DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



CHAP. III. 



OF THE STATE OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN GENERAL, PRE- 

 VIOUS TO THE AGE OF GALILEO AND BACON. 



(96.) IT is to our immortal countryman Bacon 

 that we owe the broad announcement of this grand 

 and fertile principle ; and the developement of the 

 idea, that the whole of natural philosophy consists 

 entirely of a series of inductive generalizations, 

 commencing with the most circumstantially stated 

 particulars, and carried up to universal laws, or 

 Axioms, which comprehend in their statements 

 every subordinate degree of generality, and of a 

 corresponding series of inverted reasoning from 

 generals to particulars, by which these axioms are 

 traced back into their remotest consequences, and 

 all particular propositions deduced from them; as 

 well those by whose .immediate consideration we 

 rose to their discovery, as those of which we had 

 no previous knowledge. In the course of this 

 descent to particulars, we must of necessity en- 

 counter all those facts on which the arts and works 

 that tend to the accommodation of human life 

 depend, and acquire thereby the command of an 

 unlimited practice, and a disposal of the powers 

 of nature co-extensive with those powers them- 

 selves. A noble promise, indeed, and one which 

 ought, surely, to' animate us to the highest exertion 

 of our faculties ; especially since we have already 

 such convincing proof that it is neither vain nor 

 rash, but, on the contrary, has been, and continues 



