[From Nature, VoL xnr.] 



LXXX. nTietpflFs Writings and Correspondence. 



WE frequently hear the complaint that as the boundaries of science are 

 widened its cultivators become less of philosophers and more of specialists, each 

 confining himself with increasing exclusiveness to the area with which he is 

 familiar. This is probably an inevitable result of the development of science, 

 which has made it impossible for any one man to acquire a thorough knowledge 

 of the whole, while each of its sub-divisions is now large enough to afford 

 occupation for the useful work of a lifetime. The ablest cultivators of science 

 are agreed that the student, in order to make the most of his powers, should 

 ascertain in what field of science these powers are most available, and that he 

 should then confine his investigations to this field, making use of other parts 

 of science only in so far as they bear upon his special subject. 



Accordingly we find that Dr Whewell, in his article in the Encyclopedia 

 .\f'-tii>jnJit<tmt, on "Archimedes and Greek Mathematics," says of Eratosthenes, 

 who, like himself, was philologer, geometer, astronomer, poet, and antiquary : 

 "It is seldom that one person attempts to master so many subjects without 

 incurring the charge and perhaps the danger of being superficial." 



It is probably on account of the number and diversity of the kinds of 

 intellectual work in which Dr Whewell attained eminence that his name is most 

 widely known. Of his actual performances the "History" and the "Philosophy 

 nf the Inductive Sciences" are the most characteristic, and this because his 

 practical acquaintance with a certain part of his great subject enabled him the 

 better to deal with those parts which he had studied only in books, and to 

 describe their relations in a more intelligent manner than those authors who 

 devoted themselves entirely to the general aspect of human knowledge 

 without being actual workers in any particular department of it. 



