500 BACON AND WHEWELL. 



years. Like the house in the parable that was 

 built upon the sand^ they have been defective at 

 the very foundation, which, not being able to 

 uphold the superstructure, they have gradually 

 crumbled away, to be replaced by others des- 

 tined to share the same fate. 



The observation of Bacon is no less applicable 

 now than it was two hundred years ago. " Me- 

 dicine is a science which hath been more pro^ 

 fessed than laboured, and yet more laboured than 

 advanced ; the latter having been, in my judg- 

 ment, rather in circle than in progression ; for 1 

 find much iteration, but small addition." Mr. 

 Whewell affirms in the last chapter of his Bridge- 

 water Treatise, that " we have yet to begin to 

 learn all that we are to know concerning the 

 ultimate laws of organized bodies." And he 

 observes in his late History of the Inductive 

 Sciences, that " many anatomical truths have 

 been discovered, but no genuine physiological 

 principle ; that the notion of life, and of vital 

 forces, is still too obscure to be steadily held ; 

 and that we cannot connect it distinctly with 

 severe inductions from facts, that we can trace 

 the motions of fluids, as Kepler traced the mo- 

 tions of planets; but when we seek to render a 

 reason for these motions, like him we recur to 

 terms of wide and profound, but mysterious 

 import to virtues, influences, and undefined 

 powers." (Vol. iii. pp. 404, and 431.) 



