96 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



that it appeared in the same year as John Stuart 

 Mill's ' Logic.' It may therefore be permitted to bring 

 it into a line with that reaction to which I referred at 

 the end of the last chapter, the probably unconscious 

 reaction against what we may now term the mechanical 

 view of nature, the attempt to limit the study of nature 

 to the recognition of certain recurring uniformities, such 

 uniformities being primarily conceived as comprised in 

 the formula of cause and effect, but latterly more and 

 more reduced to a mere repetition of successions in 

 time. The earlier upholders of the scientific study of 

 nature, when they desired to do more than accumu- 

 late and arrange facts and observations, laid stress, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, on that side of the concep- 

 tion of cause which in their minds was not purely 

 mechanical. 1 This implied that the effect was not 

 purely mechanical either, but shared in the ideal or 

 spiritual nature of the cause from which it ultimately 

 sprang : it exhibited a definite end or a purpose. These 



1 This remark is only fully cor- ] such beginnings must always be a 



rect if we look at the mathematical j matter of hypothesis or invention, 



or exact sciences, and does not They are hypothetical in all the 



apply to the organic or biological j sciences which deal with a variety 



sciences. The latter utilised for ! of molar and molecular, and still 



the purposes of classification and more in those that deal with 



arrangement the conception of plan organic, phenomena ; and they are 



or archetype. To have destroyed a matter of invention or choice in 



this latter idea, replacing it by a j dealing with purely mathematical 



conception of change or evolution j configurations. This has been more 



mechanically proceeding, and by j and more recognised in the course 



doing so to have converted some ' of the nineteenth century, and 



of the natural sciences into exact ; has resulted in a comparatively 



sciences, is one of the great recent science, the mathematics 



achievements of the Darwinian j of arrangement as distinguished 



revolution of Thought. It should, | from the mathematics of quantity, 



however, not be overlooked that This I tried to show in the last 



purely deductive reasoning from | chapter of the first section of this 



definite beginnings is not possible ; ' History. 



