1845.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL 



203 



argument.t and declare it a vicious circle ? I really should consider some 

 apology needed for eveu mentioning an argument of the kind to such a 

 meeting, were it not that this very reasoning, so ostentatiously put forward, 

 and 80 utterly haseless, has heeii eagerly received among usj as the revela- 

 tion of a profound analysis. When such is the case, it is surely time to 

 throw in a word of warning, and to reiterate our recommendation of an 

 early initiation into mathematics, and the cherishing a mathematical hahit of 

 thought, as the safeguard of all philosophy. 



Improvement of Lenses by Repeal of Duly on Glass. 

 A ver)' great ohstacle to the improvement of telescopes in this country has 

 been happily removed within the past year by the repeal of the duly on 

 glass. Hitherto, owing to the enormous expense of cxjierimcnts to private 

 individuals not manufacturers — and to the heavy excise duties imposed on 

 the manufacture, which has operated to repress all attempts on the part of 

 practical men to produce glass adapted to the construction of large achruma- 

 tics, our opticians have hcen compelled to resort ahruad for their materials — 

 purchasing them at enormous prices, aud never heing ahle to procure the 

 largest sizes. The skill, enterprise and capital of the British manufacturer 

 have now free scope, and it is our own fault if we do not speedily rival, and 

 perhaps outdo the far-famed works of Munich and Paris. Indeed, it is 

 hardly possible to over-estimate the efl'ect of this fiscal change on a variety 

 of other sciences to which the costliness of glass apparatus has been hitherto 

 an exceeding drawback, not only from the actual expense of apparatus al- 

 ready in common use, hut as repressing the invention and construction of 

 new applications of this useful material. 



Increased attention to the Logic of Philosophy. 

 A great deal of attention has been lately, and I think very wisely drawn 

 to the philosophy of science and to the principles of logic, as founded, not 

 on arbitrary and pedantic forms, but on a careful inductive inquiry into the 

 grounds of human belief, and the nature and extent of man's intellectual 

 faculties. If we are ever to hope that science will extend its range into the 

 domain of social conduct, and model the course of human actions on that 

 thoughtful and effective adaption of means to their end, which is its funda- 

 mental principle in all its applications (the means being here the total devo- 

 tion of our moral and intellectual powers — the enil, our own happiness and 

 that of all around us) — if such be the far hopes and long protracted aspira- 

 tions of science, its philosophy and its logic assume a paramount importance, 

 in proportion to the practical danger of erroneous conceptions in the one, 

 and fallacious tests of the validity of reasoning in the other. 



On both these subjects works of first-rate importance have of late illus- 

 trated the scientific literature of this country. On the philosophy of science, 

 we have witnessed the production, by the pen of a most distinguished member 

 of this University, of a work so comprehensive in its views, so vivid in its 

 illustrations, and so right-minded in its leading directions, that it seems to 

 be impossible for any man of science,'be his particular department of inquiry 

 what it may, to rise from its perusal without feeling himself strengthened 

 and invigorated for his own especial pursuit, and placed in a more favourable 

 position for discovery in it than before, as well as more competent to estimate 

 the true philosophical value and import of any new views which may open to 

 him in its prosecution. From the peculiar and a priori point of view in 

 which the distinguished author of the work in question has thought proper 

 to place himself before his subject, many may dissent ; and I own myself to 

 be of the number ; — but from this point of view it is perfectly possible to de- 

 part without losing sight of the massive reality of that subject itself : on the 

 contrary, that reality will be all the better seen and understood, and its mag- 

 nitude felt when viewed from opposite sides, and under the influence of every 

 accident of light and shadow which peculiar habits of thought may throw 

 over it. 



Philosophy in Germany. 



According, in the other work to which I have made allusion, and which, 



under the title of a ' System of Logic,' has for its object to give " a connected 



view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientifc investigation ' — its 



acute, and in many respects profound author — taking up an almost diametri- 



• M. Comte (' Phllogophie Positive,' li. 37t), &c.), the author of the reasoniug al- 

 luded to. assures U3 that his calculations lead to results aRreeing only approximately 

 with the exact periods, a difference to the amount of 1*45, tlie part more or less ex- 

 isting in all. As he gives neither the steps nor the data of his calculations, it is im- 

 possible to trace the origin of this difference, — which, however, 'must' arise from error 

 ' somewhere,' if hia fundamental principle be really what he states. For the Huyghenian 



measure of centrifugal force (F x ^) "combined" with " the law of gravitation" 



(F X r '\ replacing V by Its equivalent, - can result in no other relation between P 



law, aud is i 



npatible with the smallest 



and R than what is expressed in the Kelpie 

 deviation from it. 



Whether the sun threw off the plenets or not. Kepler's law 'must" be obeyed by them 

 when once fairly detached. How, then, can their actual observance of this law be ad- 

 duced in proof of iheiroiigin, one way or the other ? How is It proved that the sun must 

 have thrown off planets ■ at those distances, and at no others," where we tincl them,— no 

 matter In what times revolving ? ■ That.' indeed, would be a powerful presumptive argu. 

 ment: but geometer will venture on such a ' tour d'analyse?' And, la.stly, how can it be 

 addu ed 03 ' a numerical coincidence of an hypnihe^is with observed fact' to say that, at 

 an unknown epoch, the sun's rotation ('not observed') ' must have been' so and so, • if 

 the hypothesis were a tnie one? 



t Mill. lAijie, ii. :!3.— Also, ' Vestiges of the Creation,' p. 17. 



cally opposite station, and looking to experience as the ultimate foundation 

 of all knowledge— at least, of all scientific knowledge— in its simplest axioms 

 as well as in Us most remote results— has presented us with a view of the in- 

 ductive philosophy, very different indeed in its general aspect— but in which, 

 when carefully examinetl, most essential features may be recognized as iden- 

 tical, while some arc brought out with a salience and eflcct which could not 

 be attained from the contrary point of sight. It cannot be expected that I 

 should enter into any analysis or comparison of these remarkable works — but 

 it scLmed to me impossible to avoid pointedly mentioning them on this occa- 

 sion, because they certainly, taken together, leave the philosophy of science, 

 and indeed the principles of all general reasoning, in a very diflcrent state from 

 that in which they found them. Their Influence, indeed, and that of some 

 other works of prior date, in which the same general subjects have been more 

 lif^htly toui hed upon, has already begun to be felt and responded to from a 

 quarter where, perhaps, any sympathy in this respect might hardly have 

 been looked for. The philosophical mind of Germany has begun, at length, 

 ellectually to awaken from the dreamy trance in which it had been held for 

 the last half century, and in which the jargon of the Absolutists and Ontolo- 

 gists had been received as oracular. An " anii-speculative philosophy'' has 

 arisen and found supporters— rejected, indeed, by the Ontologists, but yearly 

 gaining ground in the general mind. It is something so new for an Knglish 

 and a German philosopher to agree in their estimate cither of the proper ob- 

 jects of speculation or of the proper mode of pursuing them, that we greet, 

 nut without some degree of astonishmeni, the appearance of works like the 

 Logic and the New Psychology of Beiieke, in which this false and delusive 

 philosophy is entirely thrown aside, and appeal at once to the nature of 

 things as we find them, and to the laws of our intellectual and moral nature 

 as our own consciousness and the history of mankind reveals them to us.* 



Meanwhile, the fact is every year becoming more broadly manifest, by the 

 successful application of scientific principles to subjects which had hitherto 

 been only empiricially treated (of which agriculture. may be taken as perhaps 

 the most conspicuous insl.ance), that the great work of Bacon was not the 

 completion, but, as himself foresaw and foretold, only the commencement of 

 his own philosophy ; and that we are even yet only at the threshold of that 

 palace ot Truth which succeeding generatioi^s will range over as their own — 

 a world of scientific inquiry, in which not matter only and its properties, but 

 the far more rich and complex relations of life and thought, of passion and 

 motive, interest and actions, will come to be regarded as its legitimate objects 

 Nor let us tear that in so regarding them we run the smallest danger of col- 

 lision with any of those great principles which we regard, and rightly regard, 

 as sacred from question. A faithful and undoubting spirit carried into the 

 inquiry, will secure us from such dangers, and guide U3, like an instinct, in 

 our paths through that vast and enlarged region which intervenes between 

 those uliimate principles and their extreme practical applications. It is only 

 by working our way upwards towards those principles as well as downwards 

 from them, that we can ever hope to penetrate such intricacies, and thread 

 their maze ; and it would be worse than folly— it would be treason against all 

 our highest feelings — -to doubt that to those who spread themselves over 

 these opposite lines, each moving in liis own direction, a thousand points of 

 meeting and mutual and joyful recognition will occur. 



But if Science be really destined to expand its scope, and embrace objects' 

 bey. nd the range of merely material relation, it must not altogether and ob- 

 stinately refuse, even within the limits of such relations, to admit concep- 

 tions which at first sight may seem to trench upon the immaterial, such as 

 we have been accustomed to regard it. The time seems to be approaching 

 when a merely mechanical view of nature will become impossible — when ihe 

 notion of accounting for all the phenomena of nature, and even of mere phy- 

 sics, by simple attractions and repulsions fixedly and unchangeably inherent 

 in material centres (granting any conceivable system of Boscovichian alter- 

 nations), will be deemed untenable. Already we have introduced the idea of 

 hcnt-atmoipheres about particles to vary their repulsive forces according to de- 

 finite laws. But surely this can only be regarded as one of those provisional 

 and temporary concep ions which, though it may be useful as helping us to 

 laws, and as suf.'gesting experiments, we must be prepared to resign if ever 

 such ideas, for instance, as radiant stimulus or conducted influence should 

 lose their present vagueness, and come to receive some distinct scientific in- 

 terpretation. It is one thing, however, to suggest that our present language 

 and conceptions should be held as provisional — another to reciimmend a ge- 

 neral unsettling of all received ideas. Whatever innovation of this kind may 

 arise, they can only be introduced slowly, and on a full sense of their neces- 

 sity ; for the limited facidties of our nature will bear hut hllle of this sort at 

 a lime without a kind of intoxication, «liich precludes all rectilinear progress 

 — or, rather, all progress whatever, except in a direction which terminates in 

 the wildest vagaries of mysticism and clairvoyance. 



Necessity of establishing the Metaphysics in Science. 

 But, without going into any subtleties, I may be allowed to suggest that it 



* vide Beneke, Nene Paycholngle, 8. :{00 et seq, for an admirable view of the state o^ 

 metaphysical aud logical philosophy in Englauu. 



