560 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



In fact, the eight chapters of this work which have 

 dealt with the various abstract views from which natural 

 phenomena have been considered in recent times, form 

 an elaborate refutation of the so-called Baconian, of the 

 enumerative or " all case," method. It was the light of 

 the idea which brought life and order into the " rudis 

 indigestaque moles " of badly collected facts, and in 

 many cases even led for the first time to their useful 

 and intelligent enumeration. But now we come to a 

 further important question. Allowing that in certain 

 large but nevertheless secluded spheres of science a few 

 general ideas have been found to apply and work 

 wonders of calculation, prediction, and useful applica- 

 tion, how about those complicated phenomena which 

 form our natural and social environment, and where so 

 far no scientific formula has proved powerful or com- 

 prehensive enough ? Are all these elaborate enumer- 

 ations and graphical representations in meteorology, in 

 sociology, commerce, industry, and finance, to which we 

 have instinctively and increasingly had recourse during 

 the whole of the century, of no value ? Is no useful 



smallest of fractions of actual Stanley Jevons ( ' Principles of 



transactions is set down so that Science,' Preface, p. vii), says : 



investigation can use it. Litera- " Within the last century a reaction 



ture has been called the ' fragment has been setting in against the 



of fragments,' and in the same way purely empirical procedure of 



statistics are the ' scrap of scraps. ' Francis Bacon, and physicists have 

 In real life scarcely any one knows ; learnt to advocate the use of 



more than a small part of what his hypotheses. I take the extreme 



neighbour is doing, and he scarcely 



of what he does himself. A corn- 



view of holding that Francis 



makes public any of that little, or Bacon, although he correctly in- 



sisted upon constant reference to 



plete record of commercial facts, experience, had no correct notions 



or even of one kind of such facts, as to the logical method by which, 



is the completest of dreams. You from particular facts, we educe 



might as well hope for an entire laws of nature." 

 record of human conversation." 



