346 INDUCTION. 



needed only to generalize, and adapt to all varieties 

 of problems, the methods which they themselves 

 employed in their habitual pursuits never until very 

 lately made any serious attempt to philosophize on 

 the subject, nor regarded the mode in which they 

 arrived at their conclusions as deserving of study, 

 independently of the conclusions themselves. 



Although, for these reasons, there is not yet 

 extant a body of Inductive Logic, scientifically con- 

 structed ; the materials for its construction exist, 

 widely scattered, but abundant: and the selection and 

 arrangement of those materials is a task with which 

 intellects of the highest order, possessed of the 

 necessary acquirements, have at length consented to 

 occupy themselves. Within a few years three writers, 

 profoundly versed in every branch of physical science, 

 and not unaccustomed to carry their speculations into 

 still higher regions of knowledge, have made attempts, 

 of unequal but all of very great merit, towards the 

 creation of a Philosophy of Induction : Sir John 

 Herschel, in his Discourse on the Study of Natural 

 Philosophy; Mr. Whewell, in his History and Philo- 

 sophy of the Inductive Sciences ; and, greatest of all, 

 M. Auguste Comte, in his Cours de Philosophic 

 Positive) a work which only requires to be better 

 known, to place its author in the very highest class 

 of European thinkers. That the present writer does 

 not consider any of these philosophers, or even all of 

 them together, to have entirely accomplished this 

 important work, is implied in his attempting to contri- 

 bute something farther towards its achievement; but 

 with his comparatively imperfect knowledge of the 

 various physical sciences, the attempt would have 

 been desperate unless the materials had been brought 

 together, and had undergone a partial elaboration, by 



