20 HISTORY OF INDUCTIVE SCIENCES. 



What has been said thus briefly and imperfectly, 

 would require great detail and much explanation, 

 to give it its full significance and authority. But it 

 seemed proper to state so much in this place, in 

 order to render more intelligible and more instruc- 

 tive at the first aspect, the view of the attempted 

 or effected progress of science. 



It is, perhaps, a disadvantage inevitably attend- 

 ing an undertaking like the present, that it must set 

 out with statements so abstract; and must present 

 them without their adequate developement and proof. 

 Such an Introduction, both in its character and its 

 scale of execution, may be compared to the geogra- 

 phical sketch of a country, with which the historian 

 of its fortunes often begins his narration. So much 

 of Metaphysics is as necessary to us as such a por- 

 tion of Geography is to the Historian of an Empire ; 

 and what has hitherto been said, is intended as a 

 slight outline of the Geography of that Intellectual 

 World, of which we have here to study the History. 



To that History we now proceed. 



