82 INTRODUCTION. 



all be a delusion, this kind of radicalism I shall try to 

 pass over as meaningless. And equally meaningless 

 appear to me those opposite conservative tendencies 

 which merely annul progress, which shut out the day- 

 light, and preach the doctrine of inertia. But this, again, 

 will not prevent me from recognising the real gain and 

 38. interest which belong to some reactionary movements. 



Reactionary 



movement such as lay at the bottom of Eomanticism, with its love 



of Romanti- 

 cism. O f the past, its artistic idealisation of the childhood of 



mankind, of aspects of life in their infancy and primitive- 

 ness, with its study of medievalism and its more sober 

 historical tastes. I shall endeavour always to ask what 

 addition to the great stock of human ideas has resulted ; 

 what gain we have to register ; convinced that every- 

 thing that lives must grow, increase, and multiply : and 

 what can be more living than Thought ? 



But although the school of Critical Thought in Kant, 

 and the Eomantic school as centred in Walter Scott and 

 the German Romanticists, are in time almost the first 

 intellectual phases of the century, they will not in the 

 beginning command my special attention. 1 



1 In order to give some idea of the complexity of the different currents 

 of thought in the first years of the century, I place here a carefully 

 selected list of dates. They refer to events or publications which mark 

 epochs or important stages in the history of thought. Of specifically 

 scientific importance are 



1796. Laplace's 'Exposition du Systeme du Monde.' 



1799. (2 vols.) 1825. Laplace's ' Mecanique celeste.' 



1799. Legendre's 'The'orie des Nombres.' 



1801. Gauss's ' Disquisitiones Arithmetical.' 



1801. Piazzi discovers and 



1802 Olbers rediscovers the first of the minor planets, "Ceres," being 

 assisted by Gauss's new methods of calculation, which were 

 published in extenso in 



1809. Gauss's 'Theoria motus corporum ccelestium.' 



1798. Cuvier's 'Tableau elemen taire d'Histoire uaturelle.' 



1800-5. Cuvier's ' Lecons d' Anatomic comparee.' 



