PEEFACE. V 



facts and ideas contained in that gentleman's "History of the Inductive 

 Sciences," the corresponding portion of this woi'k would probably not have 

 been written. 



The concluding Book is an attempt to contribute toward the solution of 

 a question which the decay of old opinions, and the agitation that disturbs 

 European society to its inmost depths, render as important in the present 

 day to the practical interests of human life, as it must at all times be to the 

 completeness of our speculative knowledge — viz. : Whether moral and so- 

 cial phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformi- 

 ty of the course of nature ; and how far the methods by which so many of 

 the laws of the physical world have been numbered among truths irrevo- 

 cably acquired and universally assented to, can be made instrumental to 

 the formation of a similar body of received doctrine in moral and political 

 science. 



