INTRODUCTION. 3 1 



inquirer is losing daily more and more those elevated 

 views, those points of condensation, those unifying and 

 idealising aspects on which, as it seems to us, the com- 

 mand and grasp of knowledge depends. This is indeed 

 almost inevitable so far as the older ideas are con- 

 cerned. Unity of knowledge, order and harmony, even 

 completeness and symmetry, truth and beauty, are indeed 

 no longer of direct use as canons for the scientific inquirer, 

 any more than the mysteries once supposed to be inherent 

 in certain numbers. Though we still live under the 

 charm of such entities, however much we may try to get rid 

 of them, it must nevertheless be admitted that the poetical, 

 philosophical, and religious aspects of things seem to recede s. 

 into an increasing distance from the scientific ; they do not distance 



between 



guide scientific search ; it does not receive from them much ^j^ and 

 support. Have both sides been losers by this change ? 

 So far as science is concerned, it can claim to have attained 

 by it not only a greater formal completeness and certainty 

 of progress, but also another very important advantage 

 which was unknown to ancient and mediaeval research. 



This advantage consists in the closer connection be- 9. 

 tween science and practical life. The same mathematical nec'tion n 



between 



spirit which governs scientific methods rules also in trade, ^ ence and 

 commerce, and industry, and is gradually penetrating into 

 the professions, such as medicine, law, and administration. 

 For all these pursuits have either directly to do with 

 numbers, measures, and weights, with distances of space 

 and time, or they have found it necessary to introduce, 

 an elaborate system of statistics and averages through 

 which the irregularity and captiousness of subjective 

 and individual influences are practically eliminated. The 



