206 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



one of which has tended enormously to broaden our 

 view of natural objects and events ; the other to narrow 

 it down and make it more definite, scientifically ac- 

 curate, and precise. The former has tended to sweep 

 away the older landmarks and divisions as inadequate 

 to afford us a correct view of nature; the latter has 

 tended to create new divisions and definitions, more in 

 harmony with the lines on which the abstract sciences 

 of physics and chemistry have been developed, and has 

 thus brought the actual objects and events of nature 

 more within the grasp of those exact and mathematical 

 e. methods which those sciences have perfected. The former 



The spirit of 



exploration, has been carried on in the vast workshop of nature her- 

 self by those daring and far-seeing travellers who, with 

 Alexander von Humboldt at their head, have attempted 

 to gain a view of nature on an extensive scale. For the 

 sake of the increase of natural knowledge alone, they 

 visited distant countries where the elemental forces of 

 nature, undisturbed by the inroads of civilisation, have 

 battled and co-operated to produce the magnificent floras 

 and faunas of the tropics, or where, as in Siberia, the 

 eternal cold has preserved intact the remains of bygone 

 periods. Equipped with the instruments and methods of 

 modern science, they recognised the necessity of studying 

 the actual formation and stratification of rocks, the geo- 

 graphical distribution of organic life on the surface of the 



genesis, the three great divisions 

 being the abstract, abstract - con- 

 crete, and concrete sciences. My 

 readers will readily see the 

 similarities and the differences 

 which exist between this classi- 

 fication and the more general dis- 



tinctions which I have adopted ; 

 and I remind them again that I 

 am not writing a history of Science 

 but of Thought, and that all 

 divisions of this great subject are, 

 more or less, arbitrary. 



