550 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



widening circles of phenomena and events. This has 

 been most decidedly the case with the sciences in which 

 the law or formula of gravitation has become the leading 

 principle. As we advanced on the other lines of 

 thought, marked by the conceptions of atomism, of 

 the various forms of motion and of energy, this sub- 

 jection to precise formulae became less perfect, more 

 complicated and hypothetical, whilst the study of the 

 typical forms of natural objects, and even more of 

 their genesis and developments, opened out a field 

 for much conjecture and fanciful reasoning, amid which 

 little more than the general outlines of a definite theory 

 could be established. Lastly, in applying these various 

 conceptions to the phenomena of the living and self- 

 conscious creation, we have struck upon the limiting 

 ideas of life and mind, of which, from a purely external 

 point of view, little more can be said than that they 

 indicate to us the existence among natural objects of a 

 unity of a different kind from that which we can under- 

 stand mechanically as the sum of many parts. In the 

 higher forms this unity revealed itself to us through the 

 analogy of our own inner life as a peculiar kind of 

 centralisation, discontinuous when viewed from outside, 

 but possessing, when viewed from another side, a con- 

 . tinuity, connectedness, and capacity of unlimited growth 

 of its own which is the special object of the psycho- 

 logical and historical sciences. These characteristics 

 belong to the great realm of philosophical as dis- 

 tinguished from exact scientific thought. 



Results of Before entering on this other great branch of our 

 science. subject, we may well pause for a moment and cast 



