18 



INTRODUCTION. 



32. 



Continental 

 mathemati- 

 cal methods 

 introduced 

 into Eng- 

 land by 

 Babbage, 

 Herschel, 

 and Pea- 

 cock. 



33. 



Liebig's 

 Laboratory. 



34. 



Comte's 

 philosophy 

 shown to his 

 own country 

 by an Eng- 

 lishman. 



since Bacon and Newton had followed their own inde- 

 pendent line of research, had to discover in the second 

 decade of the century that Newton's great name was not 

 a guarantee for the efficiency of his methods, which had 

 been greatly developed and improved in the hands of 

 Continental mathematicians. These improved methods 

 were imported into England by three Cambridge grad- 

 uates, Herschel, Babbage, and Peacock, who translated 

 Lacroix's Treatise, and by doing so gave a great impetus 

 to mathematical research in this country. Fifteen years 

 later, students from all parts of the world flocked to the 

 small University town of Giessen in Germany, thence to 

 take home with them a knowledge of the new science and 

 methods of Chemistry, taught in the laboratory of Liebig 

 methods previously used only in the private and inacces- 

 sible laboratories of learned investigators. 1 It will be in 

 the memory of many how the philosophy of Auguste 

 Comte, published between the years 1830 and 1840, 

 remained without much influence in his own country, 

 whereas, mainly through the writings of J. S. Mill and 



of the eighteenth century the 

 metropolis of the exact sciences. 

 Lalande, in writing to von Zach on 

 January 26, 1798, remarks : ' The 

 love of mathematics is daily on 

 the increase, not only with us but 

 in the army. The result of this 

 was unmistakably apparent in our 

 last campaigns. Bonaparte himself 

 has a mathematical head, and though 

 all who study this science may not 

 become geometricians like Laplace 

 and Lagrange, or heroes like Bona- 

 parte, there is yet left an influence 

 upon the mind which enables them 

 to accomplish more than they could 

 possibly have achieved without this 

 training. Our mathematical schools 



are good, and successfully accom- 

 plish their main object in the 

 diffusion of mathematical know- 

 ledge.'" Compare also vol. i. p. 

 342, referring to 1804. Also vol. ii. 

 p. 92, referring to the period 1820 

 to 1830. " Humboldt continued 

 to regard Paris as the true metro- 

 polis of Science " (p. 70), and many 

 other passages. See also Steffens, 

 " Was ich erlebte," vol. x. p. 233, 

 and what Goethe said to Eckermann 

 on the contrast of Germany and 

 Paris in the year 1827. 



1 See A. W. Hoffmann, 'The 

 Life - Work of Liebig,' Faraday 

 Lecture for 1875, p. 8. 



