400 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



chemical methods of analysis and synthesis follow the 

 former way, and they generally arrive at satisfactory 

 explanations of isolated parts of the actually existing 

 phenomena, or of special and simple cases. Notably, 

 they create the artificial world of manufactured things, 

 such as instruments, machines, chemical and mechanical 

 compounds. They may at times make it appear as if 

 this process of putting together, continued indefinitely, 

 would ultimately reach the real things which we behold 

 in inorganic, organised, and even in animated nature. 

 At all events no other way, it might seem, is open to 

 science, and the only thing that delays our progress 

 is the bewildering intricacy and complexity of things 

 natural. At the beginning of our century, when, 

 through Laplace and his school, many seemingly com- 

 plicated phenomena of nature, notably those of physical 

 astronomy, yielded to the processes of analysis just de- 

 scribed, there seemed for the moment a possibility of 

 building up a complete philosophy of nature on such 

 a groundwork. Laplace himself indulged in a fre- 

 quently quoted prophetic vision of this kind. When, in 

 the middle of the century, some molecular phenomena, 

 notably those of light, had likewise yielded to the 

 calculus, and when correcter views as to the nature of 

 forces had further brought another and different world of 

 phenomena into a calculable form, it seemed likely that 

 even the mysterious processes of living organisms might 

 be subjected to similar reasoning. It seemed time to 

 abandon the familiar conception of a special vital force, 

 and to hand over physiological problems likewise to the 

 physicist, the chemist, and the microscopist. A regular 



