54 



INTRODUCTION. 



criticise the weighty considerations which have led them 

 to a view so modest and resigned, I propose in the 

 sequel to test within narrower limits, and by what 

 seems to me a novel method, the validity of the con- 

 viction that a true understanding of phenomena and 

 events can be attained only by viewing them in their 

 interdependence and collective effect. If anything in 

 the wide expanse of physical and mental life deserves 

 to be considered as one and indivisible, it is surely 

 human thought in its various branches and manifesta- 

 tions. The attempt to trace its origin in the early ages 

 of civilisation, or to foreshadow the end which it is 

 slowly approaching, may indeed be impossible; but of 

 the age to which we belong, and the literature of 

 which we have witnessed the growth, we may claim to 

 possess a deeper knowledge. Astronomers have suc- 

 ceeded in gaining a view of immense and distant orbits 

 by minutely observing and tracing merely an insignifi- 

 cant portion l which came within their view. Com- 

 parative anatomy teaches how from a few surviving 

 links to construct the whole framework of an organism. 

 I propose to apply a similar method to the small portion 



mood's may be termed the philo- 

 sophy of the Limits of the Know- 

 able. Both views form a contrast 

 to Lotze's philosophy. 



1 The most brilliant example of 

 this is the discovery of the planet 

 Ceres by Piazzi at Palermo in the 

 New Year's night of 1801 ; the in- 

 vention of special methods for cal- 

 culating the orbit of this planet, 

 which had been lost, by Gauss in the 

 course of 1801; and the rediscovery 

 of it by Olbers, aided by Gauss's 

 ephemeris, in the New Year's night 



of 1802. After the discovery of this 

 first of the small planets, but before 

 it was known in Germany, Hegel 

 published his ' Dissertatio philo- 

 sophica de orbitis planetarum,' in 

 which he ridiculed the search for 

 new planets, but which Duke Ern- 

 est of Gotha sent to the astrono- 

 mer Zach with the superscription, 

 " Monumentum insanise sseculi de- 

 cimi noni." See R. Wolf, Ge- 

 schichte der Astronomic, Miinchen, 

 1877, p. 684 sqq. 



