THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND. 281 



eral thought and literature will depend on the cultivation 

 of a perfect form, of an expressive and elegant style. The 

 French alone in the beginning of the century could boast 

 of the last ; the Germans have most successfully developed 

 the second ; whilst England, the country of greatest indi- 

 vidual freedom, has been the land most favourable to the 

 growth of genius as well as eccentricity, and has thus pro- 

 duced a disproportionate number of new ideas and depar- 

 tures. Nor is it to be desired that the reliance of genius 

 on itself should be in any way curtailed, as it is impos- 

 sible to foretell whence the new light will come which is 

 to illuminate future ages. This individualism of the 

 English mind presents other accompanying features, and 

 these are of great interest to the historian of thought. 

 They manifest themselves in the province of science as 

 much as in other provinces. We will now study them 

 more closely; in the sequel we shall meet with them in 

 other departments also. 



Hitherto our observations on English science have nearly 

 all referred to only one side of modern scientific work, 

 the side on which lie the experimental, measuring, and cal- 

 culating sciences ; those sciences which abroad are termed 

 " exact " ; in which mathemathical notions and methods, 

 be it of measurement or of calculation, obtain. But these 

 sciences cover only one side of reality. We noticed how in 

 France, during the great scientific epoch, the other side of 

 nature, that which exhibited and was filled by the pheno- 

 mena of life, was simultaneously explored with equal 

 originality and equal success. As Laplace was the great 

 representative of the one, so Cuvier was the great rep- 

 resentative of the other. We have also seen how in 



