406 CONSTITUTION OF THE INTELLECT. [CHAP. XXJI. 



nitude, &c., these things, as actually conceived, will, in the view 

 of such persons, be the proper objects of science. But if, as 

 seems to me the more just opinion, an incurable imperfection 

 attaches to all our attempts to realize with precision these ele- 

 ments, then we can only affirm, that the more external objects 

 do approach in reality, or the conceptions of fancy by abstraction, 

 to certain limiting states, never, it may be, actually attained, the 

 more do the general propositions of science concerning those 

 things or conceptions approach to absolute truth, the actual devi- 

 ation therefrom tending to disappear. To some extent, the same 

 observations are applicable also to the physical sciences. What 

 have been termed the " fundamental ideas" of those sciences as 

 force, polarity, crystallization, &c.,* are neither, as I conceive, 

 intellectual products independent of experience, nor mere copies 

 of external things ; but while, on the one hand, they have a ne- 

 cessary antecedent in experience, on the other hand they require 

 for their formation the exercise of the power of abstraction, in 

 obedience to some general faculty or disposition of our nature, 

 which ever prompts us to the research, and qualifies us for the 

 appreciation, of order. t Thus we study approximately the effects 

 of gravitation on the motions of the heavenly bodies, by a re- 

 ference to the limiting supposition, that the planets are perfect 



* Whe well's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, pp. 71, 77, 213. 



f- Of the idea of order it has been profoundly said, that it carries within itself 

 its own justification or its own control, the very trustworthiness of our faculties 

 being judged by the conformity of their results to an order which satisfies the 

 reason. *' L'idee de 1'ordre a cela de singulier et d'eminent, qu'elle porte en elle 

 meme sa justification ou son controle. Pour trouver si nos autres facultes nous 

 trompent ou nous ne trompent pas, nous examinons si les notions qu'elles nous 

 donnent s'enchainent on ne s'enchainent pas suivant un ordre qui satisfasse la 

 raison." Cournot, Essai sur les fondements de nos Connaissances. Admitting this 

 principle as the guide of those powers of abstraction which we undoubtedly pos- 

 sess, it seems unphilosophical to assume that the fundamental ideas of the 

 sciences are not derivable from experience. Doubtless the capacities which 

 have been given to us for the comprehension of the actual world would avail us 

 in a differently constituted scene, if in some form or other the dominion of 

 order was still maintained. It is conceivable that in such a new theatre of spe- 

 culation, the laws of the intellectual procedure remaining the same, the funda- 

 mental ideas of the sciences might be wholly different from those with which we 

 are at present acquainted. 



