Socrates and his Epoch. 65 



such as history has disclosed it, and finally arrives at general 

 views of the effects of social institutions, and the springs of 

 states. This is the general coin-se followed by Aristotle. It 

 was necessary that we should digress a httle from our subject 

 to make it known, and we now return to the examination of the 

 particular treatises on the natural sciences. 



Of those which we have enumerated, the first, which relates to 

 general pliysics, is the weakest of all, and such it ought to be- 

 In fact, in that science great progress cannot be made, if the 

 attention be confined to the facts which naturally present them- 

 selves. It is necessary to make new facts arise, in other words, 

 to experiment. Now, in the time of Aristotle, this could not 

 possibly be done, for the arts were not sufficiently advanced to 

 furnish the means. There were only some observations in un- 

 connected groups, and it was therefore impossible to rise to very 

 high generalities. Many principles laid, down by our philoso- 

 pher have been found false or imperfect, but then they were 

 truly the general expression of the phenomena then known. 

 He saw, for example, solid or fluid bodies fall towards the ground 

 when they ceased to be supported, gaseous bodies rise from the 

 bottom /towards the surface of water, and flame direct itself to- 

 ward the sky ; and he concluded that air and fire had a ten- 

 dency to ascend, earth and v/ater to descend. We now know 

 that these motions, although inverse, are the result of a single 

 power ; but we have arrived at this discovery after the insuffi- 

 ciency of the first explanations were rendered manifest by new 

 facts. The same remark applies to the so-much vituperated 

 principle of the horror of a vacnnm. Aristotle did not establish 

 it a priori, he only announced it as the general expi'ession of 

 the facts then known. If he had seen water stopping in pumps 

 at a height of 32 feet, and mercury rising to S8 inches in the 

 ToriceUian tube, perhaps, on comparing the specific weights, 

 the heights of the two cohnnns, he would have been led to dis- 

 cover the true cause of the phenomenon. We may remark, 

 that so long as experiment had not shewn the contrary, it was 

 just as rational to suppose that bodies had a disposition to carry 

 themselves wherever a vacuum tended to form, as to admit that 

 they attract each other, as is now believed. Tlie principle of 

 the Jiorror of a vacuuvi is found false ; but it has nothing ab>. 



APRIL — JUNE J830. E 



