VI PREFACE. 



voured to do full justice in the body of the work. 

 But as with one of these writers, Mr. Whewell, he 

 has occasion frequently to express differences of 

 opinion, it is more particularly incumbent on him in 

 this place to declare, that without the aid derived 

 from the facts and ideas contained in that gentleman's 

 History of the Inductive Sciences, the corresponding 

 portion of this work would probably not have been 

 written. 



The concluding Book is an attempt to contribute 

 towards the solution of a question, which the decay of 

 old opinions, and the agitation that disturbs Euro- 

 pean 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 

 social phenomena are really exceptions to the general 

 certainty and uniformity 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 irrevocably acquired and universally assented 

 to, can be made instrumental to the gradual formation 

 of a similar body of received doctrine in moral and 

 political science. 



While the views promulgated in these volumes 

 still await the verdict of competent judges, it would 

 have been useless to attempt to make the exposition 

 of them so elementary, as to be suited to readers 

 wholly unacquainted with the subject. It can scarcely 

 be hoped that the Second Book will be throughout 

 intelligible to any one who has not gone carefully 



