i VERBAL PROPOSITIONS 55 



value Mr. Spencer often resorts, and 

 does so conspicuously in this paper, to 

 the scholastic plan of laying down purely 

 verbal propositions and then arguing 

 deductively from them as if they repre- 

 sented axiomatic truth. By the school- 

 men this method was often legitimately 

 applied to subjects which in their own 

 nature admitted of its use, because those 

 subjects were not physical but purely 

 moral or religious, and in which conse- 

 quently much depended on the clear 

 expression of admitted principles of 

 abstract truth. I will not venture to say 

 that such verbal propositions embody- 

 ing abstract ideas can have absolutely 

 no place in physical science. We know 

 as a matter of fact that they have led 

 some great men to the first conception 

 of a good many physical truths ; and it 

 is a curious fact that Dr. Joule, who in 

 our own day has been the first to establish 



