and has given us a system which hardly explains anything besides 

 broadest appearances, such as the annual and daily motions of the sun ; and that Fichte 

 appears as if he wished to deduce all the motions of the planets, as well as of the sun, 

 from the conditions of the spectator ; — while Schelling goes to the origin of the system like 

 Descartes, and is not content to shew how the bodies move, without also proving, that from 

 some assumed original condition, also the movements and relations of the system must neces- 

 sarily be what they are. It may be that a theory which explains how the planets with 

 their orbits and accompaniments have come into being may offer itself to bold speculators, 

 like those who have framed and produced the nebular hypothesis. But I need not here re- 

 mind my hearers either how precarious such a hypothesis is, or that if it be capable of being 

 considered probable, its proofs must gradually dawn upon us, step by step, age after age : 

 and that a system of doctrine which requires such a scheme as a certain and fundamental 

 truth, and deduces the whole of astronomy from it, must needs be arbitrary, and liable 

 to the gravest error at every step. Such a precarious and premature philosophy, at best, is 

 that of Schelling and Hegel ; especially as applied to those sciences in which, by the past pro- 

 gress of all sure knowledge, we are taught what the real cause and progress of knowledge 

 is : while at the same time we may allow that all these forms of philosophy, since they do 

 recoTni/e the condition and motion of the spectator, as a necessary element in the explanation 

 of the phenomena, are a large advance upon the Ptolemaic scheme, the view of those who 

 appeal to phenomena as the source of our knowledge, and say that the sun, the moon, and 

 the planets move as we see them move, and that all further theory is imaginary and fan- 

 tastical. 



W. WHEWELL. 



• If it be asked which posilion we can assign, in this dramatic I say that they loolt on with a belief that the drama has no plot, and 

 illustration, to those who hold that all our knowledge is derived that these scenes arc improvised without connexion or purpose, 

 from facts only, and who reject the supposition of ideas ; we may | 



