THE ASTRONOMICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 307 



familiarise the unscientific public with the progress of 

 science and its canons of thought. And it would thus 

 appear natural to resort to their teaching and their ex- 

 planations. But this is not the road I propose to follow. 

 Whewell's ' History of the Inductive Sciences,' being the 

 first attempt to compass a large subject, will, like 

 Montucla's earlier ' History of Mathematics,' always re- 

 main a standard work. It was, however, written at a 

 time when the tendency of modern scientific thought was 



Philosophy was broken up into 

 different parts. Herschel stands 

 mainly on the ground of Bacon's 

 philosophy, whereas Whewell starts 

 with the remark that " Bacon only 

 divined how sciences might be con- 

 structed," but that " we can trace 

 in their history how their construc- 

 tion hastaken place" ; that "though 

 Bacon's general maxims still guide 

 and animate philosophical inquirers, 

 yet that his views, in their detail, 

 have all turned out inapplicable." 

 He accordingly aims at a "New 

 Organ of Bacon, renovated ac- 

 cording to our advanced intel- 

 lectual position and office " (Pre- 

 face to 2nd ed. of the ' Philosophy,' 

 1847). In the exposition of his 

 views Whewell was greatly influ- 

 enced by Kant's philosophy. He 

 thus searches for the fundamental 

 ideas which underlie all scientific 

 reasoning ; for ' ' besides facts, ideas 

 are an indispensable source of our 

 knowledge." The historical por- 

 tions of Whewell's works have met 

 with great appreciation in England 

 and Germany even from those who, 

 like Herschel (see the review in the 

 'Quarterly,' June 1841) and Mill 

 (see ' Autobiography,' p. 208), could 

 not agree with his philosophy. 

 The latter has been eclipsed by 

 the bolder speculations of Auguste 

 Comte, whose ' Philosophic positive' 

 appeared in six volumes between the 



years 1830 and 1842 in France. 

 Still more than Whewell did Comte 

 emphasise the necessity of learning 

 from the exact sciences how to 

 treat economical and social prob- 

 lems in a methodical manner. 

 Instead of the minute and fre- 

 quently hesitating elaborations of 

 Whewell, we find in Comte the 

 bold generalisation of the three 

 stages of knowledge the theologi- 

 cal, metaphysical, and positive, 

 which forms the groundwork of 

 " Positivism." Of more permanent 

 value than Whewell's and Comte's 

 philosophies are the investigations 

 of J. Stuart Mill, who in his ' Sys- 

 tem of Logic, Ratiocinative and In- 

 ductive' (1st ed., 1843), has laid 

 the foundation for all subsequent 

 treatises on this subject, and whose 

 thoroughgoing empiricism is being 

 more and more adopted by scien- 

 tific thinkers. Like Whewell and 

 Comte, to whom he acknowledges 

 his obligations (' Autobiog.,' pp. 165, 

 209, &c.), his ultimate object was 

 to solve the question "how far the 

 methods by which so many of the 

 laws of the physical world have 

 been numbered among truths irre- 

 vocably acquired and universally 

 assented to, can be made instru- 

 mental to the formation of a similar 

 body of received doctrine in moral 

 and political science " (Preface to 

 1st ed.) 



