50 HISTORY OF INDUCTIVE SCIENCES. 



whirlpools. But the mind is capable of acquiring scientific Ideas, 

 which are better fitted to undergo discussion and impulsion. "When 

 our speculations are duly fed from the springheads of Observation, 

 and frequently drawn off into the region of Applied Science, we may 

 have a living stream of consistent and progressive knowledge. That 

 science may be both real as to its import, and logical as to its form, 

 the examples of many existing sciences sufficiently prove. 



School Philosophy. — So long, however, as attempts are made to 

 form sciences, without such a verification and realization of their 

 fundamental ideas, there is, in the natural series of speculation, no 

 self-correcting principle. A philosophy constructed on notions obscure, 

 vague, and unsubstantial, and held in spite of the want of correspond- 

 ence between its doctrines and the actual train of physical events, may 

 long subsist, and occupy men's minds. Such a philosophy must depend 

 for its permanence upon the pleasure which men feel in tracing the 

 operations of their own and other men's minds, and in reducing them 

 to logical consistency and systematical arrangement. 



In these cases the main subjects of attention are not external ob- 

 jects, but speculations previously delivered; the object is not to inter- 

 pret nature, but man's mind. The opinions of the Masters are the 

 facts which the Disciples endeavor to reduce to unity, or to follow into 

 consequences. A series of speculators who pursue such a course, may 

 properly be termed a School, and their philosophy a School Philos- 

 ophy ; whether their agreement in such a mode of seeking knowl- 

 edge arise from personal communication and tradition, or be merely 

 the result of a community of intellectual character and propensity. 

 The two great periods of School Philosophy (it will be recollected that 

 we are here directing our attention mainly to physical science) were 

 that of the Greeks and that of the Middle Ages ; — the period of the 

 first waking of science, and that of its midday slumber. 



What has been said thus briefly and imperfectly, would require great 

 detail and much explanation, to give it its full significance and author- 

 ity. But it seemed proper to state so much in this place, in order to 

 render more intelligible and more instructive, at the first aspect, the 

 view of the attempted or effected progress of science. 



It is, perhaps, a disadvantage inevitably attending an undertaking 

 like the present, that it must set out with statements so abstract ; and 

 must present them without their adequate development and proof. 

 Such an Introduction, both in its character and its scale of execution, 

 may be compared to the geographical sketch of a country, with which 



