PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



AT the present day, any endeavour to improve and 

 extend the Philosophy of Science may hope to excite 

 some interest. All persons of cultivated minds will 

 agree, that a very important advantage would be 

 gained, if any light could be thrown upon the modes 

 of discovering truth, the powers that we possess for 

 this end, and the points to which these may most 

 profitably be applied. Most men, too, will allow, that 

 in these respects much remains to be done. The 

 attempts of this kind, made from time to time, 

 are far from rendering future efforts superfluous. 

 For example, the Great Reform of Philosophy and 

 Method, in which Bacon so eloquently called upon 

 men to unite their exertions in his day, has, even in 

 ours, been very imperfectly carried into effect. And, 

 even if his plan had been fully executed, it would 

 now require to be pursued and extended. If Bacon 

 had weighed well all that Science had achieved in 

 his time, and had laid down a complete scheme of 

 rules for scientific research, so far as they could be 

 collected from the lights of that age, it would still 

 be incumbent upon the philosophical world to aug- 

 ment as well as preserve the inheritance which he 

 left ; by combining with his doctrines such new views 

 as the advances of later times cannot fail to produce 

 or suggest ; and by endeavouring to provide, for 

 every kind of truth, methods of research as effective 

 VOL. I. b 



