NATURAL SCIENCE TO GENERAL SCIENCE. 21 



of logical methods than the labours of philosophers properly so 

 called. One essential ground for such an assertion must un- 

 doubtedly be that in no department of knowledge can a fault 

 in the chain of reasoning be so easily detected by the incorrect- 

 ness of the results as in those sciences in which the results of 

 reasoning can be most directly compared with the facts of 

 nature. 



Though I have maintained that it is in the physical sciences, 

 and especially in such branches of them as are treated mathe- 

 matically, that the solution of scientific problems has been most 

 successfully achieved, you will not, I trust, imagine that I wish 

 to depreciate other studies in comparison with them. If the 

 natural and physical sciences have the advantage of great per- 

 fection in form, it is the privilege of the moral sciences to deal 

 with a richer material, with questions that touch more nearly 

 the interests and the feelings of men, with the human mind 

 itself, in fact, in its motives and the different branches of its 

 activity. They have, indeed, the loftier and the more difficult 

 task, but yet they cannot afford to lose sight of the example of 

 their rivals, which, in form at least, have, owing to the more 

 ductile nature of their materials, made greater progress. Not 

 only have they something to learn from them in point of method, 

 but they may also draw encouragement from the greatness of 

 their results. And I do think that our age has learnt many 

 lessons from the physical sciences. The absolute, unconditional 

 reverence for facts, and the fidelity with which they are col- 

 lected, a certain distrustfulness of appearances, the effort to 

 detect in all cases relations of cause and effect, and the tendency 

 to assume their existence, which distinguish our century from 

 preceding ones, seem to me to point to such an influence. 



I do not intend to go deeply into the question how fir 

 mathematical studies, as the representatives of conscious logical 

 reasoning, should take a more important place in school educa- 

 tion. But it is, in reality, one of the questions of the day. ID 

 proportion as the range of science extends, its system and or- 

 ganisation must be improved, and it must inevitably come about 

 that individual students will find themselves compelled to go 



