72 De Vi Physica 



injures the cause of science so much as the 

 want of a philosophical basis in its own 

 champions : science loses credit and autho- 

 rity, when scientific men cannot even at- 

 tempt to discuss the principles of science 

 without betraying their want of training in 

 their own business. The mere accumula- 

 tion of facts without any critical insight into 

 principles and causes is just as likely to lead 

 men wrong as right. So it was with Darwin, 

 who seems to have had no philosophical 

 education of any kind : except what he 

 could pick up from the perusal of J. S. Mill. 

 All his familiarity with the facts of Nature 

 did not save him, accordingly, from falling 

 into a gigantic error as to the essence of 

 Nature herself: an error which is not the 

 less an error because most of his contem- 

 poraries shared it. 



Nature not in that sense of the word in 

 which it is synonymous with the Universe, 



